Saving Seafood

NEW JERSEY: Offshore wind power lines: Buried under Island Beach State Park, hooking into Oyster Creek

April 15, 2021 — The developer of New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm plans to run the project’s power lines under Island Beach State Park, across Barnegat Bay and connect to the electrical grid at the former Oyster Creek nuclear plant, according to plans submitted to the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Ørsted, the Danish power company that is proposing to build 98 wind turbines southwest of Atlantic City, has applied to the bureau to construct an offshore wind farm powerful enough to supply electricity to half a million homes.

If approved, wind farm construction would involve tunneling under Island Beach State Park and laying power lines under the auxiliary parking lot of Swimming Area 2. From there, the power lines would run southwest under the bottom of Barnegat Bay and connect to the grid at the former Oyster Creek nuclear power plant, which ceased generating electricity in 2019.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

NEW YORK: Latest Hamptons Offshore Wind Farm Idea Shelved

April 15, 2021 — A heavily disputed plan to build a wind farm off the coast of the Hamptons is no longer under consideration, federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) officials said on Wednesday.

Two weeks after the agency first announced the plan to create five new offshore wind farm development zones in the Atlantic Ocean between New York and New Jersey, officials pulled the plug on two of the zones closest to Long Island — Fairways North, off the coast of the Shinnecock Inlet, and Fairways South, off Fire Island.

The two zones “will not be considered for leasing at this stage,” Luke Feinberg, project manager for BOEM, said during an online task force meeting on the proposed zones, citing issues with commercial fisheries.

Commercial fishing groups had opposed the wind farms on the grounds that it will interfere with their ability to make a living. New York State Energy Research and Development Authority officials also opposed the Fairways zones.

“I think we have some challenges that we have identified in the Fairway sites both in the relative size and distance from the shore,” Gregory Lampman, program manager for environmental research at NYSERDA, said during the meeting. “We’ve been pretty clear, and we want to make sure the projects are more than 18 miles from shore. And they fall at 15.”

Read the full story at Dan’s Papers

RODA Urges BOEM: ‘Don’t Forget Fishermen’ Amid Offshore Wind Development Process

April 9, 2021 — Fishing communities across the east coast of the United States submitted a letter to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) again asking for a “transparent and balanced” nationwide planning process for offshore wind development.

“Ahead of the Record of Decision for the Vineyard Wind I project, which would be the first commercial-scale offshore wind energy project in U.S. federal waters, the signers request that BOEM adopt reasonable and consistently requested fisheries mitigation measures for the project if it is approved,” the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) wrote in a release.

Read the full story at Seafood News

NEW YORK: NYSERDA chief to feds: No wind farms off Hamptons

April 9, 2021 — New York State will emphasize its position that windfarms off the Hamptons are a nonstarter as federal regulators begin the public process of auctioning off lease rights to waters off the South Shore.

Doreen Harris, the newly named president and chief executive of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, in an interview Thursday, said the state next week will make a detailed case for instead focusing on two other wind areas to the west. Harris had previously been acting chief executive of NYSERDA.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, in a highly anticipated announcement last month, released a map of proposed new wind-energy areas off New York and New Jersey in a body of water known as the New York Bight.

Read the full story at Newsday

Don’t Forget Fishermen in the Rush To Expand Wind Energy

April 8, 2021 — On April 6th, 1,665 members of fishing communities in every U.S. coastal state submitted a letter to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) requesting a transparent and balanced national planning process for offshore wind development.

Offshore wind development poses direct conflicts with fishing and the current permitting process provides no meaningful opportunity to include the needs of sustainable seafood harvesting and production in strategies to mitigate climate change. Recent interagency announcements to fast-track offshore wind energy production have provided no commitments to address this transgression of the federal government’s public trust duties.

On the eve of the expected Record of Decision for the Vineyard Wind I project, which would be the first commercial-scale offshore wind energy project in U.S. federal waters, the signers request that BOEM adopt reasonable and consistently requested fisheries mitigation measures for the project if it is approved.

Read the full story at OCNJ Daily

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

Biden administration aims for vast offshore wind expansion

March 30, 2021 — Top Biden administration officials on Monday outlined new goals for building 30,000 megawatts off offshore wind energy generation by 2030, including another wind energy area covering nearly 800,000 acres in the New York Bight.

