Nordic Aquafarms gets offer of support from Humboldt County, California, for company’s second land-based aquaculture facility in the US.
It’s early days for Erik Heim’s California operations – to produce 25,000 tonnes of Atlantic and/or Steelhead per year at an old pulp mill. Lost Coast Outpost reports that the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved a motion directing staff to go after state and federal grants — and any other possible sources of funding — to help pay for infrastructure improvements on the Samoa Peninsula.
At the meeting, Heim presented potentially expensive problems that could make the project “financially infeasible at the site”. He said that financial incentives that would be important to support are:
- The Brownfield clean up with unknown risks due to industrial history in the area
- And to secure infrastructure for the water district to deliver clean water to the Peninsula. The water has high and variable turbidity.
“I’m here to understand what the county is prepared to do in terms of working with us [and] assisting us … in getting some potential funding sources,” Heim said.
The county agreed to put a task force together to explore potential incentives at a later date. The task force will include representatives from the county’s economic development, public works and planning and building departments, and other local stakeholders including the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District.
Due diligence of the USD 400-million RAS facility is expected to be finished by August. Nordic Aquafarms’ West Coast site in Maine is aiming to finish its first stage of construction by 2021.
