As reported earlier in Pen Bay Pilot, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled last February that Nordic Aquafarms doesn't own the mudflats it needs to lay saltwater intake and effluent discharge pipes for its $500 million industrial fish farm, and the court remanded the matter to the Board of Environmental Protection for reconsideration of BEP's Nordic permit.

BEP shouldn't have considered Nordic's permit application in the first place, as Nordic never had clear title to all needed lands, as required by Maine law. But in 2019, BEP ignored this basic, fundamental law designed to keep bad actors from playing fast and loose, from cutting too many corners, and from wasting BEP's time. It's nice to have friends.

But BEP rediscovered its fondness for strict allegiance to regulations when I was barred from speaking at its October 19, 2023 meeting to reconsider Nordic's permit - because I had missed a deadline for filing written comment. Easier to swat the fly in the kitchen than the gorilla in the living room.

And now the Maine Department of Environmental Protection wants to change its official definition of abutters, thus changing its requirements for notifying abutters when future Nordics want to build the equivalent of one Gillette Stadium, one Fenway and three TD North Gardens in abutters' backyards. In emails to me, DEP Policy Director Kevin Martin says this proposed change is all aboveboard, but given BEP's and DEP's bleak history of willfully turning a blind eye to Nordic's glaring lack of title to all needed lands, it's more than a little hard to trust the DEP or the BEP.

If you want to be heard in the hearing for that "rulemaking", you better play by the rules and get your written comment in on time. Either that or tell them you have $500 million. That seems to work pretty well.

Lawrence Reichard lives in Belfast