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THE 2021 Taunton Flower Show is set to go ahead this year, with a smaller event on Castle Green in Taunton. So we decided to take a look at the 2014 Flower Show to remind ourselves what the event was like before the pandemic. TAUNTON Flower Show bridged the generation gap with competitors ranging from one to 100 years old. Judges impressed by the quality of the two-day event started in Vivary Park last Friday said it was the best show they had seen for a long time. Thousands flocked from all over the South-West and further afield to see the amazing entries, exhibits and entertainment at the ‘Chelsea of the West’.
Back in 2016, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration finalized a long-in-the-works plan to manage the construction of aquaculture facilities in areas of the Gulf of Mexico controlled by the federal government. But there was a problem. The regulatory hurdles were so complex that no company wanted to apply for the permits needed to build a fish farmâuntil Ocean Era came along.
The company, which is based in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, has already developed two aquaculture projects in federal waters, raising kampachi, a fin fish known around the Gulf as almaco jack. In 2017, the company became the first entity to try to build an aquaculture operation in the Gulf when it announced plans for Velella Epsilon, a kampachi fish pen to be built about 40 miles west of Sarasota.
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A cohort of environmental groups, including Friends of Animals, petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to further review Ocean Era’s permits, which are needed for pollution discharges into waters of the United States.
“We filed the petition because we were concerned about the facility and thought the government had not done a thorough review,” said Jennifer Best, the assistant legal director for Friends of Animals. “We’re concerned that the aquaculture facility in the gulf could harm or kill marine life, as well as really be detrimental to the environmental and coastal communities.”
Environmental advocates have argued since 2019 that Ocean Era’s facility will feed harmful algal blooms, present dangers to the genetics of native species if the fish escape and degrade the nearby ecosystem by polluting the Gulf with fish waste and pharmaceuticals.