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Controversial fish farm could be coming to a pristine Chesapeake Bay tributary

The 25-acre indoor factory would produce 2.3 million gallons of wastewater a day, according to permits.

FEDERALSBURG, Md. — Marshyhope Creek, near the town of Federalsburg on Maryland's Eastern Shore, is one of the most pristine remaining tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay. It's also home to a fish right out of the dinosaur ages -- the Atlantic sturgeon. A fish that happens to be endangered.

This is where a company is proposing to build an industrial-scale fish farming factory that has become very controversial.

"We need to have more waterways like the Marshyhope, not less. And this facility could really impact and jeopardize that water body," said Josh Kurtz, Maryland Program Director for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Kurtz said it's hard to grasp the size of what is being proposed by a European fish farming company called AquaCon.

"The building is proposed to be 25 acres -- one of the largest buildings in the state of Maryland," Kurtz said. 

The proposed site is currently a big soybean field. But the proposed building would be the size of six Super Walmarts, according to critics who say it will be nothing less than an industrial-scale fish factory.

Credit: WUSA9

According to AquaCon's permit applications to the Maryland Department of Environment, the company aims to raise 35 million pounds of salmon a year, all of it indoors. For perspective, that's more seafood from a single factory than Maryland's entire commercial fleet caught out in the wild in 2021, according to state statistics

As seen on AquaCon's website, the fish tanks will be filled with well water and chilled with salt added to mimic the ocean water wild salmon live in. The company says its water will be continuously recycled. But still, AquaCon needs to discharge some waste. 

The permit calls for the discharge of up to 2.3 million gallons of wastewater from the proposed fish farm every day. Critics are worried that the water is going to be colder than the natural water in Marshyhope Creek during much of the year. It will also be saltier.

Critics fear that discharge could have pollutants in it that could cause the sturgeon to stop spawning in this last place in the Chesapeake region where this endangered species reproduce. 

Dr. Dave Sector, a fisheries expert at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, supports aquaculture, but he calls this particular proposal reckless.

"There are better places for the plant," Sector said. "It's not that we should be against this technology, it's just that it's absolutely the worst place you could site this kind of plant in Maryland."

AquaCon representatives did not respond to WUSA9's requests for comments

A public comment period on the proposed permit has been extended to Oct. 17 and the state will decide whether to allow it after that.

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