Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: AG Healey pledges to fight Trump offshore drilling plan along coast

March 14, 2018 — BOSTON — Attorney General Maura Healey on Monday vowed to fight federal plans to open the Massachusetts coastline to offshore oil and gas drilling.

“Massachusetts does not want drilling off our coast and I will fight this proposal to defend our state and our residents,” said Healey in a statement. “Of all the bad environmental ideas the Trump administration has proposed, this one may take the cake.”

President Donald Trump and Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke in January announced a plan to offer federal energy leases in most of the nation’s offshore waters, including the North Atlantic planning region stretching from Maine to New Jersey.

The BOEM proposes two such leases within the North Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf, starting in 2021 and 2023.

Healey filed formal comments with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on Friday. She argued that aside from the risk of oil spills, drilling would conflict with state and federal imperatives to reduce carbon emissions. She said the exploration and extraction is not needed to meet America’s energy needs. Healey said she would consider a legal challenge if necessary.

Read the full story at MassLive

 

Maine critics throw cold water on Trump administration’s offshore drilling plan

The proposal to open 90 percent of the nation’s coastline – including the North Atlantic – to oil and gas exploration draws widespread opposition at an event held by federal officials in Augusta.

March 8, 2018 — AUGUSTA, Maine — Fishermen, environmentalists and lawmakers from Maine’s coast called on the Trump administration Wednesday to exclude the North Atlantic from a plan to potentially reopen much of the nation’s coastline to oil and gas exploration.

Representatives with the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management were in Augusta for an open house-style event to field questions about President Trump’s controversial offshore energy proposal. The draft plan released in January calls for reopening 90 percent of the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards to oil and gas drilling, a seismic shift from the 6 percent now available to energy companies. The public comment period on the draft plan closes Friday.

Just two of the 47 proposed lease sales would be in the North Atlantic region stretching from Maine to New Jersey. But the mere prospect of oil drilling in the Gulf of Maine or Georges Bank – and the accompanying environmental risks – was enough to draw more than 60 people to a pre-emptive event held before the bureau’s open house.

Kristan Porter, a fisherman from Cutler who is president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, recalled how one of his predecessors told Congress in 1970 that Maine fishermen were “100 percent against” allowing oil drilling in the Gulf of Maine. Nearly 50 years later, Porter said, nothing has changed.

“Allowing the exploration of oil and gas … could devastate our fisheries, our fishermen and our communities,” Porter said at a news conference. “Maine’s fishing industries are dependent on Maine’s clean water. Even minor spills could irreparably damage the Gulf of Maine.”

Porter was joined at the event by representatives of the Natural Resources Council of Maine and other environmental groups, the aquaculture industry, tourism advocates, and Democratic, Republican and independent politicians. All four members of Maine’s congressional delegation also oppose the plan.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Protesters rally against Trump’s oil drilling plans

March 6, 2018 — CONCORD, Mass. — Dozens of protesters rallied in New Hampshire on Monday against a proposal by President Donald Trump’s administration to expand offshore drilling, saying it poses a grave threat to the state’s marine ecosystem and economy.

Protesters — some carrying signs that read “Stop Big Polluters” and “No Spill No Drill No Kill”– gathered outside a Concord hotel that was hosting an information session by federal officials to explain the process that could lead to drilling for oil and gas on the Outer Continental Shelf in the North Atlantic. The hearing is one of 23 the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is holding on drilling plans including one in Maine on Wednesday.

Tom Irwin, director of the Conservation Law Foundation of New Hampshire, told reporters before the protest that oil and gas drilling put fisheries, tourism and recreation at risk. He said ocean resources in New England support 250,000 jobs and $17.4 billion in economic activity.

“The last thing we need are more man-made threats to our oceans and New England’s natural resources heritage,” Irwin said. “The Trump administration’s proposal ignores the will of our coastal communities and millions of Americans who have voiced their opposition to offshore drilling.”

