by Alex Brooks
A non-profit organization called Clearwater Aquaponics is buying the Seagroatt property in Berlin for the purpose of raising fish and vegetables in a symbiotic system known as aquaponics.
The Executive Director of the organization, Joanne Willard, has lived in Berlin for two years. She and Clearwater’s Director of Strategic Development, Malcolm Ashley, held a public meeting on June 16 at the United Methodist Church in Berlin to tell local people about the project and answer any questions.
[private]The well attended meeting featured a Powerpoint® presentation about the project. Clearwater’s goals are to produce healthy, affordable food for markets within a 400 mile radius and to create employment opportunities in the Taconic Valley. Steve Riccardi and Phil Riccardi Jr., who have been operating a produce growing company called Berlin’s Best out of the lower greenhouses, will be involved with the new company, as will other local people.
Aquaponics refers to a system for cultivation of fish and plants together in a constructed, recirculating ecosystem using natural bacterial cycles to convert fish wastes to plant nutrients. The company’s plan is to bring all 300,000 square feet of the Seagroatt greenhouses into production, raising barramundi, rainbow trout and white tail shrimp as well as a wide variety of produce.
Willard and Ashley note that the wild catch of seafood is declining while global demand for seafood is rising and that sales of organic foods are growing at a rate of 7.4% per year.
The Seagroatt property meets all of Clearwater’s requirements – sufficient space, existing structures, a pristine water supply and highway access. Some of the fish they want to raise are warm water fish, so one of the challenges of the project is to keep the water in the tanks at optimal temperature. Clearwater Aquaponics has applied to NYSERDA for grants to figure out the best way to do this while trying to eliminate the use of fossil fuels. They are hoping to incorporate cutting edge energy technologies into the project, with NYSERDA’s help.
A list of key personnel includes a number of local people and a number of experts in the fields of aquaculture, hydroponics, environmental science and seafood marketing as well as two philanthropists. Rev. Joy Lowenthal, Pastor of the Berlin United Methodist Church, is on the Advisory Board and will Chair the Hiring Committee. Nathanael Webster of Berlin is named as the Marketing Manager.
The leaders of this project, Joanne Willard and Malcolm Ashley, are both Yale graduates. They have been working on this project since last October. While there is a great deal more to do, they are gaining confidence that all the elements of a successful project are in place.
Systems which combine fish farming with growing produce in a symbiotic way have been described in traditional cultures from the Aztecs to Asian cultures. One of the pioneers of the modern aquaponics movement was the New Alchemy Institute, which built a number of such systems in the 1970s on a farm on Cape Cod and also in a building on Prince Edward Island in Canada which they called the Ark. Since then a lot of scientific work has been done on aquaponics techniques, and it is a growing field with great promise as one of the key food production techniques of the future.
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