Nordic Aquafarms announced Friday that it is giving up on its plans to build a land-based salmon farm in Belfast.
“This decision comes after long-fought legal challenges waged by opposition,” the company said in a statement, adding that it has spent “tens of millions of investment dollars and many years of planning and permitting” the project.
The U.S. subsidiary of a Norwegian aquaculture company of the same name went public in 2018 with its plan to build a $500 million facility capable of producing 30,000 metric tons of Atlantic salmon per year in recirculating indoor tanks.
The facility, which was to be built on a former Water District property near the Northport town line, was to draw water from Penobscot Bay for its tanks and discharge wastewater back into the bay, but it was dealt numerous legal setbacks as it tried to secure that access.
Nordic’s proposal was the first in a wave of big aquaculture projects that were announced in Maine, built on the promise of being an environmentally friendly alternative to ocean-farmed fish that would bring tax revenue and some jobs to the area.
Other communities, including Bucksport, welcomed proposals for land-based fish farms, but opponents of the Belfast plan waged an intense legal battle over a number of years, ultimately sending the project into a long period of dormancy that ended with Friday’s announcement.
Brenda Chandler, Nordic’s U.S. CEO, used the announcement on Friday to make a final plug for land-based aquaculture and take a final jab at the opponents who stopped the project.
“Activism has its place, but with oceans under increasing pressure, solutions like land-based aquaculture are not just innovative, they are essential,” Chandler said.
While city officials had long embraced the project because of the tax revenue and other economic benefits it would bring to Belfast, they dealt a serious blow to it last spring, when the City Council voted 4-1 to reverse an earlier eminent domain action that had aimed to secure Nordic’s access to intertidal land where it needed to install the pipes for its project.
That decision came after courts dealt other setbacks to the project, including a ruling that the eminent domain had relied on a defunct survey of the city’s border.
Belfast Mayor Eric Sanders declined to comment Friday on Nordic’s announcement.
Mike Hurley, a former city councilor who backed Nordic’s project, said he wasn’t surprised the company was throwing in the towel, given the obstacles it faced in trying to get access to the intertidal zone for its pipes.
“Unfortunately, we’ll never know what might have been,” Hurley said. “They, unfortunately, never secured indisputable access to the ocean. In the end, that’s what killed the project. I don’t really have a great sense of loss because I already knew it was gone. But I was a great supporter, I remain a supporter and it’s just unfortunate for Belfast.”
Opponents of Nordic’s project could not immediately be reached for comment.
BDN writer Sasha Ray contributed reporting.