Grievances on aquaculture decision aired
The Nova Scotia Aquaculture Review Board was on the hook Feb. 1 for a large haul of grievances regarding its decision to approve a boundary amendment for a Digby County salmon farm.
“We believe the aquaculture review board took a significant leap in describing the issue before them,” said Derek Purcell, director of the Twin Bays Coalition, a citizens group from St. Margarets Bay and Mahone Bay.
“The operator’s application reads, ‘we are requesting a boundary change to reflect the location the farm has been in for the last 15 years,’” Purcell told a virtual meeting.
Purcell said the review board was “narrow-minded, short-sighted and not acting in the interest of coastal communities,” in describing the application as requiring only an answer to what impact the boundary amendment would have in consideration of eight factors set out in the aquaculture licence and lease regulations.
“The operator’s request appeared to not only be selfincriminating but also opened the door to tabling evidence in support of that incriminating interpretation … evidence alleging wrongdoing on the part of both the operator and government,” Purcell said.
In its written decision released Jan. 28, the threemember review board chaired by retired lawyer Jean McKenna, said Kelly Cove Salmon, a subsidiary of Cooke Aquaculture, “acknowledges that it is operating outside its lease boundaries,” and that is why the Rattling Beach salmon farm site on the Annapolis Basin came before the board.
“It (Kelly Cove) has been attempting to amend since 2008 and its efforts were repeatedly postponed by the province,” McKenna, Michael McKinnon and Richard Patterson said in their decision.
OUT OF BOUNDS
During the application hearing held in mid-November,
Kelly Cove business development manager Jeffery Nickerson confirmed that its existing lease would allow for only three to four cages and the farming of 120,000 salmon at the Digby County farm but the company currently operates 20 cages that accommodate 660,000 penned salmon in a 29-hectare site.
The board, in its summary of the facts, said “portions of the farm infrastructure were located outside of the original lease boundaries, including some cages or portions of cages, and the moorings.”
The lease dimensions were created in 1993 and there has since been no issue taken by the province with the number and array of cages on the lease, or with the stocking density or quantity of salmon, the board said.
The board pointed out the boundary amendment would not change the current size of the open-pen operation.
The board also said in its decision that its role “is not to provide a platform for general opposition to, or support of, open pen aquaculture,” but rather to consider the application in relation to the specific Rattling Beach site. The board further explained the St. Mary's Bay Protectors, Ecology Action Centre and Healthy Bays Network had been denied intervenor status at the hearing because their interest was in opposition to marine open pen aquaculture in general.
Had the interpretation of the application, with consideration only for the eight factors set out in the aquaculture licence and lease regulations, been made public before the hearing, “we would have seen that the approval was pre-ordained and that there was zero interest in hearing evidence relating to the conduct of government or the operator,” Purcell said.
Karen Traversy from the Eastern Shore Forest Watch Association said the review board, when envisaged, was intended to be an arm’s-length body that could hear citizens’ complaints about compliance issues and provide a way for local community members to share with government their direct experience with fish farm operations.
“Instead, what we got with this first hearing, essentially a ratification of an already existing boundary expansion, was a process with such a narrow focus that valuable input from coastal communities was significantly constrained,” Traversy said. “These are public waters but yet the voice of the public has been narrowly
constrained.”
CONCERNS RAISED
Brian Muldoon with Protect Liverpool Bay said the review board should be dismantled, reviewed and reconstituted properly in order for appropriate industry regulations to move forward.
Gwen Wilson of the St. Mary’s Bay Protectors recalled a “no harm, no foul” comment from government earlier this year in relation to fish-farm operations acting outside the boundaries of their leases.
“That’s a pretty poor way to evaluate the kinds of things that are going on in our waters,” she said.
Kris Hunter of the Atlantic Salmon Federation said the burden “should be on the government and the proponent (Kelly Cove Salmon) to demonstrate the operation would not have an impact on wild Atlantic Salmon and the environment,” but that was not the case in the hearing process.