Whole Oceans FOAA 6/26/19 Bucksport & Maine DEP discuss the project Fall 2018 to Spring 2019

FOAA Documents received 6/26/19 from Maine DEP re Bucksport
regarding the Whole Oceans LLC Aquaculture proposal.
Note: "Wood" is Gregg Wood, Maine DEP's permit reviewer ofWhole Oceans

DOCUMENT 1 Whole Oceans DEP Permit
2018
11/22/18 DEP to WO 11/22/18 Part 1   pg 1
 11/21/18  WO's Permit Part    P6
11/21/18 Permit Attachment A  Part 1   Pc28

11/21/18  NPDES Std Conditions Part 1 pg 36
11/21/18   MEPDES Fact Sheet  Part 1 Pg 48 1.2M

2019
010219 DEP Wood_to Cindy Bertacci  1pg
Full document_ FOAA 6/26/19 Part 1 3.6M

DOCUMENT 2  6/11/18 to 11/21/18 
6/11/19 Lessard to Bertocci  98K 

9/28/18 MEPDES WO factsheet   
9/28/18 MEPDES WO public comments & responses

10/23/18 KennebecBiosci. 2pg+1blank  72K
10/23/19 EPA to DMR & DMR-EPA 101K
10/23/19 Des Fitzgerald to Wood 1pg 
10/26/18 Wolper to Wood 
10/26/18 Wood to Faubel

10/28/18 Faubel to Wood    

10/28/18 Maeve Arthars to Wood 1pg.

10/28/18 Maeve Arthars to Wood2 1 page  

10/28/18 Karen Spitfire to Wood.  
10/28/18 Friends of Penobscot Bay 7pgs (4blank)
102818 Deb Capwell 3pg including blank  

10/29/18 Penobscot Nation Kusnierz to Wood 2pgs + blank

10/29/18 Andrew Stevenson to Wood 

10/29/18 Lew McGregor to Wood

10/29/18 -10/30/18 Lessard & Wood 2emails + blanks
10/29/18 NOAA to Wood incl email list 

10/29/18. NRCM letter to DEP. 2pgs plus blanks 

10/29/18 Penobscot Nation- Wood
10.29/18 GOMRI Perkins to Wood 4pg incl blanks   
10/29/18 Whole Oceans - Wood 2pgs + blanks  
10/29/18 Jim Merkel to Wood 6pgs +5blanks
10/30/18 Wood to Lessard 2 emails (blanks between pgs)
10/30/18 10/31/18  Wood & Lessard  5emails
10/31/18 -12/21/18 Six emails between Lessard and Wood 

WHOLE OCEANS 11/218 Permit 
11/21/18 WO permit OKed 4pg permit, 18pg spec cond 
11/21/18 Attachments A, B & C of WO Permit  
11/21/18WO Permit Standard Conditions 12 pgs   558K
70 FOAA 6/26/19
Whole oceans maps and flow diagrams 1

 2019
1/2/19     G. Wood DEP to C. Bertocci BEP 2pg  

FULL FOAA pt 2  6/26/19  2.4M

FOAA results re Bucksport & Whole Oceans Jan 2018 - May 2019

Part 1 of a 2 part response to a  FOAA request by Friends of Penobscot Bay made of the Town of Bucksport for  the correspondence between Bucksport Town Manager Sue Lessard with  representatives  of  Whole Oceans LLC and  various interested parties, broken into months  The  results span from January 2018 to May 2019

2018
January 2018   *  February 2018  *  March 2018  * April 2018 (none) *  May 2018 * June 2018  *  July 2018  * August 2018 (none) *  September 2018 (none) *  October 2018 *  November 2018  * December 2018

2019
January 2019  *  February 2019  * March 2019   * April 2019  *  May 2019

(Full 60 page pdf)  

Many thanks to Town Manager Sue Lessard for her prompt  response to our FOAA request.

Mills the disappointment

Mills administration's stance on Penobscot Bay water quality demonstrated by DEP folding to political pressure and cravenly, illegally, moving forward on Nordic AquaPharm application, declaring that, while the company's application is not lawfully admissable due to an abundance of legal documentation proving it lacks ANY physical access to Penobscot Bay - a necessity for both its intake water pipeline and discharge water pipelines - the application can move forward .

This despite the company's inability to respond to DEP in any factual way to the charges, Despite repeated deadline extensions .

Despite knowing that it is wrong, very wrong to approve a permit application for processing without proof it has the access to the bay that it MUST have to operate at all.

Despite all that, the Mills administration decided that it didn't need to care if the application was legal or not. It was moving ahead. and declaring the grotesquely incomplete application as "complete" , and fobbing it off to the still Lepage appointees-dominated Board of Environmental Protection to decide. As if!

