Action Alert: Tell Humboldt County to Fully Review and Mitigate Fish Factory

Comments are due May 24 on the County’s review of the environmental impacts of Nordic AquaFarms’ proposed land-based fish factory. The $400 million project would involve redeveloping nearly 36 acres at the former pulp mill in Samoa to produce 73 million pounds of fish per year. Twelve million gallons of treated wastewater would be released into the ocean daily, 1.5-miles from shore. Most of that water would come from Humboldt Bay, with up to 3 million gallons/day coming from the Mad River through existing pipelines.

350 Humboldt is cooperating with EPIC and several other environmental organizations to make sure this project gets adequate review.

EPIC has set up a site to facilitate commenting on the project. The site includes a number of problems and ambiguities in the proposed project that you can use in formulating your comments.  The most basic point you can make is that a full Environmental Impact Report should be completed prior to considering approval. Another point, not mentioned on the EPIC website, is that large amounts of cooling is going to be needed to keep the fish cool. Refrigerants can have global warming effects thousands of times greater than CO2. But there is no information in the fish factory public information that discloses the amount of refrigerants to be used, their global warming potential, or how leaks will be monitored and averted.

Click this link to be taken to the EPIC site with project information and an email link for sending your comments.

CLICK HERE!