Press release: PUC refuses to review “dodgy sale” to Nordic Aquafarms, Inc.

[Saturday, January 4, 2025. Belfast, Maine] Late Monday, December 30th, Maine’s Public Utility Commission (PUC) dropped an end-of-year decision in the email, denying our petition to review Belfast Water District’s (BWD) 2018 sale of its HQ on the Little River to Nordic Aquafarms, Inc…a petition we filed at the PUC’s request on March 21, 2024. 

PUC’s decision is not in the public interest. It leaves the public walking trails along the Little River at risk of being degraded — even eliminated — if Nordic starts to clear-cut the BWD site for its 900,000 square-foot salmon-raising factory. After filing our petition, HLH lawyer Kim Ervin Tucker invited the City of Belfast to join us and advocate for the community’s right to continue using the walking trails that so many of the city’s residents treasure. The City decided not to do so. We believe that decision was a critical factor in the PUC decision. 

The back story on the sale reveals that  the trails were stripped of their public use protection by provisions Nordic’s lawyer inserted in the 2022 deed…provisions that were not, it appears, reviewed by either BWD or the PUC before the sale was finalized. 

PUC approved the BWD-to-Nordic sale in June, 2018. The deed cementing the deal was drawn up in March, 2022. That deed includes an easement dealing with the “Waterfront Parcel,” i.e., the shoreline along the Little River and the reservoir that enclose the walking trails. The easement allows “Nordic Aquafarms, Inc. and its successors and assigns” the right to develop the parcel for industrial purposes and gives Nordic (and anyone Nordic sells the property to) the right to deny everyone else the right to enjoy trails. 

The BWD-to-Nordic deed with the easement was written up on March 11, 2022. Three days later, on March 14, Belfast bought the Waterfront Parcel from BWD for $100,000. Since the easement on that property in the BWD-to-Nordic deed was created first, it runs with the BWD-to-Belfast deed. 

So what protection of the public’s access to the walking trails did that $100,000 buy? Did the City Council know about the threat contained in the deed BWD gave to Nordic first? Did legal council to the City know? Were BWD officials even aware of the easement inserted into the deed they gave Nordic? 

Whatever the answers to these questions, from our standpoint the Waterfront Parcel easement is a “poison pill” designed to give a private, profit-making company the right to wipe away a public benefit long enjoyed by Belfast residents and visitors alike. We are deeply disappointed that the PUC chose not to reconsider its June 2018 Order approving the BWD-to-Nordic sale because:
— The alleged advantage of safeguarding the walking trails was one of indirect benefits that PUC referred to as a basis for granting BWD the right to sell water resource land to Nordic in the first place; and 
— The easement appears to violate the spirit and letter of the requirements that describe the easement Nordic could have on the Little River waterfront when BWD, Belfast, and Nordic sat down and hammered out a 3-way agreement on January 30, 2018, four years before the sales were made.   

The decision of the PUC not to investigate leaves the Waterfront Parcel and walking trails used by the public vulnerable to use of the overly-expansive easement, drafted by Nordic's counsel in March, 2022 and inserted into the BWD-to-Nordic deed of March 11, 2022. 

The PUC’s decision and the full case history on the Commission’s approval of BWD’s sale to Nordic can be found here.

Andy Stevenson, Press Contact
Friends of Harriet L. Hartley Conservation Area
Cell: 703-407-2968