Saving Seafood

Law

Wind turbine lawsuit ruling could mean delays for wind farms

September 23, 2022 — Representatives from the two companies looking to build wind farms off the coast of Delaware and Maryland say it’s too early to tell if a recent ruling by a federal court judge saying General Electric cannot make or sell its Haliade-X turbine in the United States will lead to delays in getting the wind farms built.

U.S. District Court of Massachusetts Judge William Young ruled Sept. 7 that General Electric Co. is not allowed to produce its 850-foot-tall Haliade-X wind turbines in the United States. In June, a jury found the turbines infringed on patent owned by Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy A/S.

Ørsted spokesman Brady Walker said Skipjack Wind does not anticipate this decision will impact its timing.

“The project continues to develop its construction and operations plan in order to deliver clean energy to nearly 300,000 homes in the Delmarva region,” said Walker in an email Sept. 13.

In August 2020, Ørsted asked for, and then received, permission from the Maryland Public Service Commission to change the turbines it wanted to use from a smaller model to the Haliade-X.

Ørsted will follow any processes that are required by regulators, including the Maryland Public Service Commission and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said Brady.

Read the full article at the Cape Gazette

Fishermen appeal judge ruling that protects endangered whale

September 22, 2022 — The state of Maine and a fishing group are appealing a federal judge’s decision that new rules intended to protect endangered whales must stand.

The judge earlier this month denied a request from fishermen to stop federal regulators from placing the new restrictions on lobster fishing. The rules are intended to protect North Atlantic right whales, which number less than 340.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills and the Maine Lobstermen’s Association said this week they’re appealing that decision. Lobstermen have long contended the new rules are based on flawed data and are too punitive to the fishing industry.

Read the full article at ABC

Chinook salmon lawsuit still looms over Alaska trollers

September 22, 2022 — A lawsuit filed against the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2020 reared its head in a U.S. district court in Washington state on 8 August, 2022, and it could spell changes in fisheries management for Southeast Alaska trollers.

The case stems from a suit brought by the Wild Fish Conservancy that challenges the biological rationale in setting allocations of Pacific Salmon Treaty chinooks that local trollers catch.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Maine Lobstermen’s Association will appeal right whale ruling

September 21, 2022 — The Maine Lobstermen’s Association said it will appeal a federal judge’s ruling that new restrictions on their fishery can proceed to protect endangered right whales, calling the plan  “scientifically flawed” and “draconian.”

In an opinion issued Sept. 8, U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg turned aside the lobstermen’s arguments that the National Marine Fisheries Service acted arbitrarily and overstated the hazard their gear poses to whales.

The association had sued NMFS and allied environmental groups to block implementation of the new rules. It was the latest in several years of action in Boasberg’s Washington, D.C. courtroom as NMFS, environmental groups and fishermen battled over measures to protect the right whales – now estimated to number just about 340 animals – from entanglement in fishing trap lines.

“We refuse to let a single judge’s decision be the last word,” MLA President Kristan Porter said in announcing the new appeal. “The facts are clear. Maine lobstermen are not driving the whale towards extinction. There has never been a known right whale mortality associated with Maine lobster gear, and there has not been a single known right whale entanglement with Maine lobster gear in nearly two decades.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Maine Lobstermen’s Association appeals federal judge’s rejection of lawsuit

September 20, 2022 — The Maine Lobstermen’s Association is appealing a federal judge’s ruling that rejected its lawsuit challenging new restrictions on the harvesting of lobster off the Maine coast.

The MLA filed the lawsuit in September 2021.

U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg denied the MLA’s request in a Sept. 8 ruling. It’s the latest in a string of legal setbacks for lobster fishermen who are coping with increasingly strict fishing rules meant to save North Atlantic right whales, which number less than 340 and are vulnerable to entanglement in fishing gear.

Read the full article at News Center Maine

Maine lobstermen appeal federal judge rejection of lawsuit

September 19, 2022 — The Maine Lobstermen’s Association is appealing a federal judge’s ruling that rejected a lawsuit aimed at blocking new regulations designed to protect the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale.

The appeal goes to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The Maine Lobstermen’s Association, with the state, sued to stop or delay the regulations that will limit where and how lobstermen can fish in federal waters. The lawsuit argued that the National Marine Fisheries Service acted arbitrarily by failing to rely on the best available scientific information and by failing to account for the positive impact of conservation measures already adopted by the Maine lobster fishery.

