 All right, welcome everyone to our community conversation August 23 on the Clean Water Act and Finfish Farming. Matt Cannon, he, him, I'm with the main chapter the Sierra Club from the state conservation and energy director, and we greatly appreciate you joining us tonight. I'm going to introduce Jim Merkel, who will introduce the speakers and then we'll get going thank you all for joining us. Hi everyone, I'm glad to see all you joining us for the this great event I'm really excited for it. The Sierra Club has been in a bit of a quandary trying to understand how we can keep our waters clean in the coast of Maine. So with five big facilities, industrial facilities wanting to locate in Maine. If you add up to nitrogen output from all of them you would look at 19 Portland City sewers of nitrogen going into mains waters, and it seems like they're getting permitted that's a sewer for 60,000 people each. You know there's no real look at the, the cumulative impacts and even, you know when I was talking to Dave, Lucy and other attorneys in Maine and asking how these things getting permitted do we need new laws and he says no we have to reinforce the laws we have. And that's what led to this event Dave says we just got to enforce the laws we have because right now they're not being enforced and it's really a dire situation for Maine which is our brand and, and everything about what we love and what Sierra Club is about is to protect the shoreline and the whole state but the shore is really I think threatened by these industrial facilities so I'm going to I'm really excited I learned tonight that Charles and David are have have a history and you know grew up, I mean work together for some years and their kids know each other so I'll introduce them both but Dave Lucy, he began his legal career 1971 a year after the Congress created the US Environmental Protection Agency and just a year before the Clean Water Act passed. And then he was a special counsel to Connecticut's Legislatures Environmental Committee, and then he drafted some of the first environmental statutes there to help the state be compliant with the Federal Clean Water Act. And then in 2004 he was appointed to an eight year term on the US Environmental Health Sciences Council. And there we worked on the potential for prevention of bioterror and chemical warfare attacks following 911. And also he worked in to look at possible environmental causes of breast cancer and other illnesses. And then David retired and humorously unretired as can happen here in the Central Coast and, but he does limit his practice to environmental compliance issues and now he serves as a lead counsel to upstream watch a very fantastic nonprofit that's out of Belfast but they work in the upper mid coast, seeking restoration of rivers in the upper mid coast region. And Dave also recently participated in upstream challenge to the application of Nordic Aquiforms to build a $500 million fish factory in Belfast in Northport. And I might as well just go ahead and introduce Charlie at the same time. His undergrad at Harvard, he studied in Maine at University of Maine Law School graduating in 79, and then clerked for three main justices, working his way from the north and Halton down to Bangor and then to Portland. A steady south southern trajectory and in 1980 Charles took a job at the EPA's regional office in Boston, where he worked mainly on Clean Water Act enforcement and also superfund law, including the cleanup of New Bedford Harbor, and the related litigation. In 1990 he took a job as a lawyer for the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, a new agency created for the cleanup of Boston Harbor. And there his work included reinforcement of discharge permits issued to industrial dischargers he retired in 2019. Since retirement, he and his wife Marilyn have been building a house on Osborough where they've had a lifelong connection, and he's still is licensed to practice law and he's been also assisting upstream watch and it's appeal of Nordic Aquaculture's permits, since they were issued in 2019. So, I'm really excited to have both of you with us and Dave I think you'll kick it off right. Thanks Jim. Excuse me. And good evening everyone and thank you for allowing me to join you this afternoon this evening. A few months ago, Jim asked me what legislation I thought Sierra Club might want to propose to the next session of the legislature. I have a text of my having represented upstream watch in the Nordic Aquafarm application. And I note that David noise from Nordic is here. Welcome David. I told him I thought no new laws were necessary. Politicians want to take credit for doing something. I'll do respect and so they pass laws whether we need them or not. In my opinion mains environmental laws are just fine. They're being properly implemented. And that's what I want to talk about tonight. That's where we need help. Honoring the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act. I'll use that act. As an example, and where some factual examples are needed I may use the Nordic Aquafarm application but this is not about Nordic this is about the Clean Water Act. That act was proposed and debated and passed. As I went from a second year law student to becoming a lawyer being sworn in in 1971. I remember the chief sponsor of that Clean Water Act was Senator musky from the great state of Maine. When EPA first opened its doors in 1970. It's authority to enforce and pollution laws was very weak. The power to write effluent guidelines that only general authority to require secondary treatment. However, in the summer of 1969. Sparks from a passing train showered down on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio. The river caught on fire. And it burned. And that was the ninth time that river caught on fire. It was so frequent that locals hardly took the time to notice they simply