ICELAND’S fisheries minister submitted a bill to the country’s parliament last month amending the Aquaculture Act to ensure that the two companies who have lost their licences to expand salmon farming in the Westfjords can temporarily continue their operations.
The minister, Fiskeldi Kristján Þór Júlíusson, said he wants to be able to grant provisional licences for up to ten months.
It is the latest development in a saga which has become a national issue and has seen Iceland’s prime minister, Katrina Jakobsdóttir, step into the debate.
Both Arnarlax, backed by Norweigan salmon farmer SalMar, and Arctic Fish Farm, half owned by Norway Royal Salmon, were taken aback last month when an Environmental and Natural Resources Complaints committee unexpectedly ruled that an earlier decision by the country’s Food Authority to grant them licences to produce up to 17,500 tonnes of salmon in the Westfjord coastal ports of Patreksfjordur and Talknafjordur should not be allowed to go ahead. The committee maintained that a proper impact assessment had not been carried out, following objections from Iceland’s highly vocal environmental and fishing rights groups. The two companies still retain older licences for smaller expansion plans and it was suggested these were still valid and could be adapted.
Premier Jakobsdóttir said that two government departments were working on ways to provide the affected farming companies with a ‘fair deadline’ to overcome any deficiencies in their original applications.
The two developments are expected to create more than 150 jobs, a high figure in towns where the populations number less than 2,000 inhabitants.
Rebekka Hilmarsdóttir, mayor of Vesturbyggð, one of the nearby communities which would have benefited from the development, described the committee’s ruling as a major blow to the area.
‘Yes, this was a big surprise,’ she said. ‘This is a huge shock to this area.
‘It will have a huge impact on the whole community here.
‘It directly affects over 150 jobs and, consequently, the many families and many individuals who live here.’