Read the full article at WABI

Federal judge strikes down challenge by Maine, lobstermen to rules aimed at protecting right whales

September 12, 2022 — A federal judge has rejected a bid by lobstermen and the state of Maine to block new rules aimed at protecting endangered North Atlantic right whales.

The National Marine Fisheries Service issued new rules last year that described where and how lobstermen can fish in federal waters. The agency has said the new rules are intended to protect the remaining population of right whales, which is estimated at about 340.

The plaintiffs, which included both the Maine and Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Associations, as well as Maine’s Department of Marine Resources and the Maine Lobstering Union, asked a federal judge to block those rules, contending that they overstate the risks caused by their trap lines and create needless economic harm to the lobster industry.

They argue that in drafting those rules, the NMFS committed “scientific errors,” in part, because Maine lobstermen say their gear hasn’t been involved with a right whale entanglement in nearly two decades.

Read the full article at Maine Public

Judge rules against lobstermen, says federal rules protecting right whales don’t overreach

September 9, 2022 — A US District Court judge in Washington, D.C., handed a victory Thursday to environmental groups and rejected a challenge to federal rules to protect North Atlantic right whales that was brought by New England lobstermen, who argued the requirements go too far and are based on flawed data, court records show.

The ruling prompted sharp reactions from both sides of the issue.

Maine Governor Janet Mills, criticized the judge’s decision as being “so out of touch with reality.”

“The National Marine Fisheries Service has consistently interpreted the data in the most conservative way possible, without accounting for the impact of ship strikes on whales and whale entanglements in Canadian snow crab gear, putting all of the burden for right whale protection squarely on the shoulders of Maine’s lobster fishery,” Mills said in a statement.

“The good news today is that the court upheld the agency’s science,” Davenport said in an interview. “Of course, from the conservation point of view, the science has never really been in dispute. The question has been what’s the agency doing about the science. And our position has been that it’s not going far enough fast enough to meet the conservation crisis that the right whale is in.”

Lobstermen had argued that a report issued last year by the National Marine Fisheries Service that set new goals for reducing deaths of North Atlantic right whales “overstates the risks lobstering poses to the whale and consequently overregulates the industry,” according to court documents.

“Because [federal officials] overstated their industry’s risk to right whales, they contend, the Rule imposes some needless and draconian risk-reduction measures — e.g., restrictions on the number of vertical fishing lines in certain areas, seasonal closures, and the requirement that fishing lines contain weak links that whales can break free from,” Judge James E. Boasberg wrote.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

Patent ruling delivers blow to GE’s wind turbine business — and to the nascent US offshore wind industry

September 9, 2022 — General Electric made a huge splash four years ago with plans to build what it called the Haliade-X, the most powerful wind-driven turbine to go up in the ocean at the time.

Taller than the Hancock tower. Each blade, roughly as long as a football field. Able to generate enough electricity for at least 6,000 homes. These goliaths would accelerate the adoption of offshore wind power and help Boston-based GE leapfrog its primary rivals in the quickly growing US market, Siemens Gamesa and Vestas. Then in 2020, GE outmaneuvered Vestas for the contract to supply the nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm, the Vineyard Wind project planned for waters south of Martha’s Vineyard.

However, these grand plans ran into significant turbulence in federal court in Boston on Wednesday, when US District Judge William Young blocked the sale of the Haliade-X in the United States. With only three major players here, taking GE’s modern offshore turbine off the market could complicate life in a big way for US wind-farm developers.

Young’s ruling was based on a jury verdict in June that found several elements of GE’s Haliade-X infringed on a patent held by Siemens Gamesa, a European company considered to be the global market leader in offshore wind. Young allowed Haliade-X turbines to be installed at Vineyard Wind and another wind farm off the New Jersey coast, because they are so far along in development, as long as GE pays royalties. But beyond those projects, the injunction would require GE to come up with a new design. That’s not something that happens overnight.

This decision is a setback for GE, of course. But it may be an even bigger setback for the nation’s nascent offshore wind industry — the latest of many.

For its part, GE’s renewable energy division says it remains committed to the US offshore wind industry and is “confident in the legal and technical options available to us.”

Read the full article at The Boston Globe