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Industrial-Scale Salmon Farming Challenged
The Blue Hill area has a definite self-image, self-awareness and
protective instincts. |
It’s more than just
a town: Blue Hill shares its name with a mountain, a peninsula and a
bay, not to mention dozens of organizations and businesses. As the
highest point for miles around, Blue Hill Mountain is a defining
landmark for what has become a distinct region of the coast. Blue
Hill Heritage Trust in the 1990s secured public access to the top of
the mountain. The vistas it provides in an easy turn of the head
range from the Camden Hills, across the collection of bays and
islands to
Mount
Desert
and the Schoodic range. Anyone can feel like king of all he surveys
from up there, and a lot of people do.
The mountain
defines a region with a definite self-image, self-awareness and
protective instincts. When the threat of industrial scale salmon
farming in Blue Hill Bay loomed in the 1990s the community
responded. The nonprofit Friends of Blue Hill Bay was born out of
interest in the region to protect the public waters and the
character of the coast.
With over 300 local
members, Friends of Blue Hill Bay has questioned the State of
Maine’s aquaculture leasing procedure. The group has opposed
specific salmon farm applications, chiefly on the grounds that there
isn’t enough information about the likely impacts of salmon farm
proliferation on the ecology of Blue Hill Bay. In an attempt to
remedy that lack, Friends of Blue Hill Bay is funding multiyear
research into the natural flushing of water from the bay. Fish waste
and unused fish food concern members who question the impact the
addition of such nutrients would have on bay ecology.
The group is also
active on the legal front having brought suit against one salmon
farmer over the lack of a federal discharge permit.
Having established
itself as an important player in the statewide debate over
aquaculture lease standards, the Friends of Blue Hill Bay has gained
credibility as a serious local advocacy group. As such it is now
included in the delicate negotiations of compromises to place a
salmon farm in the bay with the benefit of local input and broader,
bay-wide planning for future uses of Blue Hill’s beloved body of
water.
– Aaron Porter |
