Last month, Friends of Acadia joined 20 other organizations and businesses who signed on to a letter from Frenchman Bay Conservancy to Governor Janet Mills urging the state to deny permits to American Aquafarms for two industrial-sized salmon pens in Frenchman Bay. Read the letter. The pens and associated barges and infrastructure would be highly visible from Acadia National Park’s hiking trails, carriage roads, and Park Loop Road, as well as from the Cadillac Summit Road.

The impact to the park’s viewshed, soundscape, and air quality, are not the only concerns, there are also serious marine implications. At full build-out, the combined salmon farms would produce over 4.4 billion gallons of effluent each day, 2,200 times greater than the Town of Bar Harbor’s wastewater treatment facility and ten times the amount that the City of Boston is permitted to release each day.

In addition to our comments to Governor Mills, we have also submitted comments to the Maine Department Of Environmental Protection in opposition to the permits, expressing concerns about the industrial size of the proposed salmon farms, the volume of effluent, risks from fuel spills, and excess nutrients circulating through the Bay. New hydrodynamic modeling has shown Frenchman Bay has poor flushing. Poor circulation in the Bay could lead to a build-up of nutrient pollution that results in harmful algal blooms and degradation of the shoreline habitats of the Porcupine Islands and other preserved islands in Frenchman Bay.

For more information about the American Aquafarms salmon farm proposal and how you can help, visit our webpage Defending Acadia against Industrial-Scale Aquaculture.