put out the blaze and what about their business. But the publicity from that ninth event finally drew the public eye to the issue. President Nixon mentioned it in the state of the Union address when he asked for Clean Water Act. The lawmakers took action by passing the Clean Water Act. Both parties. I know we don't believe that happens anymore. It did. It did. Today, the Clean Water Act protects the quality of America's water some direct regulation of water pollutants, and their points of origin. The Clean Water Act was passed at a time when about 60% of America's waterways were not fishable or swimmable 60%. Today, in part because of the Clean Water Act, less than 40% of our waters are not fishable or swimmable, representing 20, 25% improvement. It's good, but not good enough. What did the Clean Water Act do? It established a basic structure for regulating pollutant discharges into the waters of the United States. It gave the EPA the authority, which it hadn't previously had, to implement pollution control programs such as setting wastewater standards for industry. It funded the construction of sewer treatment plants under construction grants programs. It recognized the important need to address non-point source pollution. That is pollution which gets into the waterways from our fields, from our lawns, not from the end of a pipe. But most importantly, it made it unlawful for any person to discharge any pollutant from a point source into the navigable waters of the United States. Unless a permit had been obtained under the provisions of the Clean Water Act. There's a process for doing that called the NPDES or National Pollution Discharge Elimination System. Let's look at the name of that permitting authority. National, all over the US. Nobody's exempt. Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. It's a system to eliminate discharges of pollutants. That's the system under which you get a permit. A system gives you a permit, the goal of which is to eliminate pollutant discharges, the very things you're getting a permit for. It was a bold statement by Congress. Well, the goal of the Clean Water Act was to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the nation's waters. They set two interim goals. The first was to achieve the swimmable fishable standard by 1983. Didn't make it. The second was to eliminate all discharges of pollutants into the navigable waters by 1985. Didn't make that either. But those goals of the Clean Water Act are still the goals of the Clean Water Act. And it's what we strive for today, fishable and swimmable and eliminate all discharges of pollutants into the waters of the United States. Well, it's passed by Congress, but it's implemented by the states primarily. The states were commanded to create water quality standards, which is like a roadmap for achieving the goals of the Clean Water Act within each state. Each state had to designate the uses of each water body in the state, establish numeric biological and narrative criteria, protect those uses, and keep the already good water quality from being denigrated. And this is that the Upper Penobscot Bay where the Nordic discharge would take place is classified as SB, which is the second highest standard. Pretty good, considering once upon a time there was chicken waste from Belfast coming out into the bay, and it was an awful mess. It's now the second highest quality. We're not sure if they could actually ever achieve anything any higher, but it's something to be proud of, and it's something to be protected. Well, the idea of the permitting process, the NPD as funding process was to delegate that to the states. EPA wanted the states to take that over. Well, the state had to qualify to take that over qualification required a letter from the governor requesting it, a memorandum of agreement between the state and EPA. And that's one of the program and how it's actually going to work within that state. And a statement of authority by the Attorney General, and an examination of the underlying state laws and regulations, and they've got to be consistent with federal law and consistent with the Clean Water Act. In 1973, that's what I had to do for the Connecticut legislature to take all the Connecticut water laws and try and retool them to work under the federal Clean Water Act. Connecticut had a goal of becoming the first industrialized state in the union to receive delegation of permitting authority from EPA, and they made it. Well, once EPA, and let me just ask something else which I'm curious about. Maine got its authority. In 2001, 30 years. After the act was passed, and it became available. Why did it take 30 years, I don't know the answer, but I asked the question, it took Connecticut four months. I was there I saw it. Why 30 years. In any event once EPA approves the program the state assumes the permitting authority, and instead of everybody in Maine having to go to Boston for a permit, we can go to Augusta. And it has to be consistent with federal and state law but what a state says well we interpret that law differently. We're going to do it our own way. Now we got a problem. And this is what I meant when I said, gotta obey the law as written. Let me give you an example of two things that I've encountered with the main DEP that I think subvert the congressional intent. The first I call permit deferral. Let's assume a permit requires a disclosure of nine things. The applicants got a show in order to get a permit. Well, the applicant may be only able to accomplish six and they may say to the state gee, I'd like to do this but I can only do six of the nine. A favored applicant may very well be told, do six of the nine, tell you what we'll do with the other three will ignore them for now. When we give you a permit, we'll make it a condition of the permit that you do the other three. Well, what does that do. What that does is it takes