TRENTON, Maine — Even though state and federal agencies have approved plans to establish a 50-acre oyster aquaculture site in Goose Cove, area residents and officials are voicing strong objections to the project and are asking federal officials to revisit the issue.
The operation could pose a threat to the safety of planes coming and going from Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport by attracting birds to the marine lease areas, which are about a mile and a half away directly under the flight path for the airport’s primary runway, according to opponents. They add that the Federal Aviation Administration had inadequate information about the presence of birds in the area and about the planned oyster farm’s operations when it received federal approval this past March.
Mark Nadel, a seasonal resident who spends summers on Goose Cove, said the combination of attracting large birds to the area and planes coming and going is a recipe for a repeat of the so-called “Miracle on the Hudson,” in which a U.S. Airways plane landed in the Hudson River in January 2009 after it struck a flock of birds shortly after taking off from LaGuardia Airport. But, he added, the outcome in Trenton could be much worse than the one in New York City, which resulted in few serious injuries and no loss of human life.
“The idea that this [oyster farm will not create] a bird problem is kind of crazy,” Nadel said in a recent interview. “The flying public is going to be put at an unnecessary but very great risk if this project goes ahead.”
The approved oyster farm is expected to be divided between two 25-acre parcels located between Haynes Point and Alley Island, approximately one mile southwest of the bridge that connects Trenton to Mount Desert Island. The five-year lease will enable proprietor Warren Pettegrow, whose family owns the nearby Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound, to use up to 5,000 submerged cages to produce as many as 10 million harvest-sized oysters each year.
The 50-acre aquaculture operation first was proposed in 2010 and was conditionally approved by the Maine Department of Marine Resources in 2012. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved the project in March, giving Pettegrow permission to grow oysters at the site through the end of 2021.
According to officials with the Department of Marine Resources, an annual production level of 10 million oysters would exceed the combined output of all the existing oyster aquaculture operations in the state. Pettegrow has not yet begun any operations at the approved Goose Cove lease sites, his attorney, Douglas Chapman of Bar Harbor, said earlier this month.
Brad Madeira, manager of the county airport, said recently that he and other officials share Nadel’s concerns about the oyster farm. Last month, Hancock County commissioners and the towns of Trenton and Mount Desert co-authored a letter to the FAA urging the agency to reconsider the impact that the aquaculture facility will have on the safety of passing aircraft.
“We are concerned that without sufficient and appropriate wildlife mitigation requirements in place, as well as a definition of the acceptable limits of increased bird activity in the area with a response plan incorporated, that this permitted land use change could create a significant public safety issue at the Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport,” the officials wrote in the Nov. 12 letter.
Officials in Trenton and with Hancock County have sent additional letters to other state and federal officials, including members of Maine’s congressional delegation, asking them to look into the matter.
According to Madeira, FAA’s own guidelines indicate that aquaculture sites should not be allowed within 10,000 feet of the airport’s aircraft operations area or within five miles of the approach, departure and circling airspace of the airport. At a mile and a half away, the lease site will be about 8,000 feet from the edge of the airport property.
“I just don’t understand” why the FAA would have given its approval to the oyster farm, Madeira said. “This is going to be a bird attractant.”
He said area officials and local residents who have concerns about the oyster farm met in Bangor in late October to discuss the issue with state and federal officials, including representatives from the staffs of U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King and of U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin. He said he got the impression that federal officials had not fully considered the oyster farm’s expected impact on the airport.
“I left the meeting not feeling so confident,” Madeira said. “I don’t think the county has many more avenues [to challenge the oyster farm’s approval] at this point.”
Attempts by the BDN to contact Pettegrow throughout the multi-year permitting process, including efforts made in recent weeks, have been unsuccessful.
Chapman, Pettegrow’s attorney, said that the project has been properly vetted by several agencies, including the FAA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The continuing vocal objections raised by the project’s opponents are an “insult” to the public servants who have examined the proposal and to the Pettegrows, who have done everything they are supposed to do, he said.
“It’s just fear being thrown out there,” Chapman said of the critics. “They ought to be ashamed of themselves.”
The attorney said birds already are attracted to the area in heavy numbers because of general human activities and that any extra birds that gravitate to the oyster farm will be at or just above the water level, “way below the flight path” of arriving and departing planes.
He added that opponents to the project had ample time to file court appeals of the approvals, but the deadlines for taking the matter to court came and went. Even if the approvals had been challenged in court, he said, there would have been no grounds to reverse them.
“They did nothing,” Chapman said. “They had their chance. They didn’t do it.”
According to Maderia, not enough is known about the presence or traffic of birds in the area of Goose Cove to know whether an increase of fowl near the lease site will pose a safety threat. A visual survey was done as part of the oyster farm application process, he said, but he is skeptical that conclusions drawn from it are adequate for predicting bird densities in the area. Radar that tracks birds and bats is expensive, he added, but can be far more effective than eyeball observations.
Madeira said Pettegrow has agreed to put anti-perching equipment on the tops of the cages, which will float just below the water surface, to keep birds from resting on top of them. There will be no such equipment on the bottom of the cages, which will be exposed when the cages are flipped upside down to allow ‘biofouling’ material that accumulates on the cages to dry out. The upturned undersides could draw birds to the lease site, he said.
Essentially, the airport manager said, approval of the oyster farm amounts to giving a green light to an experiment to see which theory about bird behavior is borne out.
“The variables are too complex to establish a reliable baseline” for charting bird activity, he said. “I don’t know any pilots or users of the airport who are willing to be part of such a test.”
Jeff Nichols, spokesman for the Department of Marine Resources, said recently in an email that the department is aware of the ongoing objections to the oyster farm but that it does not have the authority or expertise to assess potential threats to aviation safety. He said the department could initiate proceedings to revoke the lease if its conditions are not met, but none of the department’s conditions touch upon the topic of how birds might affect air traffic.
According to the Army Corps permit, before Pettegrow installs growing cages in the cove, he is required to have a study done to determine a baseline estimate of the number of seabirds currently likely to be in the lease area. He also will be required to conduct seabird abundance studies for at least three years after he begins operations, including quarterly updates.
Copies of all the studies must be submitted to the FAA and Army Corps officials within 30 days of being completed. The Army Corps, in consultation with the FAA, will have the authority to modify, suspend or revoke the permit if the studies indicate the oyster farm poses a risk to aviation safety. The Army Corps also may identify additional mitigation measures and modify the permit to include those.
After three years, the agencies will determine whether Pettegrow must continue to conduct regular studies. The permit also requires Pettegrow to take other steps to discourage birds from congregating at the lease site, including using structural equipment to deter perching, removing incidental shellfish growth from ropes and other infrastructure, and properly disposing of such growth or litter on shore.
In a prepared statement, an FAA spokeswoman said the Army Corps “has the authority to amend, suspend or revoke the permit at any time if the [lease holder] fails to maintain the mitigation measures or if there is an unsafe increase in bird activity.”
When asked about the oyster farm, members of Maine’s congressional delegation released statements indicating that they have been assured by Army Corps officials that reasonable safety precautions have been put in place and that any indications that birds are impinging on the flight path in and out of the airport will trigger an immediate reconsideration of the farm’s federal permit.
Meanwhile, according to Chapman, Pettegrow has started growing young oysters in an indoor hatchery and plans to move them to his lease sites after winter passes.
“He’s a determined young man. He’s a fourth-generation fisherman,” the attorney said of his client. “Cages will be put out in the spring.”