The Bureau of Offshore Energy Management announced it will initiate its environmental impact statement process for the Ocean Wind project, Ørsted’s planned 1,100 MW array off New Jersey, as the agency recently started an EIS for the South Fork wind development south of Rhode Island and just weeks after finalizing its analysis for the 804 MW Vineyard Wind project in southern New England waters.

Environmental reviews could start for as many as 10 more projects this year, the agency said.

The waters between the New Jersey beaches and Long Island already include federal lease held by developers intending to build the Atlantic Shores turbine array off Atlantic City, and the Empire Wind project close to the New York Harbor approaches. BOEM has been gauging potential developer interest in areas farther offshore and said it will now begin an environmental assessment of those areas.

With 20 million inhabitants in the region, it’s “the largest population center in the United States” with an enormous energy market, said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who spoke of the opportunity for U.S. shipbuilders and other industries in a new energy sector.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Biden Administration Announces a Major Offshore Wind Plan

March 29, 2021 — The Biden administration on Monday announced a plan to vastly expand the use of offshore wind power along the East Coast, aiming to tap a potentially huge new source of renewable energy that has so far struggled to gain a foothold in the United States.

The plan sets a goal of deploying 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind turbines in coastal waters nationwide by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes. To help meet that target, the administration said it would accelerate permitting of projects off the Atlantic Coast and prepare to open up waters near New York and New Jersey for development. The administration also plans to offer $3 billion in federal loan guarantees for offshore wind projects and invest in upgrading the nation’s ports to support wind construction.

The moves come as President Biden prepares a roughly $3 trillion economic recovery package that will focus heavily on infrastructure to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and tackle climate change, an effort he has framed as a jobs initiative. Officials made a similar case on Monday, saying offshore wind deployment would create 44,000 new jobs directly in the offshore wind sector, such as building and installing turbines, as well as 33,000 new indirect jobs.

Read the full story at The New York Times

RODA circulating comment letter on offshore wind policy

March 23, 2021 — The undersigned fishing community members submit these requests to National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), noting the unclear decision authority since January’s revocation of the “One Federal Decision” policy that streamlined federal permitting of offshore wind energy (OSW) and other large infrastructure projects.

We stand willing to work with the Administration to use our knowledge about ocean ecosystems to create innovative, effective solutions for climate and environmental change. There are opportunities for mutual wins, however, OSW is an ocean use that directly conflicts with fishing and imposes significant impacts to marine habitats, biodiversity, and physical oceanography. Far more transparency and inclusion must occur when evaluating if OSW is a good use of federal waters.

However, we must be treated as partners, not obstacles. We’ve dutifully come to the table, despite the irony of the “table” being set by newcomers in our own communities employing the finely honed “stakeholder outreach” tactics of their oil and gas parent companies. We’ve diligently commented on the major conflicts and concerns of offshore wind development and taken valuable time off the water for countless one-sided meetings under false hope that our knowledge mattered. Scientific efforts from fishing experts are improving, although they need more funding and time. We can point to few, if any, other true considerations we’ve received.

We need a national strategy before OSW development. This could be modeled off Rhode Island’s Ocean Special Area Management Plan, which created an inclusive state process for holistic OSW planning. OSW decisions must be based on cost-benefit analyses, alternative ways to address carbon emissions, food productivity, and ocean health. BOEM may approve a dozen project plans this year, and new leases appear imminent from Hawaii to California, South Carolina to the New York Bight and Gulf of Maine. New technologies allow OSW deployment in all US waters in the near future, and planning is occurring in the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Northwest. Selling off our oceans with no strategy to protect food security threatens all of us.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Deb Haaland Becomes First Native American Cabinet Secretary

March 16, 2021 — Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico made history on Monday when the Senate confirmed her as President Biden’s secretary of the Interior, making her the first Native American to lead a cabinet agency.

Ms. Haaland in 2018 became one of the first two Native American women elected to the House. But her new position is particularly redolent of history because the department she now leads has spent much of its history abusing or neglecting America’s Indigenous people.

Beyond the Interior Department’s responsibility for the well-being of the nation’s 1.9 million Native people, it oversees about 500 million acres of public land, federal waters off the United States coastline, a huge system of dams and reservoirs across the Western United States and the protection of thousands of endangered species.

“A voice like mine has never been a Cabinet secretary or at the head of the Department of Interior,” she wrote on Twitter before the vote. “Growing up in my mother’s Pueblo household made me fierce. I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land.”

Read the full story at The New York Times