Press release: The sale of Nordic Aquafarms’ property to Upstream Watch

[Tuesday, April 29, 2025. Belfast, Maine] We welcome recent news of Nordic’s pending sale of its Belfast properties to Upstream Watch. It is an encouraging development for everyone concerned about the fate of the Belfast Water District’s property, the dams,  reservoirs, and the Little River. 

We have reached this point in the “Nordic Saga” for one major reason: HLH lawyer, Kim Ervin Tucker, fought for the property rights of Jeffrey Mabee and Judith Grace all the way to the Maine supreme court…thanks to the financial support of HLHCA members.

If attorney Tucker and her investigator, Paul Bernacki, had not found and followed the chain of deeds backwards for over 200 years, we would not have prevailed in the Title Claims case. the Nordic-Upstream sale would not have happened. We hammered away at Nordic’s weakest link — Who owns the mudflats Nordic needed for its pipelines to Penobscot Bay? 

HLH asserted that Jeffrey and Judith do. When the Law Court declared that Mabee and Grace owned the flats, the Nordic-Upstream sale became possible. 

Anticipating that it might lose the Title Claims case, Nordic concocted an elaborate legal and public relations campaign attempting to hide that fact and exhaust their opponent’s resources defending the property. 

During that legal battle, Nordic convinced the City of Belfast to take Jeffrey and Judith’s mudflats by eminent domain. So, we had to defend them against that threat, too. We won. Belfast vacated its eminent domain action, and after the condemnation was remanded to the City Council at our request, Nordic turned against its former ally and filed a suit against Belfast. The company lost. 

Unlike State Farm Insurance, Nordic is NOT “…a good neighbor…,” so selling the BWD property to Upstream Watch is good news, indeed. 

Nordic’s actions have cost Belfast precious taxpayer dollars and rubbed our community spirit raw.  Some additional “damage control” is appropriate. Mabee-Grace and HLH have slander-of-title and damage claims still pending against the company. In the coming months, attorney Tucker will assert those claims in the Business & Consumer (BCD) Court. We are eager to settle those claims fairly and are prepared to defend them vigorously. 

We will stay the course until we can write “The End” and close the book on this controversy.

Andrew Stevenson, press contact: 703-407-2968
Friends of Harriet L. Hartley Conservation Area (HLH)