New Hampshire’s all-Democratic Congressional delegation and Republican Gov. Chris Sununu oppose the proposal. Rep. Renny Cushing, D-Hampton, said he and a bipartisan group of lawmakers will seek to suspend House rules this week to introduce a resolution making it clear that state lawmakers also oppose it.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Portsmouth Herald

 

Trump plan to allow oil drilling off New England unites foes in opposition

March 5, 2018 — For decades, they have done battle — through street protests, in courtrooms, on Beacon Hill. It takes a lot, something broadly and viscerally opposed, to unite the traditional foes.

But the Trump administration’s new plan to allow drilling for oil and gas off the shores of New England has done just that, forging a bipartisan coalition of fishermen, environmental advocates, industry groups, and scientists against the plan.

At a recent press conference held to denounce the plan, Peter Shelley of the Conservation Law Foundation noted that the last time he stood on the same side as so many fishermen was some four decades ago, when the federal government last pressed such a proposal.

“It’s ridiculous, and very discouraging, that we’re back here 40 years later,” he said, noting that the previous coalition succeeded in blocking offshore drilling while opponents in other regions failed. “It didn’t make sense then, and it makes less sense now.”

When Angela Sanfilippo, president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association, spoke at the press conference last Monday at the New England Aquarium, she smiled at Shelley, a longtime proponent of fishing regulations.

“Here we are again,” she said, calling the drilling proposal “a disgrace.” “We’re not going to allow it to happen . . . Georges Bank is the richest fishing ground in the world. We have to protect it with our lives.”

In January, the Trump administration announced it was lifting a drilling ban and would allow prospecting for offshore oil and gas deposits in nearly all the coastal waters of the United States.

The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which will oversee the permitting process, estimates that opening the proposed areas could tap some 90 billion barrels of oil and 327 trillion tons of natural gas, potentially a major boost to the nation’s energy reserves.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

 

Massachusetts: Cape Cod drilling protesters dress to express

February 28, 2018 — BOSTON — They came dressed to make a public statement.

Brewster’s Christopher Powicki’s bearded face poked out of a plush full-length lobster costume. Kevin O’Brien of Boston was head-to-toe great white shark, and Don Mallinson of East Falmouth wore a cardboard tricorn hat — think homemade “Cheesehead” — with each side bearing an anti-oil and gas drilling message like “Exxon Valdez, Deepwater Horizon, New England.”

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management didn’t allow oral testimony at its public meeting Tuesday at the Sheraton Boston Hotel on a Trump administration proposal to open New England’s ocean waters to gas and oil exploration and extraction. While speakers lining up to give testimony at public hearings has been a familiar sight for other controversial proposals, like the defunct Cape Wind project, that practice ended for the bureau five years ago under the Obama administration.

That didn’t stop people from making their voices heard Tuesday. A costumed, sign-bearing crowd jammed into a conference room a floor above the agency’s public meeting rooms to listen to representatives from a panoply of environmental organizations, more than 20 nonprofit organizations, state elected officials, and others, speak in opposition to exploration and drilling anywhere off the New England coastline.

Their concerns ranged from the effects on everything from plankton to whales of seismic testing, which is used to pinpoint likely oil and gas deposits, and the possible effects of an oil spill on fisheries, marine life and our valuable coastline and tourist economy.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

Massachusetts: Promise of jobs, revenue not muting foes of offshore drilling

February 27, 2018 — BOSTON — The Trump administration proposal to open new tracts of ocean to the oil industry could create “hundreds of thousands of jobs,” according to an offshore energy group whose president said the plan is part of a “larger push to increase the global competitiveness of America and to spur jobs and economic growth at home.”

But the prospect of drilling off the Massachusetts coast also brought together advocates on Monday who are often at loggerheads but are now pulling in the same direction, against the Trump administration’s plans.

Decades ago, when oil exploration at George’s Bank last occurred, the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) joined together with the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives to fight the proposal, ultimately prevailing, and those groups and others are hoping for a repeat this time around.

“It was a remarkable moment,” said Peter Shelley, senior counsel at CLF, who said it is “ridiculous” that the idea has resurfaced.

