Aquaculture Review Board could set problematic precedent with decision on Rattling Beach fish farm, advocates say

The province’s Aquaculture Review Board (ARB) failed to hear community concerns and hold industry to account in its first decision involving a salmon farm, environmental advocates say.

On January 28, more than two months after a hearing before the ARB, the new decision-making body approved an application from Kelly Cove Salmon Ltd. (KCS) to expand the boundary of its salmon farm at Rattling Beach near Digby, NS.

KCS, a subsidiary of Cooke Aquaculture, applied for the boundary amendment in 2016, but had been operating beyond the borders of its lease since it acquired it in 2004. As such, the board’s decision won’t change the size, production capacity, or location of current operations at KCS’s Rattling Beach fish farm, but will bring the existing site into compliance with its lease boundaries.

In its nearly 18 years of operations at Rattling Beach, KCS never faced a penalty for operating outside the boundaries of its lease.

In a virtual press conference hosted by the Healthy Bays Network on Tuesday, representatives from environmental advocacy groups and community organizations weighed in on the ARB’s decision.

The seven speakers at the event agreed on three main points: it was difficult for the public to express their concerns at the ARB hearing; the board didn’t adequately weigh the risk the farm could pose to wild salmon in the area; and KCS’s 17-year boundary violation was met with impunity, setting a problematic precedent for other fish farms in the province currently operating outside their lease boundaries.

“在水中重新绘制一条线”

Kris Hunter, who spoke on behalf of the Atlantic Salmon Federation, said he thought the board’s34页的决定听证会发生的对话中包含“虚假陈述”。

“We were under the impression that the whole purpose of sending these lease violation cases to the ARB was to have an independent review of the impacts that the expansions are having on the environment and wild Atlantic salmon by operating beyond the boundaries,” Hunter said.

“Yet [the board] chose instead to only look at this in the context of, as they said it, moving lines on a map, and not relating moving lines on a map to the actual expansion that they’re retroactively making legal.”

In its decision, the board took into consideration eight factors, including the sustainability of wild Atlantic salmon. The others, as outlined in the province’sAquaculture Lease and License Regulations, range from the economic contributions of the site to the impact the farm will have on other parties using the surrounding public waters.

In considering these factors and what impact the boundary amendment would have, the three-person board, chaired by Jean McKenna, wrote “the short answer is none,” given KCShad already been operating in the proposed zone for nearly two decades.

“This ‘proposed operation’ consists only of redrawing a line on the water, so to speak,” the decision reads.

运营的唯一方法是董事会是否拒绝了该申请；该农场的产量将减少80％，因为其20个笼子中有四分之三超过其批准的边界。

审查员在决定后要求对董事会成员进行采访，但被告知董事会成员没有公众意见。

公众参与“受到限制”

The ARB was established following theDoelle-Lahey report, an independent review of aquaculture in the province completed in 2014. The report recommends the creation of an independent board to hear complaints and concerns from the public about the negative impact of an aquaculture site’s operations on the environment or instances where a company is violating the terms of their lease.

But Karen Traversy, who represents the董事会周二表示，董事会尚未履行其任务，因此保存东海岸协会。

“This first hearing, essentially a ratification of an already existing boundary expansion, was a process with such a narrow focus that valuable input from coastal communities was significantly constrained,” she said.

The Ecology Action Centre, Healthy Bays Network, and St. Mary’s Bay Protectors had all applied for intervenor status at the hearing, which, if approved, would have given them the opportunity to make a case against the expansion, present evidence, and call witnesses to the board’s hearing. The board denied the applications of all three organizations, saying in its decision that the groups opposed open-pen aquaculture in general and did not bring forward enough concerns specific to the Rattling Beach site.

“It is essential to point out that the role of this Board is not to provide a platform for general opposition to, or support of, open pen aquaculture in general,” reads the decision. “Rather, we must considerthisapplication.”

周二发言人也令人担忧的是，与该地区的Mi’kmaq原住民缺乏正式咨询，以如何受到现场农业业务的影响。

ARB发现没有义务咨询小姐的kmaq because the site had been operating within the area at hand since 2004, and therefore there would be no new impact on Aboriginal or treaty rights. The Office of Aboriginal Affairs (now the Office of L’Nu Affairs) also concluded there was no duty to consult for this reason.

But Sarah McDonald, a lawyer with Eco Justice, condemned the lack of consultation.

“I would suggest that it is appalling that DFA could avoid its constitutional obligation to consult with First Nations by tacitly allowing Kelly Cove to complete its expansion before going through the required application process and then retroactively claiming that the lease expansion won’t have any impacts on Indigenous rights,” she said.

The Examiner reached out to Kwilmu’kw Maw-klusuaqnalf — which represents most of the Nova Scotia Mi’kmaq communities in consultations with the federal and provincial governments — but did not hear back by the time of publication.

证明环境影响

麦当劳代表听证会中唯一获得批准的干预者，他说，由于缺乏人口监测，因此很难确定该地点是否对野生鲑鱼产生负面影响。她认为，这应该落在渔业和水产养殖部以进行监测。

“The board, of course, rejected that argument,” she said at Tuesday’s event. “And in doing so, essentially imposed a burden on groups and communities concerned about open-net pen aquaculture to produce positive evidence of impacts on wild salmon, which is a huge hurdle.”

麦当劳表示，希望社区拥有资源或专业知识以产生野生鲑鱼种群受到农场业务影响的证明是不合理的。她说，相反，省级监管机构和支持者应要求有证据表明nonegative impact on the endangered species.

Concerns over the impact of farmed salmon on wild populations has led the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans tostart phasing out open-net pen aquaculture在不列颠哥伦比亚省，到2025年仅移至那里的陆基养鱼场。对开放网笔的担忧包括寄生虱子的转移对于野生人群以及逃脱的农场鱼与野生鱼的杂交，这可能会产生较少适合在野外生存的后代。

归因于渔业和水产养殖部长史蒂夫·克雷格（Steve Craig）的一封电子邮件声明解释说，政府向支持者提供了在租赁条款之外运作的支持者，并有机会在2014年执行《多尔·拉赫伊》（Doelle-Lahey）报告后将其遗址签字。

The ARB’s decision notes the provincial government repeatedly told KCS to hold off on applying for its boundary amendment before placing a moratorium on applications in 2013 in anticipation of the Doelle-Lahey report. The ARB’s decision makes it clear the province was aware KCS was operating outside its boundaries at Rattling Beach since at least 2008.

Minister Craig did not comment on whether Cooke Aquaculture was or should have been penalized for violating the terms of its lease, and wrote that enforcement of aquaculture regulations was the responsibility of the Department of Environment and Climate Change.

With regard to KCS’s boundary expansion, the minister wrote: “We respect the independent judgement and ruling of the board.”

The Examiner asked to speak with a KCS representative about the decision, but instead received an email from Cooke Aquaculture’s public relations office with a link to a statement the company issued Friday. The statement reads, “We are pleased with the outcome of this application and look forward to engaging with this process for the other applications we have before the ARB.”

该公司表示，它雇用了205名全职新斯科舍省工人，并通过从当地供应商那里支付商品和服务来支持另外240个工作岗位，并且其在新斯科舍省的鲑鱼养殖每年征税740万美元。该公司没有说在嘎嘎作响的海滩现场雇用了多少工人。

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