July 22, 2020 — The U.S. Secretary of the Interior met with members of New England’s fishing industry in Boston Tuesday, and signaled he hears their concerns about offshore wind farms.
The Vineyard Wind project, proposed for 15 miles off the coast of Massachusetts, has been on hold since the Interior Department announced nearly a year ago that it would expand its environmental review to include an analysis of every offshore wind development that’s likely to be proposed off the East Coast over the next 10 years.
As Interior Secretary David Bernhardt met with fishermen, seafood distributors and others working in the region’s fishing industry at the Legal Harborside restaurant, he told them the Trump administration is focused on doing what’s best for America, “not Copenhagen.” (Copenhagen hosted the 2009 United Nations conference in which the U.S. agreed to targets for emissions reductions).
John Williams of the Maine-based Atlantic Red Crab Company, which operates in part out of New Bedford, echoed that, saying the proposed one mile gap between turbines isn’t wide enough for fishing vessels.
“Even though there’s a lane going through the farms, when a boat breaks down, it doesn’t have brakes and it just starts drifting through these farms,” he said. “And that’s a huge safety issue.”
After the meeting, fishermen who’d been in attendance raised a range of other concerns about the Vineyard Wind project, including a reduction of fishing access to the sea floor, underwater hazards for boats, interference with radar systems, and possible changes to the temperature stratification in the water column that could impact the ecosystem.