Sid Block came to Maine in 1975 with his wife, Martha. Sid opened his medical practice in Bangor, with Martha as his nurse and business manager. Initially settling in North Bucksport, after 20 years they and their children, Kate and Ben, moved to Belfast for the next dozen and have resided in Northport since 2012.

In addition to raising their children, they have participated in various civic and environmental activities, including the successful opposition to a proposed coal-fired power plant in Bucksport in the 1990’s. Sid plays an active role in his synagogue; Martha in her church. When free and the weather fair, Sid likes to be on the water in his Rhodes ’19. After 50 years of clinical practice (2 years in the Air Force during the Vietnam war), Sid retired in 2023 and is now trying to be helpful in Martha’s gardens.

Early on, becoming aware of the economic, ecologic and environmental threat posed by Nordic Aquafarms, and then becoming aware that the very cogent scientific arguments against the fish factory were going to be ignored, Sid became active in the so far successful legal opposition as a member of the FHLHCA. Nominally, the first President of the Board, Sid’s considers his major role (and achievement) has been to stay out of the way of the most talented, passionate, disparate and dedicated assembly of minds he has ever encountered.

Raised in the Midwest as the rebel son of a pair of teachers, Ernie somehow managed to turn his graduate degree in Economics into a career of teaching and administrative jobs at community colleges in Illinois and California. But when that eventually became unsatisfying after 24 years, he quit his pretty-good job at age 50 to enter law school, which eventually resulted in a position at the Washington, DC, office of a large international law firm. Upon retiring in 2014, he and his wife, Lisa, serendipitously landed in Belfast, where he soon became involved in community organizations.

He is currently Vice President of the Board of the Belfast Community Co-op, a member of the organizing committee of the local branch of Window Dressers, and the Treasurer of Belfast Community Works. Previously, he was on the Board of the Belfast Bay Watershed Coalition for several years, which included a stint as the President. He joined the Board to prevent pollution of the Belfast Bay and destruction of important natural watershed areas, and to challenge City and State leadership when they put the desires of international capital above maintaining the character of the local community.

Ellie Daniels came to Maine to homestead in the 1970’s and has lived in Waldo County for 40 years. She worked as a homebirth midwife for 38 years and was also an original founder of the Green Store in 1993. Ellie continues to manage the Green Store and to work as a musician for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Belfast.

In 2018, she and her partner of 25 years, Donna, were living on the South side of Belfast abutting the land where the Nordic Aquafarms project was proposed. In the course of trying to understand the project, they became alarmed at the community and environmental implications of growing finfish on land in tanks and formed the organization, Local Citizens for SMART Growth. In 2019, she was a founding Board Member of Friends of the FHLHCA. She continues to serve on the Board as Treasurer and is passionate about preventing Nordic from building in Belfast as well as educating Maine communities and Legislators about the adverse effects of industrial-scale aquaculture.

She is an avid gardener and a studious admirer of restorative and regenerative practices in local small-scale farming and aquaculture.

Jane Earley grew up in Orono and got her law degree from Maine Law. After many years in the DC area, she and husband Tom decided to return to Maine and have lived part time in Belfast since 2013. Her career spans several federal agencies, industries and nonprofits, but has always focused on the conflict between international economic policy and environmental laws and regulation. Some career highlights included litigating U.S. laws protecting dolphins in the World Trade Organization, serving as CEO of the Marine Stewardship Council in its formative years, and advocating for sustainable agriculture in the U.S. soy, corn and cotton organizations.

She is happy to bring this experience to bear for the FHLHCA and its fight against the environmentally ruinous Nordic Aquaculture development, and hopeful that lessons learned will include development in Belfast of industries suited to its environment and resources, and adherence by the City to transparency and the rule of law.

Pat has moved around a little. She started on the East Coast, then the West Coast, the deep South, the Mid-Atlantic, and finally Maine. After a career in Medical Practice Management, she moved into the non-profit sector. In Maryland, she worked with a group protecting and restoring the Anacostia River and its watershed. she also founded and ran a local Farmers Market.

