October 25, 2019 — Meghan Lapp was steamed. It was late February, and Rhode Island regulators had just finalized a mitigation plan intended to blunt an offshore wind project’s economic impact on local fishermen. Lapp, who handles government relations at a Rhode Island fishing company, viewed the plan as a farce.
“What happened last night in R.I. was an absolute roll over the fishing industry,” she wrote to two staffers at NOAA Fisheries, the federal agency that regulates commercial fishing.
State regulators had taken little input from fishermen on the plan, she wrote. What input they did receive did not sway them. A calamari processor told Rhode Island officials his biggest customer would likely have to source squid from China if the 84-turbine project proposed by Vineyard Wind in federal waters off Massachusetts was allowed to proceed.
Lapp’s company, Seafreeze Ltd., fishes for squid in the area and has taken a lead role in opposing the project.
“We are losing on every angle,” Lapp wrote federal officials. She later added, “I appreciate all the work you guys are doing on the offshore wind issue, and I thought particularly with regards to the squid industry that this was important to share.”
Doug Christel, a fishing policy analyst at NOAA, responded a week later. The federal agency had not been closely tracking the state process but had discussed Lapp’s concerns, he said.
“Similar to some of your comments, we feel the DEIS [draft environmental impact statement] underestimates landings from within the WDA,” he wrote, referring to the wind development area leased by Vineyard Wind from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.