MEDIA RELEASE
Consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch has filed an appeal in its case challenging the legality of Kona Blue Water Farms’ Velella aquaculture project in federal waters off of Hawaii.
This means the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will review the federal district court’s decision to allow the permit.
Food & Water Watch claims aquaculture facilities should not be permitted in federal waters, especially when a regional fishery management council does not authorize them.
Food & Water Watch and KAHEA filed a suit against NMFS in August 2011 for issuing an illegal fishing permit for Kona Blue Water Farms’ aquaculture project. The suit contends the federal government lacked the authority to grant the permit and failed to adequately assess the environmental impacts of the offshore aquaculture operations, as is required under federal law.
NMFS contended it could issue the permit under the federal fishery law, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery, Conservation, and Management Act, which defines the term ‘fishing’ to also include ‘harvesting.’
In her ruling last May, U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway approved NMFS’s issuance of a ‘fishing’ permit to the aquaculture facility. The court found the issuance of the permit reasonable because ‘[t]he project involved the growing and gathering a ‘crop’ of almaco jack to sell for human consumption.’
In filing their appeal, Food & Water Watch and KAHEA are now asking the Ninth Circuit to review the validity of the district court’s decision.
Food & Water Watch works to ensure the food, water and fish we consume is safe, accessible and sustainable. So we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of where their food comes from, keep clean, affordable, public tap water flowing freely to our homes, protect the environmental quality of oceans, force government to do its job protecting citizens, and educate about the importance of keeping shared resources under public control.
— Find out more:
www.foodandwaterwatch.org
The FFW is working a scam obtain tax payer money and not to “to ensure the food, water and fish we consume is safe, accessible and sustainable”. They will get padded “legal fees” from the tax payer if they win and if they loose they will have even more fund raising opportunities to scam their followers.
Their will be more tax payer money spent on these silly law suits that only benefit the FFW than the cost of the entire experiment moving a small cage of fish around miles offshore in 4,000 ft of water costs. Experiments like this one will “ensure the food, water and fish we consume is safe, accessible and sustainable”.
The FWW should have to pay the legal costs of the tax payers, if they loose. They would stop this type of legal fraud if they had a down side risk. They shouldn’t have standing without any skin in the game.