Moving to Maine in 2015, Pat learned about the PBS program and has been involved since then. This program definitely makes one aware of Penobscot Bay and its watershed. She is also a member of the Belfast Garden Club and Sears Island. In addition to serving on the Board of HLH, she serves on the board of the Watershed Coalition. She enjoys kayaking, hiking, gardening, and cooking.

Cecile came to Belfast rather serendipitously 14 years ago – by way of New Jersey and Florida. She is the proud mother of five grown children. She has been a preschool handicap teacher. She was also the assistant to the “Czarina” of multimedia for a software company in New Jersey. She was recruited by the owners of that company to be the Program Director for the private family foundation that they established. They felt strongly that helping young people go to college was a vital investment in the future.

As program director Cecile designed and directed the activities of the Foundation. Her responsibilities included developing and implementing the application process and managing the distribution of awards. Additionally, as it soon became clear that many of the students needed more than just a financial relationship with the Foundation, she arranged on campus visits and kept in frequent touch via phone and email.

As several of her friends are active movers and shakers in efforts to stop Nordic, she became familiar with the disastrous effects that proposed project would have on Belfast and the Bay. She was urged to join in those efforts, which she has done. She finds it a good thing to have done.

Over 50 years ago, John and his wife, Wendy, arrived in Liberty, Maine, in their converted school bus, seeking a bulldozer to haul them up to a site on top of their back-to-the-land acreage on Nells Hill. There, they logged trees, cleared land, and built a house without running water and CMP power. They traveled to craft fairs and sold hand-blown glass. Self-sufficiency and respect for the environment continued to be important to them.

Living off the land was not successful, and John took advantage of his privileged education with degrees from M.I.T. to pursue leadership roles in Maine government service in the environmental and health arenas. Ultimately, he became the Director of the Maine State Health and Environmental Testing Laboratory, where testing included infectious diseases, environmental quality, and forensics for multiple state and public entities. After retiring from 32 years of service for Maine.gov, he has been on the MOFGA board for 12 years and is now on his second three-year term with the Belfast Community Coop as Board Treasurer.

John and Wendy moved to Northport in 2012 from Liberty, where he had been a selectman for some 23 years. He was very upset with the CMP corridor expansion and takings on the corner of their 150-acre tree farm property. They were able to find a 35-acre parcel that was in need of TLC in Northport, which is close to the Little River Trails and the surrounding resource protection area.

When the City of Belfast went counter to its Comprehensive Plan and forced through a zoning change, turning a neighboring resource protection zone into an industrial zone, he became part of the initial citizen groups to try to understand what was going on. He wanted to scientifically understand the environmental consequences of what Nordic was really offering. He has served as a water quality scientist on the Upstream Watch Board since its origin and is now on the Harriet L Hartley board because he feels that at this time, its proximity to the Little River provides an opportunity to pursue the environmental/conservation issues in this neck of the woods.

Jeffrey came to Maine in 1982 to longline for halibut and any other bottom dwellers he could find. Because he couldn’t find many, he switched to the lobster and crab fishery and also spent one winter on Penobscot Bay fishing for scallops, all of which eventually motivated him to go back to school and become a psychotherapist. He is an inveterate boater and spends many hours on the bay, exploring the islands, fishing, hauling his grandchildren around on the end of a towrope, and taking friends on excursions. Jeffrey and his wife Judith are the owners of the intertidal zone that Nordic Aquafarms wants to use for their intake and discharge pipes. Jeffrey feels like Nordic Aquafarms’ plan to discharge 1500 lbs of Nitrogen/day into the bay is like injecting the discharge into his veins.

Jeffrey is a founding Member of FHLHCA board and feels grateful to the wonderful and hard working people of the board. He considers them his heroes and feels blessed to have them making this battle possible and successful. His interest in remaining on the board is to continue to support this battle to the end and to experience the pleasure of beginning to use funds to restore the eelgrass beds in the HLH Conservation Area.