three of the nine requirements out of the hearing process gone poof. They don't show up again until after the permit is awarded and lo and behold there's a condition saying that the applicant has to do what they were supposed to have done before they filed the application. That's clever trick number one. It takes the issues off the table. It takes them out of the hearing process. And in my opinion. It denies you and me and our towns do process of law because we cannot address those issues in the hearing, if the issues aren't in the hearing. The second technique is what I call issue avoidance. And it's similar. At the beginning of a process the board of environmental protection which serves as a hearing adjudicator for DEP will say gee we're going to have a hearing. What will the topics be in our hearing. People like me would say the application itself, all the requirements. All they said I can't happen. But we too much. We can't give you two weeks of our lives. We're all volunteers here. So we've got to narrow this down everybody come up with a list. So you come up with a list. And the department then determines what they're going to what's going to survive and actually go to hearing. Do you know what they took off the list that I requested. Carbon imprint or carbon footprint. Carbon impact of this project. The climate change impact of this project. Oh no, not fit subject for a hearing. Other questions were put by the wayside as well. For example, where does the waste go when it comes out of the pipe that project in the Nordic case, just as an example 7.7 million gallons per day at full build of treated fish waste. Where is it going to go. They were asked the question upstream watch put on testimony by a professor from the University of Maine with 37 years experience studying the Gulf of Maine where the currents go and what have you got ignored. Instead, a permit condition. Listen to this carefully. Within two years of achieving full production. The applicant is to begin a study to determine where the waste goes. Within two years of full production. How about the years that don't make full production how about the years of doing 6070 80% 90% wrapping up all those years don't know where it's going. And what happens when the studies complete the permit condition doesn't say permit avoidance or permit deferral. It's a problem. Another question that was asked but not answered what's in the fish food that constitutes a majority of the waste. DEP was told. Well we don't know because we're going to make a determination of what fish we're going to eat fish food we're going to use when we get closer to the need. So we're looking at a waste, which is primarily fish waste. How is it fish waste, because the fish poop and the fish urine is fish waste is food is wasting the fish food. The stuff that falls to the bottom of the tank. That's fish food waste. And we don't know what's in it. And yet they granted the permits. What about the power to run the plant. Never disclosed how much power was necessary to run the plant. All I knew was that there was 14 megawatts that was going to be produced on site to take care of outages. Well that's great that's a nice big number, but 14 megawatts. If they only need 10 to run the plant is great. What about if they need 28 or 30. Then you only have half power if there's an outage. So on behold, after the hearings, when the applicant did not disclose this stuff, we find out that from the public utilities commission that's about what it what it is going to have about 50% of what they need. So they're also asked, what is the plan and seen the plan yet. If this were an EPA administered program, not a state administered program, I don't believe this would happen. You know, we'll get our day in court on the specific things and lots of others that specific examples. I'm using these examples not to argue the Nordic case here, but to say look, these issues shouldn't be issues at this point if DEP we're doing its job. Let me also talk about what I call the funnel. This goes back to the NPDES permit process. I call it a funnel because these applications must meet certain technological standards and water quality standards and Charlie will talk more about those. And they have to be based on the best practical treatment. And they're limited to five years. So at the end of five years you got to go back and get a renewal permit. When you get a renewal permit. You got to show that now, five years later, you're still using the best practical treatment. And so you have to improve along with the industry, you have to improve with the technology, or you don't get your permit renewed at least that's the federal law. It draws all permit holders inexorably closer to the zero discharge goal of Congress back in 1972. So that's where the that's how the act is supposed to work. It's one man's view about why it doesn't work in Maine. And I will make a suggestion Jim I lied to you I do have a proposal. Look at Connecticut General Statutes section 22 a dash 14 through 17. Here's what that says. It says that any person corporation firm nonprofit entity of any sort. You can bring a lawsuit against any other person corporation municipality nonprofit the state entity of any sort for declaratory or injunctive relief. You can get an injunction where you can show that the proposed activity. Is really likely to cause unreasonable pollution to a natural resource of the state let me say it again, reasonably likely not all it might happen, reasonably likely to cause unreasonable pollution not just to drop the unreasonable pollution to a natural resource of the state any of the state's natural resources. And once you make a prima facie case that that is so the defendant assumes the burden and asked to prove he's not doing it. It doesn't matter if the defendant has been issued a permit by DEP. I had a conversation with Governor Thomas mescal