By Lucas Bechtol lbechtol@bryantimes.com
EDON — Sherry Fleming of Williams County Alliance had a simple request for area residents on Tuesday night.
“Please, please don’t give up,” she said.
The message came during a public meeting of the Alliance, a self-described “nonprofit, grassroots, citizen group dedicated to promoting a sustainable future,” held at the Edon Northwest Local Schools auditeria to discuss the AquaBounty project.
AquaBounty is planning to build a 479,000-square-foot facility with the intention of producing 10,000 metric tons of genetically modified salmon a year. That operation intends to draw up to 5.25 million gallons a day (mgd) of water from the local aquifer and discharge about that much into the St. Joseph River.
So far, the aquaculture business has purchased property on Kexon Drive in Pioneer and has submitted applications for several permits it needs to operate the farm.
One of those permits is a water withdrawal and consumptive use permit application that, if granted, will allow the company to draw 5.25 mgd from the ground.
“I feel like we’re bystanders in this whole process,” Fleming said.
That is not necessarily the case, she added, as there is much concerned residents can still do.
For example, people can still submit comments during any public comment period that comes up for AquaBounty’s applications.
They can also contact their government officials.
“I think we made it pretty clear in 2018-2019 that we wanted some control on the local level over this,” Fleming said. “Our state legislators are the ones who make the rules; they’re the ones that enacted the regulatory system for the groundwater withdrawal that’s occurring right now.”
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) is following the laws set out by the General Assembly in legislation co-authored by State Rep. Jim Hoops (R-Napoleon) and State Sen. Rob McColley (R-Napoleon), both of whom represent Williams County.
She said they should “get some of the heat” for the situation.
“I feel like if local communities can have local control over wind and solar farms, because Sen. McColley said they want to preserve farmland (which is a good thing) then water is even more critical and we should have some local control over that, too,” she said. “If you’re going to contact them, that would be one thing I would say to them: Water is critical.”
Fleming also discussed the possibility of a water line going along County Road S from the AquaBounty facility to the discharge point into the St. Joseph River. She presented a letter from Pioneer Village Administrator Al Fiser requesting use of the county’s right of way. She also showed a response from the county commissioners saying Pioneer could obtain a public right of way if it was for a public utility.
“We just got ahold of a letter that went out June 21,” she said. “This is a request, again from the village of Pioneer … They’re doing a permit to work on county right of way limits.”
Another item of discussion was the recent noncompliance with the discharge rate at AquaBounty’s facility in Albany, Indiana. Fleming showed a letter from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, dated April 12, 2022, saying the facility was not in compliance with their permit for Carbonaceous Biochemical Oxygen Demand (CBOD) Concentration, which is the concentration (amount) of carbon-containing organic material found in effluents. This parameter is an indicator of the impact of the organic matter on receiving waters.
The letter, a copy of which was viewed by The Bryan Times, was obtained by the Alliance via a public records request.
Questions and Comments
In addition to a short presentation about AquaBounty and the Alliance’s efforts to fight it, Fleming and others took questions and comments from the crowd.
Alliance members did their best to answer questions, including one about testing wells during the wettest time of the year and whether that affected the results in any way.
Andy Struble, an Alliance member who retired from the City of Bryan’s water treatment plant, said spring is the best time to do well tests.
“They have a lot of water in the deep aquifer, so they could do a lot of study with that,” he said. “It might have made a little difference, not much. But they did the other one, the east well field, they did in December. So, it was probably down a little bit then.”
A resident who lives in Edgerton asked what was in the discharged water.
Struble said AquaBounty officials say the water is purified, but he still expects things like DNA and “other micro contents” to be present in the water.
“Hopefully Fort Wayne (Indiana) will bring up that issue,” he said. “It’s not feces or anything like that, but we think the DNA is going to transfer into the river and down to Fort Wayne.”
Fleming said there is also concern about the water temperature, as it needs to be around 50 degrees for the salmon.
She also said that in AquaBounty’s Albany facility the feces is removed and sold as fertilizer to farmers.
Manure is a good source of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, needed for plant growth. However, Fleming raised concern about toxic algal blooms in Lake Erie that have made Toledo’s drinking water unpotable in years past.
“The fear is because of Lake Erie and algal blooms, this is another source that may contribute to that just because AquaBounty is going to rely on farmers to deal with it,” Fleming said.
Ray Strup commented, saying he was worried about the precedent set by this project.
“We need to put any legal additions, any kind of source we can to stop this because it opens up a Pandora’s box for anyone else who wants to come in and misuse our water and our river,” he said. “Watch out for what happens after that … This sets a precedent and we need to set a precedent of ‘No, not in my backyard.’”
Strup said residents need to stand up for their rights, questioned the effects discharged water would have on wildlife and said he didn’t like the condescending tone of AquaBounty officials when they were asked about fish escaping.
At a town hall meeting last week, AquaBounty President and CEO Sylvia Wulf said the risk of escape was low as the facility will have physical barriers and the fish weren’t going to grow legs or wings.
Struble said he has a microbiologist friend who is concerned about what could happen if the fish did escape.
“If those fish escape, they will out-eat the natural salmon and they eat crayfish and the crayfish population in the Great Lakes is already stressed,” he said.
Wulf also said the fish were all female and sterile.
Struble doubted that, saying he simply doesn’t believe AquaBounty.
Another question was on the comment during AquaBounty’s town hall when company officials said the aquifer is recharged at 200 million gallons a day. Someone asked where that study was.
Fleming said that study was from 1986.
“It does state 200 million gallons of water a day, in 1986, coming into Williams County,” she said. “It’s not equally divided because when Artesian of Pioneer dug 10 wells in the 3-million-gallons-a-day well field, I think there were only three wells that were productive. That shows you how variable the aquifer is.”
Ted Fleming, Sherry Fleming’s husband, had the last comments of the meeting, saying people’s property won’t be worth anything without water.
“People need to wake up,” he said. “You’ve got to protect this (aquifer) for your children, for the future of your property that you want to pass on. It’s not about me, it’s not about us bunch of old folks, it’s about our children and grandchildren so we have something to pass on.”