“We knew this would not die completely,” said Angela Sanfilippo, of the Fishermen’s Wives, who said she saw the devastation an oil spill can bring to a fishing community when she visited New Orleans after Deepwater Horizon spewed fuel into the Gulf of Mexico eight years ago.

CLF often supports regulations on fishing that the industry opposes, but the two groups — and others — were on the same side for Monday’s event, organized by U.S. Sen. Ed Markey one day before the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s hearing on the offshore drilling proposal in Boston.

The public meeting scheduled for 3 p.m. at Sheraton Boston Hotel is a “sham” because officials there will not take live testimony from the public and the meeting location was moved multiple times, according to Markey.

“We cannot allow George’s Bank to become Exxon’s Bank,” Markey said at Monday’s event, held at the New England Aquarium. The Trump proposal is an “invitation to disaster,” he said.

The Trump administration has proposed opening up waters to drilling and oil exploration, allowing companies to tap into some of the estimated 89.9 billion barrels of oil sitting undiscovered beneath the continental shelf. The idea has pitted food providers against fuel providers.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

New Bedford Standard-Times: Building trust with fishermen is key for wind energy companies

February 26, 2018 — There’s a lot of buzz in New Bedford these days about the offshore wind industry — and for good reason.

Blowing in with the massive turbines will be the promise of good-paying jobs; new activity along the waterfront; and even the prospect that SouthCoast could become a training center for those interested in offshore wind careers.

Indeed, New Bedford could once again become the city that lights the world (or at least much of Massachusetts) with clean, renewable energy.

Amid the hubbub, however, we can’t lose track of the industry that has made New Bedford the most lucrative seafood port in the nation for 17 years in a row. The city’s hard-working fishermen — beset by changing regulations, dwindling catches, competition from foreign fleets and the ever-present hardship of storm-tossed seas — must be given serious consideration in any changes that could affect the waters where they ply their trade.

If both industries are to thrive together in the marine economy, they must communicate openly in the months and years ahead.

At a Feb. 12 meeting with wind energy developers, some members of the fishing community expressed frustration that little progress has been made to date.

But “it’s not too late,” noted David Pierce of the state Division of Marine Fisheries. And thankfully, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has structured its wind application process to give fishermen a voice.

Each company bidding for a wind-energy contract must have a representative to the fishing industry, as well as a fisheries liaison. The fisheries liaison for DeepWater Wind, for instance, is longtime fisherman Rodney Avila, while the city’s Harbor Development Commission is acting as the company’s fishing representative.

HDC Director Edward C. Anthes-Washburn explained the importance of keeping fishermen engaged. There are legitimate concerns, he said, and “we’re committed to making sure they (fishermen) understand what’s happening.”

Anthes-Washburn admitted such details as precise turbine locations have been scarce, but much more information will be forthcoming throughout the design phase. And fishermen will need to make their concerns known before construction, he said.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

Fish stakeholders to protest drilling plan

February 20, 2018 — Well, the boys of spring are heaving the ol’ horsehide around in the warmer climes of Florida and Arizona and that’s always a good thing, knowing that the calendar is about to flip over to baseball any minute.

Quick thought: What if baseball had been invented in, well, Norway or Iceland? Well, then the ball probably would be covered with fish skin rather than horsehide or the cowhide baseball switched to in 1974.

Be way better with fish skin. That way, any wild pitch truly would be the one that got away.

Meeting and greetin’

As we mentioned in last week’s column, things should be hopping in Boston on Feb. 27 when the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management hosts a public hearing on the Trump administration’s proposal to open the ocean floor off New England to potential drilling and exploration for gas, oil and whatever else is down there that can make a buck for somebody.

The meeting is expected to be packed with fishing stakeholders, conservationists and public officials — all of whom seem to be against any systematic mechanical intrusion into the marine ecosystem off the coast of New England.

One programming note: The venue for the event has been changed to the Omni Parker House hotel from the Hyatt Regency Boston. The time remains the same — 3 to 7 p.m.

We also were remiss last week in our discussion of the issue not to mention that the New England Fishery Management Council has submitted comments setting out its concerns about the possibility of gas and oil drilling off the Eastern Seaboard.