Greenwave into water

Announced 2 days ago,  Nofima (Norwegian Aquaculture research institute) launches EU-wide 4 year, $9million research into low-tropic(mussels, seaweeds, urchins, etc) and Integrated Multi-Tropic (combine fin-fish with all of the above in one tank). 

Reasons being...low-tropic foods have great food value and require less energy intensive farming techniques...Integrated Multi-Tropic is the "holy grail", you basically create a tank-environment where the low-tropic flora and fauna sustain the fin-fish.

Attachments area

Andrew Stevenson	10:42 AM (20 minutes ago)
to Holly, Amy, me, Dave

This sounds as though it is a validation of the "Green Wave" model for off-shore aquaculture, the main difference being that if it is land-based, then the energy inputs and the artificial controls needed will be much higher and more expensive than an open-water alternative. Still, it is a recognition that the whole spectrum of possible aquaculture scenarios and the more "economical," the better.

Sent from my iPad

On Jun 15, 2019, at 6:10 AM, Holly Faubel <hollyfaubel@gmail.com> wrote:

Announced 2 days ago,  Nofima (Norwegian Aquaculture research institute) launches EU-wide 4 year, $9million research into low-tropic(mussels, seaweeds, urchins, etc) and Integrated Multi-Tropic (combine fin-fish with all of the above in one tank). 

Reasons being...low-tropic foods have great food value and require less energy intensive farming techniques...Integrated Multi-Tropic is the "holy grail", you basically create a tank-environment where the low-tropic flora and fauna sustain the fin-fish.

<Nofima kicks off $9 million low-trophic aquaculture research project.pdf>

FOPB strat plan scenic beauty

Strategic plan FOPB

Scenic Beauty Protection

* Scenic Beauty is an economically important natural resource around Penobscot Bay, as coastal forests succumb to sprawl, bit by bit,  In 1990 Maine developed a scenic beauty algorithm that uses baselines to grade scenic viewsheds' "quality" However it is infrequently used in coastal development decisionmaking. Can the survey be updated? Greater access to recent satellite footage shows  coastal development since then. 

The 'Water Views' methodology clearly defined what variables  contribute to the classification of scenic resources as either "Present" or "Outstanding. The factors are:

1.     Elevation

• present - hilltops over 100' within 1/4 mile of the shoreline 

• outstanding - hilltops over 150' within 1/4 mile of the shoreline

2. Steep Slopes

• present - 25% for 1/2 mile

• outstanding - slopes in excess of 40%

3. Sense of Enclosure (going to take me a couple minutes to wrap my head around this one)

4. Configuration

• present - shoreline irregularity

• outstanding - highly configured shoreline, many indentations within 1/4 mile of each other

5. Cultural Features (This is the most subjective data element)

• present - visually harmonious development that either blends in with or enhances the character of landscapes

• outstanding - concentrations of features of unusually high scenic value (usually more than three within 1/4 mile of each other)

6. Physical Features

• present - sand beaches, islands, exposed granite shoreline

• outstanding - concentrations of features of unusually high scenic value (usually more than three within 1/4 mile of each other)

7. Wildlife Features

• present - wildlife areas defined by US FIsh and Wildlife

• outstanding - areas of high value

8. Vegetation Diversity

• present - more than a single cover type

• outstanding - four or more cover types

Project idea, develop  an online model to allow for development scenarios to be analyzed to see the impact they would have on the viewshed. This would provide a baseline and quantitative and qualitative output to see the contribution/detraction from the place.

Rockweed scientists agree: The Supre

a) LD 1323 is an unconstitutional taking of private property - the rockweed - by
putting rockweed in the public trust when it the court has just said it is private
property (March 2019 opinion).

(b) Landowners must be compensated by the state for the “taking” of rockweed, in order for LD 1323 to be constitutional. The cost of this would be at least $88 million. No
law can take private property without compensation.

(c)  Rockweed companies don't have to go out of business just because they now
need landowner permission to cut. They can seek permission just as the loggers get permission from private landowners in the Maine woods.

(d) LD 1323 attempts to overturn a Maine Supreme Court decision. The
legislature should not be trying to overturn the effect of a recent, unanimous
judicial branch decision.

(e) Rockweed will get more protection to support cod, lobster, pollock,
alewives from private ownership than from state ownership. Most/many
fisheries in the public trust get overfished and decline: urchins and cod are the
best examples.

Windpower extraction industry - the intellectual leap they still won't make.

Windpower extraction industry - the intellectual leap they still won't make.

"The kinetic energy of moving air molecules above the surface of the Gulf of Maine is either dissipated as friction with other air molecules, or enters the water column as kinetic energy in the form of friction with the water surface. This is visible as ripple in lighter winds and waves in more powerful winds."

