Saving Seafood

Plans for Delaware, Maryland offshore wind projects questioned at forum

May 23, 2022 — Signs of support for offshore wind power abounded outside of Indian River High School Friday.

Inside, it was just the opposite.

Waves of skepticism and opposition followed presentations by representatives of US Wind and Ørsted, two companies that have obtained leases for proposed offshore wind projects in federal waters off the Delaware/Maryland coast.

Topics of concerns included detrimental impact on marine and migratory bird life, the local fishing industry and numerous natural resources, as well as marine safety and unobstructed viewshed.

The fishing industry – recreational and commercial – would take a huge hit, says Meghan Lapp, a fisheries liaison for Seafreeze Ltd. in Rhode Island. She addressed the panel and audience by Zoom.

“What you are looking for in wind farms from a commercial fishing perspective is essentially a complete loss of fishable areas for the next 30 years, which is going to be the career and the lifetime of the fishermen that are out there right now,” Ms. Lapp said.

Bonnie Brady, executive director of Long Island Commercial Fishing Association in Montauk, New York, said sonar from site surveying and electromagnetic frequency through cables will result in long-term migratory changes that will have a detrimental impact on marine life, including several endangered species of whales.

“It will change the ecosystem of the area,” Ms. Brady said.

Read the full story at Delaware State News

New York: Wind Farm Study Moorings Anger Fishermen

May 6, 2022 — Fishermen on the South Fork are angered by the placement in August of several dozen 500-pound concrete blocks on the ocean floor off Wainscott, moorings for the telemetry devices in use for the South Fork Wind Fisheries Study Work Plan that was a condition for the East Hampton Town Trustees’ lease agreement allowing the South Fork Wind farm’s transmission cable to make landfall on a beach under their jurisdiction.

Researchers with Stony Brook University who are conducting the five-year study required of the wind farm’s developers are at present on a regular visit to the sensor array to collect data, replace batteries, and deploy new, smaller, and retrievable moorings alongside the existing 500-pound blocks. A spokeswoman for the developers, Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind and Eversource Energy, said on Tuesday that the original moorings will be removed.

Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, criticized the deployment of the concrete blocks on the sea floor where dozens of boats fish. She described the area as “a really busy squid, fluke, all-of-it area,” she said on Monday. “Why would academia treat fishermen so poorly when they’ve got a body of knowledge academics can’t begin to?” For trawl fishermen, the concrete blocks are a hazard, Ms. Brady said.

Read the full story at the East Hampton Star

NEW YORK: Long Island’s Offshore Wind Farm Plans Take Root

March 2, 2022 — After years of planning and debate, offshore wind farm developers recently took several big steps forward in a half dozen projects in various stages of development off the coast of Long Island.

A record-setting sale of offshore wind development rights last week saw combined bids for six areas off the coasts of New York and New Jersey stretching to $4.73 billion. The auction came less than two weeks after officials held a groundbreaking — or a seafloor breaking, as it were — ceremony in Wainscott on Feb. 11 to mark construction starting on the 130-megawatt South Fork Wind, the first offshore wind project in New York State.

LOCAL OPPOSITION

The South Fork Wind farm’s developers, Ørsted & Eversource, who plan to build 12 turbines about 30 miles off Montauk’s coast — enough to power 70,000 homes annually — have faced legal challenges from some Wainscott residents opposed to the cable coming ashore in their community.

Citizens for the Preservation of Wainscott filed a motion in the Appellate Division of New York State Supreme Court to block the construction until the court has an opportunity to rule on the group’s appeal of the state Public Service Commission’s decision allowing the cable to run through the community. The appeals court judges rejected that motion last month, but the suit is pending.

“We continue to support the move to renewable energy and celebrate the progress toward that goal,” the group said in a statement following the groundbreaking. “But we continue to have serious reservations regarding an infrastructure project that runs its cable through residential neighborhoods, and next to a PFAS superfund site, particularly when better alternative sites were available. Our focus will continue to be on protecting our community.”

The group isn’t the only one opposed. Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Montauk-based Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, protested the groundbreaking ceremony while playing an audio recording of what she says the construction noise will sound like from on land. As officials left, she reminded them that the turbines will be built in North Atlantic Right Whale territory.

Read the full story at the Long Island Press

Texas wind power critics, Northeast fishing advocates meet at Austin forum

January 25, 2022 — Advocates for the East Coast fishing industry sat down with free-market critics of wind power for a panel in Austin, Texas, where a conservative legal foundation has taken the fishermen’s fight to federal court.