The council has recommended BOEM exclude the North and Mid-Atlantic areas because “oil and gas exploration and extraction activities in the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf involve inappropriate risks that may harm living marine resources and communities that depend on them.”

Last summer, the council listed five general concerns: direct displacement of fishing activities due to survey or extraction activities; harm to sensitive deepwater habitats, such as corals; negative impacts on living marine resources from the high-decibel sounds produced during surveys and drilling; negative impacts to near-shore fish habitats from infrastructure necessary to support oil and gas industries; and risks associated with leaks and spills resulting from extraction and transport.

That’s a lot of concerns.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

New Yorkers rally against offshore drilling plan

February 16, 2018 — ALBANY, N.Y. — Wearing fish-shaped caps and armed with a megaphone, New York state’s leading environmental advocates protested President Donald Trump’s plan to open offshore areas to oil and gas drilling on Thursday as federal energy officials held an open house on the proposal near the state Capitol.

The group, wearing caps shaped like sturgeon, salmon and other vulnerable ocean species, included Aaron Mair, past president of the Sierra Club, and Judith Enck, the regional Environmental Protection Agency administrator under former President Barack Obama. They said Trump’s plan could devastate the environment while leaving potential renewable energy sources untouched. They called on Congress to pass a law blocking the proposal.

“We all remember the BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe,” Enck said into a megaphone, referring to the 2010 rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that triggered the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. “We cannot afford that reckless activity in the Atlantic.”

Inside, federal energy officials handed out information packets and briefed members of the public on the president’s decision last month to open most of the nation’s coast to oil and gas drilling as a way of making the U.S. less dependent on foreign energy sources. Several dozen people had trickled through at the midpoint of the four-hour open house. Members of the public were encouraged to submit written comments.

William Brown, chief environmental officer at the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said he welcomed comments from opponents to the plan.

Read the full story from Associated Press at the Seattle Times

 

Rhode Island: Ocean State Officials Pledge to Halt Offshore Drilling

February 13, 2018 — NARRAGANSETT, R.I. — Rhode Island’s governor and members of Congress are calling for an all-out effort to oppose President Trump’s plan for offshore drilling along the Eastern seaboard. They warned of the environmental and economic risks to the state’s fishing and tourism industries. They urged the public to submit comments on the proposal to the Bureau of Ocean Management (BOEM) and to show their opposition at a scheduled Feb. 28 public workshop in Providence.

Referencing the six commercial fishermen in the audience at at Feb. 12 press event, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said he planned to advance a bill signed by all New England senators to ban offshore drilling off the New England coast. Whitehouse called the offshore drilling proposal a “dumb idea” and blamed the fossil-fuel industry for directing the Trump administration to enact it.

“This will not happen. Whatever it takes to prevent it, we will see takes place,” Whitehouse said.

Gov. Gina Raimondo promised to lobby governors of coastal states to pass resolutions opposing the offshore drilling plan.

“This is backwards. We ought to be moving forward for offshore wind farms, not backwards for offshore oil drilling,” she said.

Raimondo also restated her intent to have Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke follow through on his promise to meet her in Rhode Island and discuss the fossil-fuel project. Several East Coast governors called Zinke after he met with Florida Gov. Rick Scott. Scott apparently convinced Zinke to exempt his state from the offshore drilling plan. Although there is skepticism of the agreement after Zinke’s office backtracked somewhat on that promise and legal questions of such an exemption surfaced.

Whitehouse and Raimondo were asked whether a state or regional carbon tax would put economic pressure on Trump and the fossil-fuel industry. Both said they favor a national or multi-state fee on fossil fuels. However, Whitehouse said his carbon tax bill in the Senate won’t advance until the head of the Senate is a Democrat.

“The Republicans are keenly interested in trying to shovel this issue under the rug as much as they can to keep the fossil-fuel money flowing into their party. It’s a sad state of affairs,” Whitehouse said.

Raimondo said she favors advancing a carbon tax along with public pushback to offshore drilling.

Read the full story at ECORI