Environmental Concerns

Currently, over 90% of fresh salmon is airfreighted into the US, and half of all fresh seafood is thrown away. The Belfast facility will displace a portion of imports from overseas locations with a local craft seafood product. At Nordic, we plan to distribute our salmon by truck, as airfreighting produces much more CO2 than our local strategy.

We’ll be able to get our fish to consumers faster than imports, giving people more available days for their fish to be fresh. Reducing food waste is the most effective way of reducing CO2.

We further reduce our footprint by employing renewable energy solutions.

No. By raising our fish on land, with robust wastewater treatment systems in place, Nordic solves the issues associated with net pens. Following their scientific review of our application, the Atlantic Salmon Federation (ASF) has written a letter of support for this project, which concludes that there will be little impact from our farm and that it will contribute to taking pressure off wild salmon populations. Our biosecurity and fish escape measures are foremost in the industry, and therefore will not affect wild salmon locally.

No. Our wastewater system removes 99% of phosphorous, total suspended solids, and biochemical oxygen demand, and 90% of the nitrogen in the effluent. The residual discharge is going into a bay containing trillions of gallons of water- like a drop of water in a bucket. Even though we go far beyond current industry standards by removing 90% nitrogen, we do have elevated levels of nitrogen compared to background levels. The residual discharge is, however, less than 1% of the nitrogen already going into the bay. If other current dischargers raised their treatment level to only 50 % of our level, we would see material reductions in nutrient discharge along the entire coastline.

The Gulf of Maine Research Institute and the Conservation Law Foundation have reviewed our application and not found cause for concern. We will remain diligent in contributing to the health of the bay as a part of our environmental stewardship strategy.

No. Extensive pump testing and modeling confirmed this and the groundwater levels at our facility and the surrounding neighborhood will be under continuous monitoring. Nordic has further agreed to make whole any homeowner who has issues with their well. The overwhelming majority of homes and businesses are served by municipal water, with only a handful of homes still employing wells. We rely on freshwater for our fish and have three different available sources. The site we chose is unique in that the impoundment of the Little River previously supplied the drinking water for the city of Belfast and Northport for close to a century. We have been permitted the use of multiple ground water wells, withdrawal of water from the reservoir, and can use municipal water supplied by the Belfast water district. This allows us sufficient flexibility to balance which water supply we use.

Lastly, the facility will employ seawater for most of its processes.

The extensive data collection and secondary assessments done by an additional environmental consultancy conclude that our proposed withdrawal will not have negative effects on the overall health of the watershed area in Belfast. It also concludes that other local wells are safe. We will have fully transparent monitoring practices in place to give assurances to the community in the future.