Saving Seafood

Maine narrows location for proposed offshore wind turbines

July 13, 2021 — After reviewing potential impact to fisheries, marine wildlife and navigation within 770 square miles of ocean off southern Maine, the Governor’s Energy Office is now focusing on a 16-square-mile area to site up to 12 floating wind-power turbines.

The preferred site for the research array is an L-shaped swath of the Gulf of Maine, about 25 miles south of Muscongus Bay, according to a report issued Monday.

The office is inviting comments on the site through July 30 to inform its final siting decision, which will be included in a federal lease application to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, an agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior that’s responsible for managing development in some offshore waters.

The application will be the first step in a subsequent multiyear permitting process by the bureau, which includes further impact studies and opportunities for public input, according to a news release.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

Top Natural Resources Republican asks Haaland for details on national monuments

March 29, 2021 — Rep. Bruce Westerman (Ark.), the top Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee, requested further information Monday from Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on the department’s review of the boundaries and protections of national monuments.

The Trump administration reduced the boundaries of two Utah sites, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.

Biden in January ordered a review of the boundaries with a report of its findings issued within 60 days. However, the department has since announced it will publish the report after Haaland completes a visit to the monuments in April, after the 60-day window.

“While the planned visit to Utah, as well as reports of DOI [Department of the Interior] aides meeting with stakeholders, are encouraging steps, many matters remain unclear. For example, there is uncertainty whether DOI plans to initiate a formal, public comment period and how local support for the Trump administration’s decision will factor into future analysis,” Westerman wrote.

Read the full story at The Hill

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

CHRIS MCCARTHY: Is Vineyard Wind Dead or Just Playing Dead?

December 17, 2020 — The New Bedford fishing industry is celebrating the announcement that Vineyard Wind has withdrawn from the federal permitting process and the process has ended.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a part of the Department of the Interior, issued a statement on Tuesday, December 15, that finalizes the end of the permitting process to build an 800-megawatt wind energy turbine off of the coast of Massachusetts.

Because Vineyard Wind withdrew from the process on December 1, 2020, the permitting process “is no longer necessary and the process is hereby terminated.”

Termination of the process “is effective immediately” and that exact verbiage is used in the letter to the government by Vineyard Wind and by the government in its announcement.

Read the full story at WBSM

Fishing industry leaders flag offshore wind concerns to Trump interior secretary

July 21, 2020 — Today, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt met with representatives of the commercial fishing industry to discuss their concerns with offshore wind at a roundtable organized by Saving Seafood’s National Coalition for Fishing Communities. The roundtable included representatives from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and North Carolina:

Members of New England’s commercial fishing industry who feel they’ve been cast aside in the rush toward offshore wind took their concerns straight to the top of the Trump administration Tuesday in a Seaport sit-down with Interior Secretary David Bernhardt.

“The fishing industry is not anti-wind. But the fishing industry’s not been part of this process from the beginning,” said Lund’s Fisheries Chairman Jeff Reichle. “Let’s do it the right way.”

Industry representatives voiced a raft of concerns with offshore wind, including the safety of commercial and recreational boaters navigating the waters, issues towing fishing nets through the farms and the potential for disrupting marine life.

Bernhardt said he’s not looking to “whack people with an unnecessary burden if we can avoid it” but noted he’s “very eager” to pursue offshore wind “in a way that works.”

Read the full story at the Boston Herald