On its website, the Belfast Water District says it is recognized by the State of Maine for protecting its water resources. Well, that's no surprise, given the state's recent endorsement of the Nordic Aquafarms plan to spew 7.7 million gallons of effluent a day into Belfast Bay, and Nordic's plan to devour 630,000,000 gallons a year of the same water the state commends the water district for protecting. A fox could only dream of a henhouse protection racket like that. If only the state and the water district were as concerned about protecting our water as they apparently are about PR and mutual backslapping.

If the water district has its way, we may never know the full story of how Nordic convinced the district to serve up our limited water supply on a silver platter. On September 13, I made a Maine Freedom of Access Act request for all email between the district and Nordic, and all Nordic-related email between the water district and the City of Belfast, and on October 5, water district Superintendent Keith Pooler told me in an email it would take 100 hours to process the 91 pages of emails, at a cost to me of $1,500. That's more than an hour a page. 

Hell, I'll process it for half that. And I'm no talent scout by trade, but I personally know at least four sloths who could beat that miserable pace - and two of them can't even read. 

Lawrence Reichard lives in Belfast