Saving Seafood

BOEM needs staffing help with offshore wind permitting regardless of election results, experts say

October 16, 2020 — BOEM is reviewing the Construction and Operation Plans (COP) for a number of projects in the Atlantic, which are contingent on the agency issuing its first Environmental Impact Statement for a large-scale offshore wind project in federal waters.

“I think there is a recognition that BOEM doesn’t have all the resources to put out six or seven COPs at one time,” particularly in the same wind energy areas, Geri Edens, counsel for Vineyard Wind, said on the panel.

But while staggering the permitting of the rest of the projects might make sense for BOEM, it is “not necessarily ideal for the industry, because everyone’s been waiting for a while now to get these things forward,” she said.

BOEM had pushed back its review of Vineyard Wind’s Massachusetts construction plan for 1.5 years, deciding that permitting for offshore wind needed to be done in a more holistic capacity, including considerations for further expansion of the resource.

The delay has led other projects to revise their timelines, such as the 120 MW Skipjack Offshore Energy wind farm, which originally sought commercial operation as early as November 2022.

The bandwidth of BOEM will be stretched in January 2021 regardless of how the election turns out, experts say.

According to the Permitting Dashboard for Federal Infrastructure Projects produced by DOI and other agencies, federal permitting applications for Vineyard Wind and Deepwater Wind’s South Fork Wind Farm are both in progress. BOEM has received COPs for 10 offshore wind projects to date.

Read the full story at Utility Drive

Offshore wind project completes final step, ready to deliver renewable energy to Virginians

October 15, 2020 — Dominion Energy announced Wednesday that the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) pilot project has completed the final stage of testing and is ready to enter commercial service providing clean, renewable energy to Virginians.

“This is a monumental day for the Commonwealth and the burgeoning offshore wind industry in America as CVOW is ready to deliver clean, renewable energy to our Virginia customers,” said Joshua Bennett, Dominion Energy vice president of offshore wind.

“Our team has worked diligently with key stakeholders and regulators while safely navigating through the coronavirus pandemic to complete this vitally important project that is a key step to reducing carbon emissions,” Bennett continued.

The next step for the two turbine, 12-megawatt project is submitting final documentation to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to complete its technical review — which is expected to be complete by the end of the year.

Read the full story at WAVY

Mid-Atlantic Seismic Blasts Halted

October 14, 2020 — Oil and gas drilling companies are standing down from seismic testing in the Atlantic Ocean this year, to the relief of environmental groups and wildlife advocates in the Chesapeake Bay region.

The industry said in a status conference before the U.S. District Court in South Carolina that it will not move ahead with testing for oil and gas reserves this year. The current seismic blasting authorizations expire November 30, and renewing them would require another round of environmental review and public comment.

Bay Bulletin first reported two years ago the federal approval for five companies to do seismic surveys in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maryland and Virginia, as a first step to gas and oil offshore drilling.

Read the full story at the Chesapeake Bay Magazine

Seismic airgun blasting efforts halted in Atlantic Ocean for now

October 5, 2020 — The oil industry will not pursue seismic airgun blasting to investigate offshore petroleum locations in the Atlantic Ocean because permits cannot be reviewed in time.

The Coastal Conservation League, an environmental organization based in Charleston, South Carolina, announced the news after a status conference on the lawsuit that seeks to halt the underwater blasting.

The blasting, which involves loud pules of compressed air into the water column and deep into the seabed, to find oil and gas formations deep under the ocean floor, can disturb or injure whales, sea turtles, and other marine life, according to the New Jersey-based Clean Ocean Action.

But in the August 22, 2014 edition of “Science Notes,” a newsletter published by the federal government’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, an agency representative wrote that in more than 30 years of air gun use, “there has been no documented scientific evidence of the noise … adversely affecting marine animal populations or coastal communities.”

Read the full story at WHYY

Trump’s Offshore Oil Ban to Halt Coastal Wind Farms Too

September 30, 2020 — President Donald Trump’s decision to rule out energy development along the coasts of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas will bar not just offshore oil and gas drilling — but coastal wind farms too.

The broad reach of Trump’s recent orders, which was confirmed by the Interior Department agency that oversees offshore energy development, comes as renewable developers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars snapping up the rights to build wind farms along the U.S. East Coast.

At issue are recent Trump memos ruling out new oil and gas leasing along Florida, Georgia and South and North Carolina from July 1, 2022 until June 30, 2032, issued after some Republicans pressed for a drilling ban and as the president courts voters concerned about the environment. On Friday, Trump said he would expand the offshore energy moratorium to include Virginia, though he has not yet issued a directive encompassing the territory.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

NORTH CAROLINA: Questions Linger on Offshore Drilling, Seismic

September 25, 2020 — Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., announced this week that President Trump had agreed to prevent drilling for oil and natural gas off the North Carolina coast, but the president has yet to speak publicly on the matter, and his administration says it is still moving forward with permitting for seismic exploration in the Atlantic.

