PORTLAND, Maine (AP)   A Norwegian firm says its plan to build one of the largest inland salmon aquaculture facilities in the world in Maine could be a new model for the way the fish are farmed in America.

Nordic Aquaculture wants to build a facility that would produce more than 60 million tons of salmon per year. It would use land-based tanks. Salmon farmers in Maine and New Brunswick, Canada, rely heavily on a different model that raises fish in pens in the ocean.

Maine’s combined salmon farms produced 24.5 million pounds of the fish in 2010, the most recent year for which statistics are available. Environmentalists believe the total has decreased since then.

The Nordic facility would be located on 40 acres in Belfast, about 100 miles up the coast from Portland.