GIF made with images from the County of Humboldt.

###

PREVIOUSLY

###

Is the Nordic Aquafarms project dead? 

It has been six months since the Norwegian company’s executives last spoke on the record about the project, and the Humboldt Bay Harbor District is being conspicuously tight-lipped about where things stand. The resulting dearth of new information has led to deep uncertainty about the much-heralded proposal to build a $650 million recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility on the Samoa Peninsula. 

Back in April, Nordic’s stateside CEO, Brenda Chandler, and local project manager, Scott Thompson, told the Outpost that the company was seeking new investors and projecting a longer project timeline amid turmoil in international financial markets and more complex environmental mediation requirements from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW).

Just three months earlier, the company had cut bait on a similar project in Maine, despite having spent more than six years and tens of millions of dollars securing the necessary permits. Legal challenges from the local community (which have yet to be fully resolved) proved too costly.

Seeking an update on the local project, the Outpost reached Harbor District Executive Director Chris Mikkelsen by phone on Sept. 11. He said he’d been “working with Nordic on what outcomes could look like” but did not have anything to report yet. However, he said he had a phone meeting with the company’s Norway-based executives scheduled for the following morning. 

Later that day, though, Mikkelsen called back to say the meeting had been pushed to the following Wednesday. He also hinted at the possibility of the company bailing on the project altogether.

“At the end of the day it’s a fully permitted project, so we would market the project to other users,” he said, though he acknowledged that the project’s value is dependent on keeping the environmental permits valid. 

We called Mikkelsen back after the meeting was scheduled to take place, but he did not return the call. In fact, over the next two and a half weeks Mikkelsen did not respond to a series of phone messages, a text and an email. Finally, earlier today, he sent the following reply via email:

I do not have any substantive updates to provide you concerning the Nordic project. Our team continues to have productive discussions with Nordic about the project, the entitlement vesting schedules, and the challenges surrounding the current global market conditions. As soon as I have a firm update or announcement, I will be happy to share that with you.  However, as of right now, I am not in a position to disclose additional details. Thanks for your understanding.

Members of the Harbor District’s board of commissioners, including Aaron Newman and Stephen Kullmann, also declined to say anything substantive. The former noted that Nordic has been “so challenged” by regulatory requirements but referred all questions to Mikkelsen.

The company itself regularly posted links to local news coverage and Humboldt-specific updates to its website until October of last year, when the posts abruptly stopped. 

Chandler, Nordic’s former U.S. CEO, is no longer with the company. Thompson, who appears to be the only remaining Nordic employee in the United States, said he’s unable to comment on the record. Emails to Norway-based CEO Lars Henrik Haaland received no reply.

Humboldt County’s First District supervisor, Rex Bohn, believes the company has indeed given up on the project.

“I understand they’ve thrown the towel in but nobody wants to admit it,” he said via phone this morning. The Humboldt County Planning and Building Department has put the project “on the back shelf” and stopped any work on it, he added.

The Humboldt Bay Harbor District announced the project in February 2019, saying it would involve a massive cleanup and modernization of the agency-owned Redwood Marine Terminal II. Nordic quickly signed a 30-year lease for that property, agreeing to pay the district $20,000 per year during the planning phase, followed by a balloon payment of $500,000 and a rent increase to roughly $159,000 per year for the duration of the lease term. 

Nordic planned to complete environmental cleanup of the EPA brownfield site on the Samoa Peninsula and replace the crumbling old pulp mill infrastructure with a state-of-the-art recirculating aquaculture facility that would eventually create up to 150 full-time jobs with benefits. This, combined with the proposed development an offshore wind terminal, promised to revitalize the industry and economy surrounding Humboldt Bay. 

Over the past six and a half years, Nordic Aquafarms managed to secure the necessary agency approvals and environmental permits, even conducting a full Environmental Impact Report despite the absence of a legal obligation to complete one. The company modified its plans several times — switching its product from Atlantic salmon to yellowtail kingfish, for example — but managed to survive appeals to both the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors and the California Coastal Commission. 

Still, the finish line kept getting more and more distant. To comply with the terms of an incidental take permit from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), Nordic agreed to design a new environmental mitigation project aimed at minimizing impacts to longfin smelt, a species of fish designated as threatened under the California Endangered Species Act.

That project, which would involve construction of new wetlands in several locations, would require its own environmental permitting. Meanwhile, the Coastal Commission asked for additional underwater mitigation work to be done between the Harbor District’s two intake locations — one at Redwood Marine Terminal II and the other at the “Red Tank” dock in Samoa.

When we spoke with Chandler in April, she said the construction was likely still years away, plans had been downsized and she still had doubts.

“I’m not going to be 100 percent confident until we’re literally breaking ground,” she said at the time. Two months later she was no longer employed by Nordic. (It’s unclear whose doing that was; the Outpost was unable to reach her for this story.)

Visions of a revitalized harbor have not been entirely extinguished. Mikkelsen recently said that the Harbor District is proceeding “full steam ahead” with plans for an Offshore Wind Heavy Lift Marine Terminal Project despite the Trump administration’s withdrawal of more than $426 million in federal funding for the project. 

The district is looking elsewhere for that funding, and it’s looking increasingly likely that completion of a fish farm project on the Samoa Peninsula will also require a different backer.