Tillis, whom polls show trailing his Democratic Party challenger Cal Cunningham, announced Monday that Trump had agreed to add North Carolina to a multistate moratorium on Atlantic offshore drilling announced earlier this month.

The president announced Sept. 8 during an event in Jupiter, Florida, an order to extend the moratorium on offshore drilling on Florida’s Gulf Coast and expand it to Florida’s Atlantic Coast, as well as the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. North Carolina was not included at the time.

Tillis said Monday that he had spoken with Trump who agreed North Carolina would be included in the presidential memorandum withdrawing new leasing for offshore oil and gas developments for the next 12 years.

Also on Monday, the Department of Justice filed a document with the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, Charleston Division, stating that Trump’s memorandum “has no legal effect” on the status of the applications to conduct seismic surveys in the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf that are pending before the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Read the full story at Coastal Review Online

Reports raise questions regarding impact of offshore wind on seafood industry

August 4, 2020 — A pair of new reports from NOAA Fisheries’ Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee (MAFAC) and the Science Center for Marine Fisheries  has raised more questions about how big offshore wind projects – planned for areas of water off the coast of New England in the Northeast U.S. – will impacts the fishing industry in the region.

The science center report calls into question the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s investigations of wind energy impacts on seafood, particularly the supplement to the draft environmental impact statement (SEIS) that the bureau released on June. That supplement was intended to examine all of the potential impacts wind energy development – both current and future – could have on the surrounding area.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

RODA: Offshore Wind Report Indicates ‘Major Fundamental Flaws’ in Process

August 3, 2020 — The following was released by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance:

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) latest report on offshore wind “highlights the severity of impacts to fishing resources, businesses, and communities” and indicates “major fundamental flaws” in the offshore wind planning process, according to new public comments from the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA). Deficiencies in the report also reveal an unacceptable level of uncertainty and risk from a large-scale new ocean use.

RODA’s comments responded to BOEM’s supplement to the draft environmental impact statement (SEIS) for Vineyard Wind’s proposed 800-megawatt offshore wind project in federal waters off the coast of Massachusetts. In the SEIS, BOEM found that “major cumulative effects could occur on commercial fisheries” from East Coast offshore wind development in the coming years.

“We need to be thinking about the long-term impacts on our coastal communities and marine ecosystems, and right now there are too many red flags and unknowns,” said Annie Hawkins, RODA’s executive director. “Unfortunately this is the result of a collective failure to plan in a way that accommodates both fishing and renewable energy, and to invest in sound research and conflict resolution before the very latest stages of project review. The SEIS was a welcome step, but if it serves as the basis for greenlighting 2000 of the world’s largest turbines over 1400 square miles of unique ocean habitat, we’ll be embarking on one of the biggest socio-ecological experiments in history.”

Offshore wind planning has been fundamentally flawed, RODA wrote, and for fishermen, fisheries scientists, and managers “it is nothing short of chaotic.” While the SEIS partially evaluated fishing impacts, the most important decisions have already been made at the state- and project-level, making it difficult for BOEM to fairly weigh ocean uses, or ensure adequate ecological safeguards, on a geographically-appropriate scale. Fisheries experts have expressed for nearly a decade that the leasing process systematically ignores their environmental concerns until the final permitting phases. Without this important expertise, it is not surprising to see how much conflict and uncertainty remains, RODA wrote.

Transit lanes, the creation of a comprehensive mitigation plan, environmental impacts, and domestic job creation are among the other issues that still need to be resolved if offshore wind is to move forward, according to RODA’s comments.

Fishermen have long maintained that for most fisheries and gear types in the Vineyard Wind area, spacing turbines in a grid 1×1 nautical miles apart is too narrow to operate, making viable and safe transit lanes through the turbine arrays extremely important in the project design. RODA also questioned BOEM’s reliance on the Coast Guard’s Massachusetts and Rhode Island Port Access Route Study analysis of transit lanes, which RODA previously criticized for containing “serious errors.”

RODA prefers that mitigation efforts focus on avoiding and minimizing impacts on fisheries, before resorting to direct compensation. Fishermen aim to preserve healthy ecosystems and continue fishing for their livelihoods, rather than be paid for damages. Unfortunately, avoiding and minimizing impacts are not currently prioritized in the process, and current compensatory mitigation is insufficient and must be revised with direct input from the fishing industry.

There are also “major flaws” with the current understanding of offshore wind’s impacts on the outer continental shelf ecosystem, RODA wrote. These flaws include insufficient data against which to measure impacts, and a lack of time to evaluate impacts before further projects move forward. The comments also cited a recent Science Center for Marine Fisheries review which concluded the SEIS paid “insufficient attention” to overall wind impacts, including the overall scope and scale of impacts on fisheries surveys and on the critical but ecologically sensitive Mid-Atlantic Cold Pool phenomenon.

