Saving Seafood

The first offshore wind lease sale under Biden is coming soon. Will the fishing industry intervene?

January 11, 2022 — The Interior Department is expected to greenlight the first offshore wind lease sale under President Biden as soon as this week, a move that would lower the nation’s reliance on the fossil fuels that are dangerously warming the planet.

But the effort has sparked concern from the fishing industry, which contends that towering turbines in the waters off New England could harm fishermen’s catches and livelihoods. It’s the latest sign of tensions between Biden’s ambitious clean-energy agenda and industry interests concerned about its economic impact.

The details: Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is poised to issue a final sale notice for the New York Bight, a nearly 800,000-acre area of the Atlantic Ocean south of Long Island.

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance has emerged as the fishing industry’s main voice in disputes over offshore wind. The group has argued that fishermen should receive compensation for losses caused by turbines in commercial fishing grounds.

Annie Hawkins, executive director of the alliance, told The Climate 202 that the group remains concerned about offshore wind development in the New York Bight. She said the turbines could prevent fishing altogether if they are spaced less than a mile apart.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Coalition intends to sue feds over offshore Massachusetts wind project

October 29, 2021 — Massachusetts fishermen worried for their livelihoods and the ocean’s ecology are suing the federal government over an offshore wind project called Vineyard Wind.

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), a coalition of fishing industry associations and fishing companies, recently filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the federal government, according to a news release. This follows a petition for review filed in the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals last month, which is pending.

The notice gives the government 60 days to address statutory and regulatory violations RODA asserts the wind project will cause, including violating the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act, the press release said.

RODA Executive Director Annie Hawkins said the government has not done enough investigation into the effects of offshore wind projects.

Read the full story at The Center Square

 

What’s behind one lawsuit against Vineyard Wind

September 21, 2021 — Annie Hawkins has a message you don’t hear very often in Massachusetts these days.

The executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a national group of fishing interests, Hawkins is questioning the rush to develop offshore wind. Her organization is suing the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, alleging the agency is failing to protect the fishing industry as it races to develop the nation’s offshore wind potential to help address climate change.

“In taking action to address climate change, we have to acknowledge that these new uses [of the ocean] have a lot of environmental uncertainty. They have a lot of impacts of their own,” Hawkins said on The Codcast. “They can be better understood and minimized before we go whole hog on this 30 gigawatts tomorrow. A lot more upfront due diligence needs to be done.”

The 30 gigawatts reference refers to President Biden’s goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. It’s a goal that meshes with Gov. Charlie Baker’s push to develop 3.2 gigawatts by 2030. The Baker administration has already procured 1.6 gigawatts and is in the midst of reviewing proposals that would double that amount.

Read the full story at CommonWealth Magazine

 

BOEM, states discuss compensation for fishing lost to offshore wind

July 29, 2021 — The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is working with coastal states to come up with plans for potentially compensating fishermen for lost fishing grounds and other negative effects of developing offshore wind turbine arrays.

But details are murky, according to one fisheries advocacy group that says fishermen should already be involved in that planning.

Reuters reported July 27 that officials in the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management who are driving offshore wind planning are talking about compensatory payments for displaced fishermen.

That was news to Annie Hawkins, executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a coalition of fishing groups and coastal communities.

The only direct knowledge her group’s executive committee got was in an informal conference call with BOEM administrator Amanda Lefton and her staff, Hawkins said Wednesday. Lefton mentioned that her agency would be working with state government officials to explore “compensatory mitigation” for fishermen forced out of work by wind farm development, and would begin scheduling meetings for that effort.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

CALIFORNIA: Local fishing voices are left out of offshore wind discussions

July 16, 2021 — The waters off the shore of Morro Bay have been the focal point of a potential wind farm development site since 2015.

Between 2015 and 2017, a state intergovernmental task force that evaluated offshore wind power for the state of California was established, and its members included the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the Morro Bay mayor and a City Council member, and regional state representatives. However, the fishing industry was largely left out.

At the time, the community engaged with the task force through public hearings to learn about the project’s blueprints—although its potential impacts weren’t shared. The project was halted in 2018 because the then-designated area conflicted with naval operations.

Public conversations about offshore wind regained steam in 2021 for two reasons. U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) led an effort to work with the U.S. Department of Defense to reduce the project development area to 399 square miles—enough to produce 3 gigawatts of energy. Morro Bay Commercial Fishermen’s Organization President Tom Hafer said he believes there’s also a renewed interest in this type of energy generating project because of the new presidential administration.

Castle Wind has engaged with organizations and leaders within the fishing community, but there’s no guarantee that it will be the project developer. Annie Hawkins, executive director for the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), said that proactive engagement is needed from all agencies involved.

RODA was established and worked on the East Coast because there were concerns about the exclusion of fishing voices during offshore wind project discussions. Their first project was Block Island off the coast of Rhode Island, which is a five-turbine wind farm.

Read the full story at The New Times

Offshore Wind Farms Show What Biden’s Climate Plan Is Up Against

June 7, 2021 — A constellation of 5,400 offshore wind turbines meet a growing portion of Europe’s energy needs. The United States has exactly seven.

With more than 90,000 miles of coastline, the country has plenty of places to plunk down turbines. But legal, environmental and economic obstacles and even vanity have stood in the way.

President Biden wants to catch up fast — in fact, his targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions depend on that happening. Yet problems abound, including a shortage of boats big enough to haul the huge equipment to sea, fishermen worried about their livelihoods and wealthy people who fear that the turbines will mar the pristine views from their waterfront mansions. There’s even a century-old, politically fraught federal law, known as the Jones Act, that blocks wind farm developers from using American ports to launch foreign construction vessels.