in 1973. He'd been the mayor of urban industrial city in Connecticut, he'd been a US Congressman, and then he was sitting as governor. He said, Governor is, I'm so skeptical about the need for this, this law that allows people to bring these lawsuits. And he said, I've been in municipal government I've been in the federal government I've been state government. Trust the people because you can't trust the government. He believed firmly that the people given the chance will do the right thing. I don't, I think laws may means laws are fine. Maine has to administer and enforce them as they are written. And as a check on that. I urge Jan, any others who are interested in legislation, take a look at the people's initiative in Connecticut, and see if that wouldn't be a good backstop because you know what it does. It keeps DEP honest. It keeps everybody in Augusta honest. I've rambled on long enough. You can hear from a scholar now, Charlie bearing piece of, I think better equipped to explain the true ins and outs and creation of the Clean Water Act. Then I am kind of the shirt sleeve street fighter that represented businesses over the last 50 years. Charlie. David, I'm not at all sure I'm better at explaining anything than you are but I'll give my, give him my best shot. And I want to begin with something that I put into our appeal brief is a quote from the late Justice Scalia is very simple statement, the words of a statute mean what they say. Scalia made that statement. Actually said it in a case which I can't remember the name of but he made a vote in a text that he wrote about interpreting laws that he distinguished and this is what he is most known for he distinguished between original intent and original meaning. He was opposed to the search for the original tent intent, except to the extent that he could be discerned from the meaning, and he emphasized the meaning of the words. The context of the Clean Water Act the one things things that we have said is that if the intent if and if their statute contains a statement of intent. That's part of the law and it has just as much force as the rest of the law. In the context of the Clean Water Act we have section one on one, which is a section that says that the purpose of the law is fishable swimming water, and the goal of the law is fishable swimming, swimming water, and the elimination of discharge of pollutants to the waters of the United States and I want to make a quick distinction here. That means to the waters of the United States if you have wastewater that has some pollutants in it and you reuse it in some fashion and don't discharge it. You are not discharging in violation of the Clean Water Act. If you discharge clean water after removing the pollutants that's also not a violation, at least not as a general matter that maybe context in which there's a reason why it might be but in general, the act, the intent of the act to achieve zero discharge is just as much in force now as it ever was and the words mean what they say. Now, in, you know, I want to talk about the, the effluent standards as they're called or the standards governing discharges from a facility when it applies for a permit. There are two kinds of discharge limits that the Clean Water Act calls for and it's, it's a stepwise process, either the permit contains technology based standards. Or if those are insufficient to prevent the degradation of water quality in their receiving water, then the permit has to have water quality based limits. Excuse me, I use the word standards and it's specifically limits in the context of the permit. It's limits on the concentrations of pollutants in the discharge. It can be based on standards in the act, but the permit limit is what governs the discharge itself. Now, when DEP issued the permit to Nordic, they went through a long, in their, in their final decision in November of 2019. They described at length Nordic's proposed discharge system. And they never actually said, at least I don't remember them saying that this represented the best available technology or the best technology in use. And they also did not base the limits on what that discharge technology could achieve. Nordic proposed this system and proposed a limit of 23 milligrams per liter for dissolved nitrogen and dissolved nitrogen is the pollutant of concern to us here and I'll get, get to that in a minute. But I want to say that DEP considered the fate of nitrogen in their receiving waters. They spent a great deal of time modeling it and reviewing the models, and they determined that 23 milligrams per liter was too high. And they did what the statute called on them to do. They came up with a water quality based limit of 21 milligrams per liter, which is only 3% less than 23 but it turns out that it is a significant difference. There is nothing in the record, which shows tells us how or tell DEP how Nordic can meet that limit. So DEP ended up finding that this discharge as it would be, as the applicant said it would be from their system would cause deleterious and that's not that's the word they use but I'm trying to use a non technical term it would harm water quality and the limit that DEP chose was not according to the record something that DEP had any evidence that the company could meet. Now I read that to mean that when the permit is issued the company can begin can build its system as it was designed as it was described in the final decision issuing the permit and begin discharging as soon as they have production up and running. And to me, they're not going to meet the water quality based limit under those circumstances, so there will be the kind of harm to water quality which DEP predicted. If that leaves me wondering how DEP could possibly have made the determination that water quality wouldn't be harmed. Now I know what they said they said it's not they won't be harmed because the permit