And according to UMaine's Peter Jumars, when it comes to  coastal surface currents,  those wind-generated ripples matter, for they either speed up, slow down and/or modify the direction of,  prevailing surface currents of the Gulf of Maine.

When those moving air molecules are instead used to turn the blades of a wind turbine, the energy that would have been added to the water column is now converted to electricity and diverted to shore. 

While the amount extracted would only be only a small percent of the  total amount of wind energy available within the Gulf of Maine, it would be intensively extracted from a relatively small anchored location of the floating windpark.

So. when offshore wind power supporters talk about the gigawatts of energy that their floating turbines could send ashore, what has been left unspoken is the fact that those gigawatts would be taken from the Gulf of Maine's surface waters energy budget, within the localized "wind shadow" or energy footprint of a floating turbine and cumulatively by an offshore windpark.

A second issue is whether the water current disruptions predicted to occur as described by the UMaine and others, see below, will interrupt or redirect any of the  flow of lobster larvae that normally head down the Maine coast from as far away as the Bay of Fundy. Will the UMaine's proposed offshore windpark deflect lobster larvae offshore away from Penobscot Bay and points south? This is a little tougher to understand - a matter of persistent "wind shadow" affecting  surface water movement in the "energy footprint" of each floating windturbine - but very important, so check out the below for details.

A simulation on youtube of what could happen to lobster larvae if the large floating turbines proposed by DeepCwind get installed off the mouth of Penobscot Bay - where they propose setting them up. 

For  info on how full scale floating windmills affect the water column and interrupt current flow, see these reports by UMaine oceanographer Professor Pete Jumars.   Pete told me that four full-size floating windturbines should be enough to start affecting the stability of the watercolumn beneath them, especially in summer when the water is naturally stratified.  The legislator should contact him directly, after reading through the below. He'll be very conservative about it, but will indeed admit it is an issue that needs more review.

* DeepCwind Offshore wind report University of Maine Febuary 23, 2011
http://deepcwind.org/docs/OfficialOffshoreWindReport-22311.pdf
See pages  5-49; 5-76;  9-6

* Anticipated environmental effects of offshore wind development in the Gulf of Maine
http://www.islandinstitute.org/documents/EnvironmentalEffects-PeteJumars.pdf
(See page 13)

* Goran Brostrom 2009 powerpoint: Can Ocean Windmills affect the Climate?
http://penbay.org/wind/ocean/statoil/goran_brostrom_bergen_20090429.ppt

* Measuring and Calulating offshore wind shadow http://docs.wind-watch.org/wake-ris-r-1615.pdf

* More on windshadow from a Delaware would be ocean windpower company
http://www.boemre.gov/offshore/RenewableEnergy/PDFs/stateactivities/MD/BWWShadowEffect.pdf

Oh that slacker wind! Would that Goggin would look into the wind's role in everything from, in the ocean,  the direction and speed of ocean currents great and small, (and thus the fate of  those ichthyoplankton migrating from hatching place to their distant settling place, from young striped bass to lobsters and blue crabs, all of whom flow up and down the myriad of coastal currents off our Atlantic shores)


Doubtless the

Water: Maine DEP's Hierarchy of estuarine & marine risk

Condensed from:
Classification of Maine estuarine & marine waters. 

The Hierarchy of Risk. MDEP  In three parts

1. Current classifications. Local 

Hancock County. All estuarine and marine waters lying within the boundaries of Hancock County and that are not otherwise classified are Class SB waters.

Bucksport (1) All tidal waters - Class SC. \

Waldo County. All estuarine and marine waters lying within the boundaries of Waldo County and that are not otherwise classified are Class SB waters.

Stockton Springs.Tidal waters lying northerly of the southernmost point of land on Verona Island - Class SC

Knox County.  All estuarine and marine waters lying within the boundaries of Knox County and that are not otherwise classified are Class SB waters.
Rockland. Tidal waters lying westerly of a line running between the southernmost point of land on Jameson Point and the northernmost point of land on Battery Point, Owls Head - Class SC.

2. Classification System

Class SA waters allow impoundments and very restricted discharges, so the risk of degradation while quite small, does increase since there is some small human intervention in the maintenance of the ecosystem. 

Class SB have fewer restrictions on activities but still maintain high water quality criteria. 

Class SC have the least restrictions on use and the lowest (but not low) water quality criteria.  Class SC waters are still good quality, but the margin for error before significant degradation might occur in these waters in the event of an additional stress being introduced (such as a spill or a drought) is the least.

3. The Hierarchy of Risk in Determining Water Classification 

The  Water classification system should be viewed as a hierarchy of risk, more than one of use or quality,

The risk is defined as the possibility of a breakdown of the ecosystem,  and loss of use due to either natural or human-caused events. 