Should the Vineyard Wind project move forward despite the largely unaddressed major cumulative impacts to commercial fishing, RODA maintains that BOEM’s final EIS must re-do the mitigation plan to be complete and equitable, make Vineyard Wind a study site for radar interference, adopt adequate transit lanes for fishing, increase investment in research, implement the recommendations of NOAA’s Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee, require enhanced interstate coordination, and put fishermen at the table for all decisions and planning going forward.

RODA represents fishing industry associations and companies dedicated to improving the compatibility of offshore developments with their businesses. RODA’s approximately 170 members represent every Atlantic coastal state from North Carolina to Maine, and Pacific coast members in California, Oregon and Washington.

SCEMFIS: Federal Offshore Wind Report Paid Lack of Attention to Impacts on Fisheries

July 29, 2020 — Researchers from the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS) found that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) latest environmental report on offshore wind “paid insufficient attention” to the impact of the practice beyond the Vineyard Wind project.

Last month, BOEM released its supplement to the draft environmental impact statement (SEIS) for the Vineyard Wind project off the Massachusetts coast. The SEIS aimed to analyze the impact of every reasonable offshore wind development on the East Coast in the following years.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Latest Federal Report on Offshore Wind Pays ‘Insufficient Attention’ to Overall Impacts, SCEMFIS Researchers Find

July 28, 2020 — The following was releasd by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries:

A new report released last week by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS) found that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) “paid insufficient attention” to the total impact of offshore wind beyond the proposed Vineyard Wind project in its latest environmental report. SCEMFIS researchers also found that BOEM failed to address the scope and scale of offshore wind’s impacts on fisheries surveys beyond categorizing them as “major.”

BOEM released its supplement to the draft environmental impact statement (SEIS) last month for the Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts. The SEIS sought to analyze the cumulative impacts of every reasonably foreseeable offshore wind development on the U.S. East Coast in the coming years.

“In the case of the present SEIS, one cannot evaluate the total impact of the proposed development of the Mid-Atlantic Bight as insufficient attention is paid to the impact beyond the Vineyard Wind project, whereas the cumulative impact is the issue of greatest concern,” the SCEMFIS team wrote. While the SEIS analysis is “extensive across potentially affected resources,” its frequent “lack of detail” is a weakness, they wrote.

The most important direct economic impact of offshore wind on fisheries could be the impact of turbine placement on stock assessments, the SCEMFIS report found. Surveys are unlikely to be conducted in wind areas, in which case it is assumed that no stock exists there. This would likely lead to quota reductions, especially due to increased uncertainty in the assessments, and the resulting long-term effects would not be able to be resolved by a single-year compensation plan.

While the SEIS correctly categorized such impacts as “major,” the SCEMFIS team wrote, “it does not address the scale and scope of these impacts.” The SEIS also seemed to overlook potential changes in vessel transit routes that make certain areas no longer profitable to fish, the team wrote.

The biggest indirect threat to fisheries is a likely increase in marine mammal entanglements in and near wind areas, according to the SCEMFIS report. This could result from an increased density of fishing gear due to a reduction in available fishing areas and a new source of entanglements from offshore wind construction and operations that could be mistakenly attributed to fisheries. Greater threats to marine mammals would lead to greater limitations on fishermen, and the SEIS should have classified these impacts as “major” instead of “moderate,” the researchers wrote.

There are also several potential environmental impacts from offshore wind that the SEIS did not adequately explore, the SCEMFIS team found. For instance, the SEIS considered impacts on the ecologically important “cold pool” of water that extends seasonally off the U.S. East Coast, but only focused on impacts during some parts of the year. Seasonally, this region experiences one of the largest transitions in ocean stratification of anywhere in the world. Weakening the cold pool could help generate “the most catastrophic ecological event on the continental shelf the world has ever seen,” the researchers wrote, so great care must be taken to show the chance of an impact from offshore wind is “vanishingly small.” Such science is not present in the SEIS, they wrote.

Additionally, the SEIS mentioned climate change “without coming to grips with the seriousness of the problem,” according to the SCEMFIS team. While the SEIS considered the current state of resources in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, it failed to adequately consider changes in species and fishing distribution that are likely to continue as a result of climate change, the team wrote.

In total, the SCEMFIS report found the Vineyard Wind SEIS needed further work on eight key issues: the totality of impact across the Mid-Atlantic, physical oceanographic processes, climate change, adequacy of the database on finfish and benthic invertebrates, long-lived biota, fishing/surveys/stock assessments, marine mammals, and economics.

The report was written by Eric Powell (University of Southern Mississippi), Andrew Scheld (Virginia Institute of Marine Science), Pat Sullivan (Cornell University), Josh Kohut (Rutgers University), Thomas Grothues (Rutgers University), Daphne Munroe (Rutgers University), Paula Moreno (EcoMarine Integrated Analytics, LLC), and Gavin Fay (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth). The scientific results and conclusions of this report, as well as any views or opinions expressed, are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the SCEMFIS Industry Advisory Board, member companies, VIMS, USM, NOAA, or the Department of Commerce. The report can be found on the SCEMFIS website here.