has a limit of 21 milligrams per liter and that will protect the water. Now that we also have in Maine something called the the site law the site law for protecting sites when they're chosen and I forget the exact terms of this the formal name of it, but the site law requires a determination from DEP that there will be no adverse impacts to and they it covers air quality and water quality and a lot of other interests. I don't understand how DEP could in one breath say they can't meet this discharge they we have no evidence that they can meet this limit. When they're discharged at a higher amount higher concentration, there will be harm to water quality, and then make a finding as required by the site law that there won't be harm to water quality, and it's a curious fact that in the site law decision that DEP issue. They will make that fine. What they do instead is try to incorporate by reference, the water discharge permit, which also doesn't make that finding and in fact tells us that there will be water quality harm. So, I am very much at a loss as to how this permit will be upheld when we finally get a decision from the, what we call the law court the main SJC. We are, we have a brief in front of them, and we're waiting for a response from the state to responses one from the state went from Nordic. We will have an opportunity to respond to those responses and then the SJC will grant oral argument schedule at some time after those things are filed, and sometime after that they'll issue a decision. I have no idea how long that process will last. But when I clerked for the SJC. Vincent McCusick was the Chief Justice and he was determined to reduce the backlog and we did it we got the backlog down to a couple of months. And I recall it may have been more than that but it was not a year more than a year and it had been up to three years at times. So I will be confident when we get a decision that when we have oral argument that we will have a wait of only a few months before we get a decision so sometimes winter. And, and we'll see what they do with it. Well, I also want to talk about how technology based standards are arrived at and what, what they look like. There are several different terms in both mains and EPAs, or the federal statute that describe various levels of water quality or technology based standards. And because of the amount of time that's gone by the only ones that really matter now are best available technology and new source performance standards, which are for facilities that are have never been built or just discharges that have never been operated before. Now there is, there is a different standard which is for. And explain this that their best available technology is now the standard for toxic pollutants and there are a large number of toxic pollutants I believe it's 130 now and those pollutants are addressed whenever EPA develops a categorical standard that discharges any of them. Here, we're concerned with nitrogen, there are other pollutants in Nordic's proposed discharge and some of those will be eliminated by Nordic's treatment system. But most of them are in fact, and as is nitrogen, they're actually nutrients and therefore not toxic pollutants. However, this is a facility that is brand new on a site that has nothing never had anything built on it is quintessentially a new source and it should be subject to a new source performance standard. And that's the argument one of the arguments we make in our appeal in this permit DEP did not do that. It didn't even talk about new source performance standards as I recall, maybe I missed something. The standard that they set is something as I just mentioned that the technology that will be put in use under this permit and meet. Now, the way that you identify a technology based standard is you look at existing consider and that's the word in the statute existing technology. Even if that word weren't there in their statute, the idea that this technology has to be the best technology necessarily implies that there will be some comparison between the proposed technology and other technology and uses treatment technology and uses at other facilities. And we upstream watch recommended other facilities that DEP should look at that was filed right at the beginning of the permitting process in December of 2019. I believe. Right, excuse me, December of 2018, there was before the permitting hearings began and not after the permit was issued. The recommendation made by upstream in those that was what's called pre filed testimony, it was to qualify expert witnesses to testify. And upstream made the same recommendation repeatedly in comments on draft permits in a brief that we filed after the completion of the hearing. And again, in the fall of 2019 and in comments on the draft water permit. The recommendation was the DEP should consider three companies that are all achieving or working to achieve but in fact we're achieving zero discharge. The companies were coming to actual multi I don't know if I have the pronunciation right Israeli company that as I understand it was building new companies in Canada and even in in the West Nevada I believe, and working very hard to improve its technology all the time. And there's nothing wrong with they're doing that that's what you would expect them to do but the fact is that they were in their operating facilities. They were achieving a discharge that doesn't discharge pollutants to fresh water now. I'm saying that out of memory and I, as possible I have aqua move wrong, but I know that the other two companies superior fresh, which is a Midwestern company that discharges treated wastewater. It has an irrigation source, and that does not go the pollutants in that discharge do not go to the waters of the United States. And the other company is the best of them says sustainable blue which is located in Nova Scotia, and upstream