Annie Hawkins, executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, which includes hundreds of fishing groups and companies, worries that the government is failing to scrutinize proposals and adequately plan.

“What they’re doing is saying, ‘Let’s take this thing we’ve really never done here, go all in, objectors be damned,’” Ms. Hawkins said. “Coming from a fisheries perspective, we know there is going to be a massive-scale displacement. You can’t just go fish somewhere else.”

Fishing groups point to recent problems in Europe to justify their concerns. Orsted, the world’s largest offshore wind developer, for example, has sought a court injunction to keep fishermen and their equipment out of an area of the North Sea set for new turbines while it studies the area.

Orsted said that it had tried to “work collaboratively with fishermen” but that it had sought the order because its work was complicated by gear left in the area by a fisherman it could not identify. “To safely conduct the survey work and only as a last resort, we were left with no choice but to secure the right to remove this gear,” the company said in a statement.

When developers first applied in 2001 for a permit for Cape Wind, a project between Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, resistance was fierce. Opponents included Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who died in 2009, and William I. Koch, an industrialist.

Read the full story at The New York Times

RODA says it’s being ignored

March 31, 2021 — With America’s first industrial-scale offshore wind farm poised to receive final approval from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), fishermen continue to have reservations about potential impacts.

Vineyard Wind 1, an 84-turbine wind farm to be situated in the Atlantic 15 miles south of Aquinnah, is expected to get that final approval — a record of decision — from BOEM within a month.

Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), a coalition representing fishing interests, has taken issue with the project from the get-go, notably the transit corridors. These are the lanes between turbine towers vessels would navigate through. Vineyard Wind and other developers that have leased sections of New England ocean for wind development have agreed to 1-nautical-mile transit lanes. RODA has long demanded wider lanes, preferably four miles wide.

That stance hasn’t changed, RODA’s executive director, Annie Hawkins, told The Times. Hawkins said a recommendation for wider lanes could have emerged from the project’s environmental impact statement, but that didn’t happen. Hawkins said the safe passage of fishing vessels, especially those towing any sort of mobile gear, is in question with the current spacing layout. It’s unknown if insurers will allow fishing vessels to travel inside Vineyard Wind 1 or the farms that will follow, Hawkins said.

Read the full story at the MV Times

America’s biggest offshore wind farm is on the verge of federal approval

March 11, 2021 — America’s offshore wind infrastructure is modest: the only turbines in the ocean today power a small community’s worth of homes from a wind farm off Block Island. But within two years, the number of American homes powered by the renewable energy source could grow to nearly half a million.

Vineyard Wind CEO Lars Pedersen says an environmental review released by the federal government this week brings the company closer to its goal of supplying 800 megawatts of electricity to New England’s grid by 2023.

“More than three years of federal review and public comment is nearing its conclusion and 2021 is poised to be a momentous year for our project and the broader offshore wind industry,” Pedersen said.

The much-anticipated study from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management found the only major environmental impact from the turbines would be felt in the region’s commercial fisheries.

Many fishermen fear Vineyard Wind is leaving too narrow a distance between turbines for vessels to safely navigate during bad weather. Annie Hawkins, director of the seafood industry-backed Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, said the federal government has also failed to set guidelines for compensating fishing crews that will lose access to squid and lobsters they once caught in Vineyard Wind’s 118-square-mile lease area.

Read the full story at The Public’s Radio

RHODE ISLAND: As Commerce Secretary, Raimondo to play key role in offshore wind

January 19, 2021 — In the selection of Gina Raimondo as the next U.S. Secretary of Commerce, the offshore wind industry would get a champion in Washington.

What influence she could bring to bear for the emerging energy sector remains to be seen, but if confirmed to her new position in the Biden cabinet, Raimondo would oversee federal fisheries regulators who have raised some of the concerns about potential negative impacts of erecting what could be many hundreds of wind turbines in the ocean waters off southern New England.

It’s those concerns that have played a major role in delaying the approval process for the first set of large wind farms proposed in the nation.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, an arm of the Department of the Interior, has permitting authority over the multibillion-dollar projects, which are all planned for the Atlantic Ocean waters off Rhode Island and Massachusetts. But both federal fisheries management and coastal zone management are under the aegis of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is part of the Department of Commerce.

“I think it’s fantastic to have someone that does have experience with offshore wind and knows the extent of the conflicts,” said Annie Hawkins, executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a group representing fishing interests in the development of offshore wind. “She understands coastal communities and their concerns. I think there is a real opportunity here.”

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

Expo News: Static electricity

November 17, 2020 — The fledgling U.S. offshore wind industry is gathering critical mass in southern New England, where a forthcoming environmental assessment of the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind plan could determine how it and a dozen other East Coast projects might proceed.

Fishermen in the Northeast fleets, heirs to a 400-year New England industry, are deeply engaged on scientific, political and legal fronts, trying to slow what they see as federal and state governments overenthusiastic about granting wind developers chunks of the outer continental shelf.

In June 2018, East Coast fishing industry leaders organized the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance to represent fishermen’s interests to the wind industry and government regulators. Annie Hawkins, RODA’s executive director, says fishermen on every coast need to get involved.

“Just because the current projects are not located in your area doesn’t mean they won’t affect you,” Hawkins wrote in a July 2 commentary in NF. “A relatively small group of developers own the leases, and the federal permitting process is being tested and tweaked in real time.

Read the full story at National Fisherman