April 25, 2023 — The executive directors of three federally established fishery councils along the East Coast expressed concern last year about the threats posed by offshore wind energy projects.
In an Aug. 22 letter to former Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Director Amanda Lefton, the three officials — who respectively lead the New England, Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic Fishery Management Councils — expressed concern about current processes for approving offshore wind development. They also made a series of recommendations to help the federal government mitigate impacts on fisheries.
“As we have stated in several past comment letters to BOEM, we are very concerned about the cumulative impacts of multiple wind energy projects on the fisheries we manage,” they stated in the letter. “The multiple wind energy projects planned along the east coast will have cumulative and compounding effects on our fisheries.”
“The synergistic effects of multiple projects may be more than additive and this may not be sufficiently identified in project-specific documents; therefore, losses may be undercompensated by taking a project-by-project approach,” they continued.