supporters have been here. We have our expert witnesses talked to their manager. They have said and we put this in the record of DPS hearing that they could put their technology to use on at the scale of the facility that Nordic has proposed and achieve zero discharge. That's in the record, and it's the only thing at the record that is on the subject of zero discharge because DEP never responded to any of the comments submitted by upstream. And that is a violation on their part of a requirement that is in EPA's regulations and is identically in DPS regulations. The exception in that requirement is that they're not required to respond to insert insignificant or they are required to respond to significant comments. And it is entirely beyond my understanding how they could have claimed or thought that these comments about discharge technology from upstream were insignificant I don't believe they actually really thought that but I don't know what they did and I don't know why they did. The only thing I know is there's nothing in the record in the nature of any response to those comments. So, we end up with a record that shows the DEP did not consider other technologies in spite of what the statute says they should have done. And they really didn't have a basis of any kind for choosing a technology based standard. The outcome was that they didn't choose a technology based standard at all but they did leave that extensive description of the proposed system in the permit. And the implication is that that's what the permit allows Nordic to build. I don't know what would happen what I don't know what DEP would do. If Nordic builds something completely different from what the permit describes. I think they might say, all we can enforce in this permit is the 21 milligram per liter water quality based permit limit if you can do that you're okay. And I have no idea how they would do that because they never offered us anything. They just couldn't couldn't do it. It just means we haven't seen any plan to do it. Now, one thing I want to conclude in that discussion is that the, there have been a number of circuit court cases concerning zero discharge as a, either a requirement in state regulations that are being reviewed by these circuit courts, or in some cases as a requirement that is been imposed on a given industry. And we cited a number of these cases in our brief and I just want to quote one of them which described the zero discharge goal as a guiding star of the Clean Water Act. It should have been a moment of celebration when the comment identifying a company that had achieved zero discharge was received, but I don't know what the DEP actually thought. And all I know is they didn't do anything about that comment. So, I know I want to add that as we as it's our information that there are three and there were four new NPD as permits for agriculture facilities under consideration, and anyone can correct me if I'm wrong I think that the, there was one permit proposal that was denied, and I don't think it was by DEP, so I don't know whether DEP sells four or five, but there are a lot of proposals in the works coming down the pipe. And I would expect that upstream, I mean Nordics permit would be treated as a model for those new applications, and I would expect to see if that happens that they would have the same findings about the alleged best available technology. And I don't know how they're going to justify that because DEP has already said that that would lead to water quality violations. I really don't know how those new permits are going to work. And I think it will take some serious revision of thinking. Now, I, when I was thinking about all this, and trying to think through I know David and I agreed that we didn't want to talk about how the laws could be changed. I have a couple of ideas about that and recommendations which I'd like to offer. One is that EPA has under the Clean Water Act an obligation to regularly review and if necessary revise its existing federal categorical standards. It's under section 304 M of the Act. And they have a schedule that or at least they have a schedule and a plan that identifies several industries that they will review, one of which is agriculture, and that's because in 2004 EPA issued regulations, federal categorical regulations which contained no discharge limits. They only, the only standards they created were what's called best management practices. Now, that may have been the state of the knowledge of the industry in 2004, but that was almost 20 years ago. And what we know now tells us it is high time for them to revisit those regulations. And I would suggest as a possible and goal of advocacy that we either get EPA to do that or we get Congress to tell them to do it. And Congress could, in fact, tell them to do review of those of agriculture in light of the goals of the Clean Water Act implying that if they find that zero discharge technology is in use and could be used, that should be the best available technology. And that would be the federal term under the main statute it would be the best practical treatment. But that's this that's the standard that I would envision and a hope to see for the future of agriculture in on the coast of Maine. I want to emphasize, that's what I upstream and his members are advocating. This is not a mess that an attempt to stop agriculture from being developed. It's not even an attempt to stop Nordic from being built. I think that has always been clear, Nordic has, I mean, upstream has always said that, and I hope that it the word gets around that that's what this is about because this is not and I hope nobody would ever use in reference to what we're doing. The phrase, namely, that's not what this is what we're doing. So, so in conclusion, I have those recommendations. I, I want to add that one other thing that could be done in terms of an amendment to main