This is Douglas S. Miska, born in Chicago and an accomplished real estate professional with over four decades of experience in the Florida and National markets. He completed his studies in Anthropology, Archaeology, and Marine/Underwater Archaeology, and spent his postgraduate years traveling the world and studying international cultures. Additionally, he has spent the past 40+ summers in Maine, which has enriched his perspective.

In his professional career, he has held significant roles, including serving as Senior Sales Consultant at Coldwell Banker Commercial Real Estate in Miami, where he specialized in the Multi-Family Investment Division. He was recognized as the number one salesperson in 1987 and received the top earning salesperson award, presented every five years based on highest cumulative sales. Currently, as President of Gator Realty and Management, Inc., he oversees the sales and development of multi-family and retail investment properties. He is passionate about the future and ensuring a positive impact on both the community and the environment is a core aspect of his life.

Janie has lived in Belfast with her husband Andy Stevenson since 2013. Before moving to Maine, she worked as a pediatric chaplain at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC. Moving to Maine has been a dream come true for her since she began coming here on camping trips in the 1980s. She was taught by her father to respect nature and be a responsible steward of the earth.

When she first learned of Nordic Aquafarm’s project, she was very concerned about the environmental impact on our community, and she soon became a member of Upstream Watch. Later she joined FHLHCA and has served on the Board as Vice President since 2020. It is her privilege to be a part of HLH and to work alongside so many dedicated people to protect Belfast Bay for future generations.

She loves hiking and camping, growing medicinal plants and vegetables, making art, reading, and spending time with friends.

Karin has lived in Belfast since 1987, when the potato, sardine and chicken factory were all still operating. As a feminist, activist, and artist, she has produced, performed, and participated in many actions, productions, and committees over the years. To date, her crowning artistic organizational feat was the 2010 “Sardine Extravaganza” which culminated with an afternoon of performances during the Rotary Club’s Annual Harbor Fest, which ended with a parade and a contra dance on the walking bridge…all to celebrate coastal Maine’s relationship with herring and to raise awareness of the disappearing number.

She has been engaged with fighting off Nordic from the first public hearing, in which it was apparent to her that this was a bad idea. She attended the first reading of the zoning change at the City Council and protested, knowing that this change would indeed grease the entire permitting process with no other brakes to stop the process. She joined the Board to participate more directly actively in the nitty-gritty and to enjoy the companionship of like-minded people while doing so. She is interested in alliance-building between other towns or entities that are also being affected by such powerfully backed shenanigans, exploring options for eelgrass restoration, and creating community events that further HLH’s mission.

Andy’s commitment to environmental protection and restoration began in graduate school and has matured since then. “The environment” often invokes a large-scale concept that we have little influence over as individuals. However, Andy’s professional experience has focused on regional and local pollution control programs. He spent his first wage-earning years in the U.S. EPA Office of Water during the Nixon Administration; worked for a lobbyist representing the 50 largest wastewater treatment agencies in the U.S.; and directed political affairs for the Water Pollution Control Federation. In the 1980s, he switched his focus from clean water to hazardous waste when he joined the Boston-based environmental engineering firm of Camp, Dresser & McKee.

When Nordic Aquafarms came to Belfast in 2018, he gave them the benefit of the doubt. As the details and likely impacts of their project became clear, his curiosity turned to skepticism, then alarm, then active resistance. Like his wife, Janie, he joined Upstream Watch and worked with equally concerned and conscientious folks devoted to using the permitting process to reveal the true costs and risks in Nordic’s proposal. When Jeffrey and Judith created the conservation easement on their intertidal lands, he decided that defending their property rights was critical to keeping Nordic out and Belfast from becoming a “single industry” town. Maine needs a sustainable, restorative economy built upon a rejuvenated environment. Joining FHLHCA gives him a chance to be a small part of that grand initiative – ”paying forward” to future generations.

Lauren Valle is a community herbalist, mother, gardener, painter, community organizer, activist and devotee of the ocean and all the waters of the Earth. She is a founder of the Rockweed Center, a community center in downtown Belfast. You can learn more about her work through her practice Marigold Healing Arts.