After scrapping its salmon farm on the Eastern Shore, company sets sights on Cecil County

A plan to develop Maryland’s first salmon farm, which was scrapped last year due to environmental concerns with a proposed Eastern Shore site, has resurfaced in Cecil County, along the Susquehanna River.

This time though, the environmental conditions are different, potentially lessening concerns that the facility and its discharges would have a harmful effect.

Instead of discharging water into a small creek called the Marshyhope that flows into the Nanticoke River, the proposed salmon farm would discharge water through a pipe into the Susquehanna River — the Chesapeake Bay’s largest tributary.

Unlike the Marshyhope, the Susquehanna River is not a key breeding ground for an endangered bay species — the Atlantic sturgeon. Worries for the sturgeon, and how they would be impacted by cold water flushed into the river system from the salmon farm, were the principal reasons for public outcry , which ultimately compelled the Norwegian company, AquaCon, to abandon its proposal .

This time, AquaCon has secured 160 acres for its farm, in Port Deposit’s Bainbridge development, a former naval training facility that’s under redevelopment for industrial uses. The company plans to construct new buildings on the site, which would house salmon throughout their lifespan, from eggs to fully grown fish, said Henrik Tangen, AquaCon’s executive chair and president, in a statement to The Baltimore Sun.

At first, the facility will produce about 10,000 metric tons of Atlantic salmon annually, Tangen said. When it’s fully built, the facility is expected to produce double that, and employ about 300 people, Tangen said.

The county is “thrilled” to eventually host the AquaCon project, County Executive Danielle Hornberger said in a statement.

“This innovative project, which utilizes clean tanks over land and eliminates the need for harmful chemicals, promises sustainable practices that align with our commitment to protecting the environment,” Hornberger wrote. “Moreover, it will create high-quality manufacturing jobs for our community, driving both economic development and ecological responsibility.”

AquaCon’s goal is to begin construction in the first half of 2025, and complete its first harvest in the first half of 2028.

In June, the company applied for a permit to discharge into the environment from the Maryland Department of the Environment. Its application remains under review, said Jay Apperson, a spokesperson for the agency.

Twice in July, MDE advertised the receipt of the application, and the opportunity for a public meeting about its contents, in The Cecil Whig, Apperson said. But no such meeting was requested.

At least one environmental group says the project still warrants careful scrutiny.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation does not have a formal position on the project, but they are examining the proposal closely, said Alan Girard, the foundation’s advocacy director.

In particular, the foundation is examining any potential impact on other species in the Susquehanna River, or key environments that would be downstream of the new facility, like the vast underwater grass bed of the Susquehanna Flats.

“We do know that this location downstream of the Conowingo [Dam] does have shad, river herring, other anadromous species expected to be in that area,” said Girard, using the scientific term for fish species that migrate into rivers to spawn. “Those species are in low numbers, and we need to understand habitat impacts to them.”

In his statement to The Sun, Tangen said the facility would use raw water from the Susquehanna, provided by Artesian Resources Corp., the water and wastewater provider for Cecil County, for the salmon in its recirculating aquaculture system, or RAS, and then purify that water before returning it to the river.

“As we are taking water from the river, the discharge water will be cleaner than the intake water. We are cleaning the intake water to meet the high purity standard needed for salmon production,” Tangen wrote. “The same water cleaning process will be done to the discharge water enabling adherence to all thresholds set for discharge water to the river.”

In addition the flow of the discharge water would be “minuscular” compared to the large water flow of the Susquehanna, which is about 0.8 miles wide at the discharge point, Tangen wrote.

The Susquehanna, which drains much of central Pennsylvania and into New York, accounts for about half of the Chesapeake Bay’s fresh water.

“Due diligence of the various important criteria, such as access to water from the Susquehanna River, electric energy, wastewater treatment, and logistics (access roads and efficient distribution to customers as [the] site is just off I-95), is very positive,” Tangen wrote in his statement.

Based on a quick review, David Secor, a University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science professor who voiced opposition to AquaCon’s former site in Federalsburg, said the company seems to have found “a much more suitable site,” where discharges would be significantly diluted.

In his statement, Tangen said the AquaCon team has “more than 60 years of experience of planning, building and operating salmon RAS facilities elsewhere in the world.”

“RAS land-based fish farming is regarded as the future of environmentally sustainable seafood production,” Tangen wrote. “We are most proud to bring this technology to Maryland.”