February 1, 2022 — A lawsuit challenging the federal approval of the nation’s first industrial-scale offshore wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts raises questions about the haste with which the project was approved and the fallout it will have on endangered right whales and the fishing industry.
The lawsuit, filed on Monday in federal court in Washington, DC, by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, which represents fishing interests, also highlights the dramatic scale of the wind farm and questions whether taxpayers were shortchanged by the leases the federal government negotiated with the developer, Vineyard Wind.
The lawsuit is one of a handful challenging the project on the grounds that several environmental statutes were violated in the Biden administration’s rush to kickstart the offshore wind industry.
Vineyard Wind filed its construction and operations plan initially in 2017. The Trump administration decided to extend its review indefinitely in 2019 to take into account the many offshore wind farms planned up and down the coast.
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