The Friends of Eastern Bay are dedicated to preserving the health, accessibility, beauty, and character of Eastern Bay and Mount Desert Island's waters. In recent years, statewide rules designed to protect the health of our local waters and regulate the growth of aquaculture in Maine have been significantly eased, opening the doors to the extensive expansion of existing operations and opening the doors to large-scale international corporations seeking to take advantage of our limited regulations to make a quick profit.

 Over the last decade, Maine made the following changes to the rules regulating aquaculture:

• Increased the aggregate number of acres that can be leased by an entity, from 250 to 1,000;

• Increased the terms of a lease from 10 years to 20;

• Allowed the transfer of a lease from one entity to another without a public hearing and without addressing guarantees to future compliance with the initial criteria

In addition, there is no limit on the total number of leases that can be granted in a specific area and no mechanism in place to assess the cumulative impact of these leases on water quality, navigation, fishing, and ecologically significant flora and fauna.

Currently, the Maine Department of Marine Resources approves 97% of all applications, despite remaining chronically underfunded and operating without the adequate staff or resources required to enforce existing regulations and monitor Maine’s 3,748 miles of coastline.

OUR GOAL

The Friends of Eastern Bay are advocating to:

1) Establish a long-term conservation strategy for Frenchman’s Bay that balances development.

2) Require the Commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources to adopt rules to form a task force to study the current status and future sustainability of aquaculture in Maine, including whether the current statutes and rules are inadequate to address growing concerns.

3) Implement an immediate moratorium on approval of all aquaculture leases in the state of Maine until the findings of the task force are complete. The task force would consider at least the following concerns:

• Whether the 1,000-acre aggregate lease acreage for aquaculture leases established by DMR Rule ch. 2 section 2.12(3) should be reduced;

• Whether to recommend a statutory change to 12 M.R.S. section 6072(12-A) to make aquaculture leases nontransferable so that they revert back to the state as do lobster licenses;

• Whether Rule should impose additional siting requirements and evidentiary showings for leases within national parks, landmarks, and areas of ecological significance;

• Whether 20-year lease terms are too long to hold a piece of Maine’s publicly owned ocean, and the Department should by Rule impose a shorter lease term consistent with 12 M.R.S. section 6072(A);

• Whether the statutory terms “unreasonable interference” in approving leases should be more specifically defined by rule to be a more objective and a less subjective standard that gives the decision-maker less discretion.

• Whether to make decisions on aquaculture leases reflect Maine’s newly adopted Climate Action Plan: Executive Summary

• Whether to adopt a policy that identifies stakeholders and gives them a formal voice to answer how, in specific lease applications, Maine can best honor its obligation to act in the Public Trust to shepherd marine waters and submerged lands in perpetuity in ways that ensure sustainable development that provides the best use for a potential lease area with the lowest long-term risk.

• Whether to adopt criteria that determine and identifies ‘best use’ for marine environments that considers non-commercial attributes like views, protected status, habitats, and sustainability for independent workers equally with purely commercial interests seeking resource extraction.

• ·Whether to require criteria addressing business integrity, a transparent business plan, ability to capitalize and provide security over the term of the lease, and ability to post bond adequate to cover any environmental remediation that may become necessary.

• To address whether the existing regulatory framework provides adequate regulations, the manpower, and the funding to provide oversight for the lease over its full term. Since leases will be granted for a specified term, should funding for the corresponding regulatory effort be escrowed in advance?

• Whether to require assessment of the long-term and cumulative impact of current lease holdings on any pending lease applications in a bay or connected waterway.

  
  

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Community response and involvement is essential to our success. If you live, work or love Frenchman’s Bay, Mount Desert Island, and Acadia National Park, we encourage you to get involved today. Here are three immediate things you can do to assist:

1)     Join us by subscribing to our email list HERE to receive:

• Periodic (no more than one per week) email updates and Action Alerts

• Invitations to join our monthly Friends of Eastern Bay meetings

2)     Spread the word by following us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

3)     Make a non-tax deductible contribution HERE to support our work.

4)     Write to federal, state, and local agencies and legislatures.

5)     Write to local newspapers.