statute the main legislature could do this. There should be a rule prohibiting DEP from issuing a water quality based standard in an NPS permit without a record showing how the company meet that standard meet that limit and the there should be a compliance schedule in the permit, which would requires them to achieve compliance with that limit within a reasonable amount of time. And the technology should have been shown to the agency it should be in the record of the permit was issued and there should never be another permit that has a water quality based limit with no evidence that it can be met. So I'm going to conclude there and thank you very much for listening. And thanks. I want to thank the Sierra Club to for giving us this opportunity. Yeah, thank you, Charlie and Dave really, really appreciate all of that. And as we said, folks we have a little bit of time for Q&A we have a big, pretty big chunk of folks on the call so we're going to keep it to the chat function. And we'll do our best to get to where we get by the hour, and anything else we'll try to follow up with folks on. But if you do have extra questions that we don't get to please feel free to reach out. I'll put my email in the chat later. But I'll leave it to Jim and I will try to facilitate and field some of these questions from the chat. So Jim, I don't know if you want to start off and see. I want to underscore Charlie's point that upstream watch is not anti aquaculture upstream watches not anti Nordic upstream watch is pro doing it right. It's an important point that I know that all the directors that upstream we want me to make and thank you for that opportunity Matt. Of course, yeah. Thank you for clarifying. If anybody who has a question please do put it in the chat and I see we have a few there so if anyone else wants to write a question in the chat. And now's your time to do it. And, and we'll try to get to as many as we can. So, just want to take it really take advantage of the expertise that we have here on the call. And we have from dawn asking. And it should be mentioned that cook aquaculture has been operating at a multitude of industrial open pen salmon farms in mains waters for over 20 years with DMR and the DP turning a blind eye to the pollution and environmental impact of their operations. And so I wonder if you Charlie or Dave have any thoughts about. These new proposals coming through our land based systems so called recirculating but they are what are known also as open recirculating not closed so they have a. They recirculate but then they put out Matt usually millions of gallons of water per day. And these other net pens of course are just the pollution is going straight straight straight into the environment and do either of you David Charles have a good idea of like how these have been permitted because they do seem to be really impactful. I don't know what the history is but I certainly agree that they should be the permits that they have should be revised, revoked whatever, whatever the best outcome would be it would take a lot of process for the state to do that but I think they should undertake it and I believe. I don't know what you could get the legislature to do with that is a good point of advocacy. And Jim I see one more above. David just yeah just about the zero discharge and municipalities. I think you both said that the technology exists but can you speak more to the technology and how zero discharge would be applied to all municipalities. It exists at an agriculture facility or three different agriculture facilities but particularly. Sustainable blue in Nova Scotia I said nothing about municipalities and in fact municipalities are regularly quite differently from industrial discharges under the Clean Water Act, because there is a specific technology, which is in use and there are three kinds of discharge. I worked for a municipal discharger in Boston, and it is a huge facility it's very expensive to operate and zero discharge would not be reasonable but for industries that discharge into the sewer system, zero discharge would be, in some cases quite possible and I believe as I recall that there were people doing it I know that there were quite a number of discharges and mercury, who simply stopped doing what they're doing that that caused those discharges and that's, that's not quite the same thing as what I'm talking about because I'm talking about a company with a treatment system that is treating wastewater taken out of their RS or recirculating system and treating it to remove all the pollutants. And I think the important point is, they can do it and in EPA's history and EPA's case law there are situations in which EPA has bases at standard zero discharge standard on us or BAT best available technology standard on a single facility and implied that they imposed it on a whole category of industries of companies and the circuit court is upheld they're doing that and said that if that's what has happened one company has gotten out in front of everybody else. The way the statute works is that should be BAT and EPA has done it exactly right. And I see in the chat there's a question about a statement that they are the same technologies why is it reasonable for a city but not a aquaculture facility says a farm. And then someone MS responded none of the proposed projects in Maine are discharging into a sewer. Could you, David or Charles comment on those two comments and maybe your thoughts between those two. I'm not seeing the comments but it's not the same technology. I mean it's different that technology could be replicated or other technologies could achieve the same thing and it's it's simply not the same if you're talking about other industries or sewage treatment plans. Okay. And let's see that I had a question for you to also and I'll see I'm gonna monitor and monitoring the chat as we go. But also I'm wondering