ON THE COVER
Quantifying Impact
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Environmental review for massive Samoa fish farm heads to planning commission By Elaine Weinreb
newsroom@northcoastjournal.com
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n 2019, Nordic Aquafarms approached the county with a unique proposal: Using some derelict land owned by the Harbor District, the Norway-based company wanted to build a giant land-based fish farm, with Atlantic salmon raised in tanks, separated from the waters of the ocean and Humboldt Bay, and marketed all over the nation. As part of the deal, Nordic would first clean up the highly polluted site, which was last occupied by the now defunct Samoa pulp mill, saving the district and the county millions of dollars. Nordic also promises the project will bring hundreds of good-paying jobs throughout the course of site cleanup, construction and ongoing operations. State and federal law require environmental assessment of most projects. At first, the county proposed a minimal level of environmental review, called a Mitigated Negative Declaration, for Nordic’s proposed fish farm. However, in response to public criticism, the company decided to commission a full-scale Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR), which was about 1,500 pages long, including a 10-page list of acronyms, and dozens of highly technical appendices. This was released in February.
The purpose of the DEIR is to explain all possible environmental ramifications of the project, to collect public comments on these issues and, where necessary, identify mitigation measures. The letters of comment, the company’s responses to them and some legal details were then published July 1 in a separate document called the Final Environmental Report (FEIR), containing hundreds of comments from members of the public and various organizations. The Humboldt County Planning Commission is now slated to take up the FEIR, which now sits at close to 3,000 pages, on July 28 to determine if it adequately assesses the project’s potential impacts of what would be the world’s largest landbased recirculating aquaculture system. Certification of the document would be needed for the company to continue in the permitting process. As described by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife: “The project site is situated on the Samoa Peninsula, bounded on the west by dunes and the Pacific Ocean and on the east by Humboldt Bay, and located at the site of the former Samoa Pulp Mill in the unincorpo-
rated community of Samoa in Humboldt County. “The proposed aquaculture facility will include operations to grow-out fish from egg to harvestable size. The fish will be contained indoors in separate buildings connected by underground pipes for fish transfer. “At full capacity, the facility will have an annual production of approximately 25,000 metric tons of head-on-gutted fish,” CDFW continued. “The project will require approximately 2.5 million gallons per day of freshwater sourced from the Mad River and 10 million gallons per day of seawater sourced from Humboldt Bay. Treated wastewater (12.5 million gallons per day) will be discharged into the Pacific Ocean utilizing the existing Redwood Marine Terminal ocean outfall pipe located 1.55 miles offshore of the Samoa Peninsula.” The project will see five buildings constructed — for intake water treatment, grow-out modules, a hatchery, fish processing and wastewater treatment — with a combined 766,530-square-foot footprint. The project will also include “ancil-
lary support features,” including a paved parking lot, fire access roads, security fencing, stormwater management and a fire suppression water line, according to the report, which notes that all of this construction would take place after existing environmental contamination is remediated. As might be expected, public comments for the project fall into two basic groups: Those who support the project because of its perceived economic benefits to the community, and those that oppose it because of its perceived environmental hazards. For example, the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District, which supplies both the peninsula with untreated water for industry and most of Humboldt’s larger towns with treated drinking water, strongly supports the project. The water district was originally formed to supply the peninsula’s pulp mills with Mad River water. When the mills closed, it was left with a massive surplus, which it could forfeit under the state’s “use it or lose it” policies. As such, the district wants new industrial customers. Continued on next page »
northcoastjournal.com • Thursday, July 14, 2022 • NORTH COAST JOURNAL
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