Freedom of Access Act request reveals Mills upset by Law Court's Decision on Nordic's lack of TRI
Governor Mills is aware that Nordic does not own the land they plan to build on, and that their surveyor told them this years ago.
Belfast, Maine - "Bad news for Nordic." That is how Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Director Jerry Reid begins his Feb. 16th note to Gov. Mills about the Maine Supreme Judicial Court's decision that Nordic Aquafarms never had the "title, right, or interest" (TRI) it needed to secure the state permits and licenses needed for its proposed fish factory.
Belfast activist and journalist Lawrence Reichard obtained a copy of the Reid-Mills email exchange just days ago through a FOAA request.
In his letter to the editor in the Portland Press Herald, Mr. Reichard writes:
On February 16, 2023, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled that Nordic Aquafarms didn't own the intertidal land it needs to lay saltwater intake and effluent discharge pipes for the $500 million industrial fish farm it wants to build in Belfast.
At 1:56 p.m. that same day, Jerry Reid, chief legal counsel to Governor Mills, wrote in an email to Governor Mills and various state officials that I acquired under Maine's Freedom of Access Act that the court's decision was Nordic's "self-inflicted wound." Feeley elaborated: "They (Nordic) put millions of dollars into a project on land they didn't own, and...their own surveyor apparently told them that years ago."
Exactly. That's exactly what the Nordic opposition has been saying for years.
And two minutes later at 1:58 p.m. Governor Mills responded to Feeley's email: "Oh boy. This is not a good message for Maine.." Apparently Governor Mills thinks that Maine's highest court stopping a big corporation from illegally taking land from Maine residents is "not a good message for Maine."
Prior emails obtained by FOAA in February 2021 by Mr. Reichard and Paul Bernacki reveal that -- early on -- Mills and Reid knew full well about the weaknesses in Nordic's TRI assertions. In January 2019 Reid told Governor Mill and her brother Peter that Nordic “...had nontrivial title, right and interest problems.” Despite that knowledge, at an ex parte meeting on Jan. 25, 2019, Ried (then the DEP Commissioner nominee) and Acting DEP Commissioner Melanie Loyzim nullified an initial DEP determination three days earlier that Nordic had failed to demonstrate “sufficient TRI” and pulled a demand that Nordic provide DEP with the Nov. 14, 2018 survey prepared by Jim Dorsky for Nordic.
Subsequently, DEP and the Board of Environmental Protection (BEP) repeatedly denied attempts by our attorney, Kim Ervin Tucker, to require that Nordic to file all the surveys they had in their possession in 2019 and dismiss Nordic’s applications for DEP permits and licenses for lack of TRI. BEP also ignored the plain images on the surveys Nordic did file with Bureau of Parks & Land (BPL) and DEP in May and June of 2019, surveys that plainly show the Eckrotes’ property boundary ending at the high water mark — as does the Aug. 6, 2018 Easement Option Agreement between Nordic and the Eckrotes that Nordic, DEP and BEP claimed showed “sufficient TRI” to obtain permits, leases and licenses from the State of Maine.
Maine regualtory officials continued to support Nordic's proposed development despite mounting evidence that the company had little real evidence it could withstand the legal challenges brought by embattled homeowners Jeffrey Mabee and Judith Grace, HLH, Upstream Watch, and the Maine Lobstermens Association.
That the dispute had to go all the way to the Supreme Judicial Court to be resolved is a lesson for local communities to take on board: Be prepared for a marathon, not the 100-yard dash!
Now the Law Court has sent those permits, leases, and licenses back to BEP and BPL to have those administrative agencies have another chance to get this determination of whether Nordic has TRI right — based on the judicially determined ownership rights of Jeffrey Mabee and Judith Grace and Friends’ Conservation Easement.
In light of the emails from the Governor and her chief legal counsel Reid on the day the Law Court’s decision was entered it remains to be seen if the State agencies will finally uphold the rule of law or if they will again ignore Nordic’s lack of TRI — requiring another appeal to the Law Court to enforce the constitutionally-protected property rights of Mabee, Grace and Friends. Or will the Mills Administration continue to support a foreign corporation’s attempt to misappropriate land it has not right to use?
For more information contact Andy Stevenson at 703-407-2968 or andrewsteve@icloud.com.
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