in the in the case of the project up in Jonesport the Kingfish project. It seemed they that the their nitrogen levels are five times that of Nordics actually per quantity of fish it's a very very high nitrogen outputting facility. It's the same output of nitrogen, like twice Portland sewer but for fifth of the fish, but they have an exemption for economic necessity and I thought that may have been a main part of the law is that in the federal law and exemption so the city. I mean, the DP is basically saying, we're giving you an exemption because we think you're in in extraordinarily economically under tough situation as a town of Jonesport that you can be excused from the law, because you have an economic necessity is that mains interpretation or is that federal law. The state express provision in mains regulations, and I don't know of anything in federal law which is equivalent. There are ways that the feds could work a concept like that into their idea of best technology, but where you have an existing standard or limit I don't believe there is such an exemption. So, and I think in King the case of Kingfish. I mean that was that that is the what DP is allowed to do, but it hasn't been built yet and I, I guess it has been approved by the local community but I was under the impression that there's still more to come on that. Right, it's not approved by the community but they had a referendum that didn't pass but it's also go through the planning board and meet local. Yeah. Yeah. And MS is asking if zero discharge or possible wouldn't that mean none of these permit permit none of these facilities would even need a discharge permit and then wouldn't they want to actually do that wouldn't it be in their best interest to actually do something very very clean for me and not propose all this nitrogen pollution. Yes. Yes, I agree with that I used to be a big issue at, when I was at MWA whether somebody who was connected to the system but wasn't discharging and had no plans to discharge needed a permit. They at one time took the position that yes they should have a permit and yes they should report annually or by annually to confirm that they're not discharged. I didn't really think we even had jurisdiction to enforce that but it may be that if there is a discharge or clean water, which there usually will be at these facilities because they'll have a sanitary discharge that it might be. That the agency might decide that they want some kind of annual review or annual confirmation that they're not discharging from their, from their RIS system. But it's true that if there was really no discharge then there wouldn't be anything to permit. And so, yeah, they should want that. Yeah. And Jan is also Jan Dodges put in just wondering if there, if either of you have seen anything on the horizon with stay aquaculture programs at our universities and you know I'm really curious to just what research is. And I've discovered for, you know, these facilities to really push toward and start to propose those in Maine, those zero effluent facilities. Well I can take a shot at that. I am not familiar with the programs in Maine I confess that, but I did do a environmental compliance program, partnering with EPA, and about 400 colleges and universities around the country. And I observed a number of places for Institute of Technology, for example is one where they're doing remarkable work on exactly that subject. I think that we're going to see some terrific advances championed by our young people. I hope that it's happening in Maine the way it is in other states, Maine did not participate in the college audit program. When we did it was one of the most of the states did, but so I had a chance to see the other states but not main and golly if means anything like what we were seeing in some of these other states. The future is very bright. So what you do is search on agriculture in Maine you'll discover that there is lots and lots of research and programs and state and university and college. I went through a lot of those websites and I did not see anything about wastewater discharges which doesn't mean they're not doing it, but I just didn't find it. I'll show you. Yeah. Well we're at the, we're at the hour folks know there's maybe a couple lingering questions. If there are any more please feel free to reach out but I just want to respect the speakers time and try to keep these to an hour so I don't know if the speakers have any final thoughts really appreciate you giving us some ideas on legislation. Are there any final thoughts before we wrap up here. Just this that I, I appreciate the Sierra clubs effort to pull this together 50 years under the Clean Water Act. I remember watching President Nixon advocating that in the State of Union address and thinking 50 years and I'm not going to be alive 50 years from now. Well, here I am and here we are in the act is alive and well and getting better all the time and the efforts on the part of our environmental administrators can make a better world for all of us. And I look forward to cooperating in that adventure. I'd much rather be doing that in my non retirement than taking an opposition position. You know I really did come to me to retire a lot of people do I think they're smart. I wasn't smart enough to sustain it. But I think that the that that's the future, and not not antagonism. I think there's a lot that can be done that's positive. I just want to extend my thanks to Jim and Matt and the Sierra Club. This has been terrific and I second everything David just said so thank you and we'll look forward if you want to email me more questions I'll take a shot at answering them. Great. Thank you both very much for your time. Thank you everyone for joining us. Really appreciate it will post the recording online and hope that you stay in touch with us on our future endeavors. Have a great rest of your day.