Going their separate ways: Belfast and Northport jurisdictions diverge at the mouth of the Little River

[Wednesday, October 16, 2024. Belfast, Maine.] Last night, in a 6:00 p.m. briefing to the Belfast city councilors and the Northport select board, surveyor Robert Yarumian submitted his preliminary report on the location of the mouth of the Little River, a boundary point separating the two municipalities. His conclusions are another blow to the latest attempt by Nordic Aquafarms, Inc. to save its proposed fish factory project. 

Yarumian began his briefing with a review of the history behind the legislative determinations of each town’s jurisdiction – Belfast’s beginning in 1769; Northport’s in 1795. He described the Belfast boundary as “…a very special boundary line…” because it runs through an intertidal zone of mudflats, no longer contains any permanent natural or manmade markers; and presents a question that no surveyor can answer definitively.

Yarumian’s concluded that the Little River now has two mouths: one for Belfast; the other for Northport. His decision confirms what we have maintained all along: that surveyor Don Richards correctly identified point at which Belfast’s municipal boundary turns “due east” from the Little River and on into the Penobscot Bay. Any intertidal land south of the line is simply “beyond Belfast’s jurisdiction.” 

The location of Belfast’s southern-most boundary is a key point in the intense legal battles we have fought with Nordic Aquafarms, Inc. and the Belfast city council. Surveyor Yarumian’s agreement with the survey we commissioned Don Richards to produce in 2019 adds another brick to the defensive wall we have placed around the mudflats owned by Jeffrey Mabee and Judith Grace. The point at which the Belfast municipal boundary turns east determines how much of the Harriet L. Hartley Conservation Area (HLH) is beyond Belfast’s municipal boundary, and therefore beyond the city’s ability to take the protected mudflats outside its jurisdiction. 

Nordic Aquafarms has coveted this intertidal zone since 2018. The mudflats are an indispensable piece of real estate Nordic must access if it has any hope of building a 900,000 square foot salmon-raising factory on the bank of the Little River’s lower reservoir. Nordic’s latest ploy to assert control over the intertidal zone involves suing the City of Belfast for failing to make every possible effort to defend a March 2022 Nordic-Belfast agreement to wrest control of the flats from its owners, Mabee and Grace, and HLH. Belfast hired surveyor Yarumian, in part, to provide it  – and Northport – with an objective assessment of the boundary question, and to demonstrate to Nordic that Belfast went “the extra mile” on the company’s behalf. 

We appreciate Belfast’s decision to engage Mr. Yarumian for several reasons: (1) his conclusions validate our claim that Belfast’s boundary at the mouth of the Little River creates no potential dispute between the two towns; (2) they completely agree with the 2023 decisions of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court (a.k.a. “the Law Court) in our successful ownership case against Nordic; and (3) weaken several of the claims Nordic made in its 2024 suit against Belfast. 

But what about Northport’s boundary?

Yarumian’s research reveals that Northport’s boundary line separates from the Belfast boundary at precisely the point identified by Richards as the mouth of the Little River. From there it meanders southwest until it reaches a second “mouth”…with the area in between the two boundary lines under neither municipality’s jurisdiction. That intertidal land is under state jurisdiction. 

At the end of his briefing, surveyor Yarumian took questions from Belfast and Northport officials. None of the Belfast councilors disagreed with or rejected the surveyor’s agreement with Don Richard’s 2019 survey. Northport and Belfast officials plan to meet separately to fully consider Yarumian’s findings; confer about any joint action the two municipalities might undertake as a follow-up to the report; and ratify those findings at their respective proceedings. 

The Yarumian briefing and the subsequent Belfast City Council meeting were video-recorded and are accessible on the city’s website.