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For Immediate Release February 18, 2004

Contact Penobscot Bay Watch 207-594-5717 coastwatch@acadia.net

Maine legislators to hear today from public on major aquaculture bill.

Augusta. Members of the Maine Legislature's Maine Resources Committee will hear from the public today on LD 1587, a controversial aquaculture bill that calls for doubling the acreage that aquaculture companies can lease, stripping Maine towns of their authority to issue aquaculture mooring permits, ending Maine citizens' right to require a public hearing of aquaculture lease renewals, and rejecting development of bay-level management plans that would ensure fishpens and mussel rafts fit in with existing businesses and uses.

The committee hearing will start at 1pm at the Augusta Civic Center's Pine Tree Room.

The bill was written based on a report by the Governor's Task Force on Aquaculture in Maine, which was commissioned last year to address the "controversy, litigation, and acrimony" that typifies aquaculture leasing in Maine at present.

( Click here for more about the task force, including online recordings of their meetings.)

Supporters of the bill, including the Maine Aquaculture Association and Canadian and Norwegian aquaculture firms say the state needs to make it easier for business to profitably raise salmon, mussels, oysters, and several other animals in the waters off Maine.

But critics of the bill say it is so flawed they will ask the committee to table the bill until next session.

Roger Fleming of the Conservation Law Foundation says that the bill entirely excludes the issue of baywide management.

"The most important recommendation from the Task Force has not been included in this bill and should be added as a new section." Fleming wrote in testimony to be delivered today. His group is calling for the state's Land and Water Resources Council to take on the task of developing legislation that would call for "the voluntary creation of local bay-wide or area plans for the integrated management of Maine's bays and the land that surrounds them."

Fleming noted that such bay management is happening many places around the world. "Maine should be a leader in modern marine resource management," he wrote.

Penobscot Bay Watch also dissents with the wording of the bill.
"Doubling the maximum allowable acreage of that companies can lease from the state, ending the power of Maine coastal towns to regulate aquaculture operations in municipal waters, and barring towns from charging them mooring fees, is not making aquaculture more friendly to the Maine coastal community." said PBW's executive director Ron Huber. "Just the opposite."

* Download LD 1857 as a word.doc for easy reading: Click Here

* TheTask Force's Stakeholder Advisory Panel dissented from some of the Task Force findings and made numerous suggestions to the Task Force concerning municipal control; .

* Directions to the civic center: http://www.augustaciviccenter.org/directions.htm

* About the Aquaculture Task Force & its 2003 hearings http://www.penbay.org/aqtaskforce03.html

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