Ecosystems that are more natural in their structure and function can be expected to be more resilient to a new stress and to show more rapid recovery. Classes AA, GPA and SA involve little risk since activities such as waste discharge and impoundment are prohibited. The expectation to achieve natural conditions is high and degradation is unlikely. 

Board of Environment

Bertocci, Cynthia S	5:08 PM (29 minutes ago)
to Cynthia

Dear Interested Person:

You are being sent this email because you are on the Board of Environmental Protection’s list of persons who have asked to be notified of matters pertaining to Nordic Aquafarms’ applications for the RAS Atlantic salmon facility proposed to be located in Belfast and Northport.

Please see the attached correspondence.

Sincerely,

Cindy Bertocci

Cynthia S. Bertocci

Executive Analyst, Board of Environmental Protection

17 State House Station, Augusta, Maine  04333-0017

Phone:  (207) 287-2452

Cynthia.s.bertocci@maine.gov

From: Bertocci, Cynthia S
Sent: Friday, June 14, 2019 5:04 PM
To: Kim Ervin Tucker <k.ervintucker@gmail.com>; Joanna B. Tourangeau (JTourangeau@dwmlaw.com) <JTourangeau@dwmlaw.com>
Cc: Bensinger, Peggy <Peggy.Bensinger@maine.gov>; Boak, Scott <Scott.Boak@maine.gov>; Loyzim, Melanie <Melanie.Loyzim@maine.gov>; Callahan, Beth <Beth.Callahan@maine.gov>; Wood, Gregg <Gregg.Wood@maine.gov>; Martin, Kevin <Kevin.Martin@maine.gov>; Gilbert, Jane <Jane.Gilbert@maine.gov>

Subject: Nordic Aquafarms - Board Meeting June 20, 2019

Dear Ms. Tucker and Ms.Tourangeau:

The purpose of this email is to confirm that Board Chair Mark Draper has determined that the Board of Environmental Protection will consider the requests that it assume licensing jurisdiction over Nordic Aquafarms’ applications for an RAS Atlantic salmon facility at its meeting on Thursday, June 20, 2019.  While Ms. Tucker has a scheduling conflict and will not be able to attend the meeting, Chair Draper has decided to proceed because, in this case, the matter of Board jurisdiction is not discretionary since both the Commissioner and the applicant, Nordic Aquafarms, have requested Board jurisdiction. Also, it is not a contested matter as Ms. Tucker, on behalf of Upstream Watch, has requested that the Board assume jurisdiction of the applications as well.  In part because Ms. Tucker cannot attend the meeting, and in part because it is not a discretionary decision for the Board, the Board will not allow comment at the meeting from the petitioners (Upstream Watch and Maine Lobstering Union), the applicant (Nordic Aquafarms), or the public. 

When the Board accepts licensing jurisdiction, it will vote on whether to have a public hearing (but would not set a date for that) and would set a deadline for the filing of petitions to intervene.  Under the Department’s Chapter 3 Rules Governing the Conduct of Licensing Hearings, section 11(A)(1), the deadline for the filing of a petition for leave to intervene is within 10 days of the Department’s publication of notice of opportunity to intervene, or such other time as may be specified in the notice.  The parties may submit written comment by Wednesday, June 19, 2019 at 5 pm on an appropriate deadline for the filing of petitions to intervene in the licensing proceeding. 

A copy of the Board agenda and Commissioner Reid’s request that the Board assume licensing jurisdiction over Nordic Aquafarms’ applications are attached.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Cindy Bertocci

Cynthia S. Bertocci

Executive Analyst, Board of Environmental Protection

17 State House Station, Augusta, Maine  04333-0017

Phone:  (207) 287-2452

Cynthia.s.bertocci@maine.gov

Rockland Adhoc Harbor Mgmt Plan Committee 6/6/19 AUDIO

On June 6, 2019, Rockland's Ad Hoc Harbor Management Plan Committee met in Rockland City Council Chambers to  review the latest iteration of parts of the draft Harbor Management Plan . Led by consultant Noel Musson the committee considered its workplan milestones past and future, discussed mooring area challenges, adding a wave attenuator, refederalizing  the  once-dredged North End channel used by Prock and north end fishing boats, and more!  Note audio recordings reorganized for easier use.

Full Audio Recording 2 hours


Pt1_Intro 6min

Pt 2_Consultant Noel Musson on workplan 13min

 Pt3_11min20sec workplan discussion, cont'd.


Pt4 A Wave attenuator  add to fed project areas  17min 15sec

Pt 5 Carrying  capacity 28min

 Pt 6 Yachting Solutions & boardwalk, public physical & visual harbor access 20min.mp3


Part 7_final_18min 45sec