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A company that wants to drop fish cages two miles off the Big Island’s Kohala coast has won a permit from the Hawaii Department of Health — but there could still be more legal stumbling blocks ahead.

Hawaii Oceanic Technology Inc won a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit, which lays out the conditions under which the fish-farming enterprise will comply with the Clean Water Act. 

reports:

The permit, approved more than a year after it was sought, lasts for five years. It allows the release of fish excrement and unconsumed fish food that washes beyond the cages. One critic who wrote the state during the comment period said the permit was “not a pollution control permit (but) a permit to pollute.” All 23 responses either opposed the project or raised concerns about it.

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Another company, Kona Blue, grew Hawaiian Amberjack in cages off the coast of Kona for several years, marketing it as Kona kampachi. The company originally intended to market its product to the sashimi market in Japan, but found California to be a larger market, and eventually decided to move most of its operations to the Mexican coast to reduce shipping expenses.