Hosted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the discussion featured Meghan Lapp, fisheries liaison for Seafreeze Ltd. and Seafreeze Shoreside in Narragansett, R.I., and Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association.

“There’s basically been wholesale sellout by the federal government of our fishing grounds,” said Lapp. “We’re talking about the whole East Coast…and the obliteration of fishing on the East Coast.”

Lapp put her legal background to use in years of reading government documents and putting formal comments into the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and other federal agencies involved in offshore wind planning.

“I write every single comment letter like we’re going to sue, to establish that on the record, and I knew that’s where we were going to get with these projects,” said Lapp.

She knew then it could go all the way to the Supreme Court, but that the fishing industry could not do that on its own without more legal firepower, Lapp recalled. That led her to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, after reading how the group had brought a case on the Affordable Care Act to the high court.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Texas Public Policy Foundation Hosts Fishermen to Talk Wind Impacts

January 24, 2022 — The following was released by the Texas Public Policy Foundation: 

 

The growing wind industry is increasingly looking to offshore to capture ample wind resources, especially in the Northeast U.S. However, the impact of this development on commercial fishermen, endangered species, and grid reliability is being ignored. Hear from a group of Rhode Island fishermen who are suing the federal government to properly enforce its laws and how Texas could be impacted by the outcome.

Speakers:
Bonnie Brady – Exec. Director, Long Island Commercial Fishing Association
Meghan Lapp – Fisheries Liaison and General Manager, Seafreeze Shoreside
Rep. Jared Patterson – Texas State Representative
The Hon. Jason Isaac – Director of Life:Powered, Texas Public Policy Foundation

Rhode Island commercial fishers join anti-Vineyard Wind lawsuit

December 23, 2021 — Lawyers for a Texas-based libertarian think tank, joined by members of the Rhode Island commercial fishing industry, have filed a federal lawsuit that seeks to stop the Vineyard Wind project from moving forward.

An 85-page complaint filed last week in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia claims that federal regulators improperly permitted Vineyard Wind I, the offshore wind project that would place 62 turbines 15 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard while powering 400,000 Massachusetts homes.

Some commercial fishing interests in the Northeast have been trying to stop the project. In the latest round, a handful of plaintiffs across three states are represented by lawyers with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and its Center for the American Future. The foundation bills itself as a non-profit with a mission “to promote and defend liberty, personal responsibility, and free enterprise in Texas and the nation.”

The Rhode Island plaintiffs include Seafreeze Shoreside Inc. — a Port Judith fish dealer and portside service provider — and two small fishing companies owned by Thomas E. Williams of Westerly. The Northeast Fisheries Sector XIII — a Massachusetts-based coalition of fisheries permit holders — and New York’s Long Island Commercial Fishing Association area also parties to the lawsuit.

Read the full story at the Boston Business Journal

Balance of power: BOEM and states look at compensation for fishermen; endangered whales pose challenge to developers

September 14, 2021 — The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is working with coastal states to come up with plans for potentially compensating fishermen for lost fishing grounds and other negative effects of developing offshore wind turbine arrays.

Fishing industry advocates are pushing anew to get fishermen deeply involved now to minimize impacts from sweeping plans to rapidly develop a U.S. offshore wind industry — and hoping to limit damage to the U.S. food supply.

The government’s drive toward creating more offshore wind energy areas in the New York Bight is looking like a repeat of its mistakes in planning southern New England projects and needs to be braked, fishermen said at an Aug. 6 meeting in New Bedford, Mass.

“It’s going to be responsible for the destruction of a centuries-old industry that’s only been feeding people,” Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, told officials of the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Offshore wind plans court disaster, fishermen warn

August 9, 2021 — The government’s plunge toward creating more offshore wind energy areas in the New York Bight is looking like a repeat of its mistakes in planning southern New England projects and needs to be braked, fishermen said in a meeting Aug. 6 in New Bedford, Mass.

“It’s going to be responsible for the destruction of a centuries-old industry that’s only been feeding people,” Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, told officials of the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

“If you really want to do that right thing, stop everything” until wind energy areas can be better assessed to accommodate power generation while maintaining fisheries, said Brady.

Speaking with fishermen via a Zoom online link, BOEM Director Amanda Lefton opened the meeting by saying the agency has learned from experience and is working to engage better with the fishing industry and head off conflicts.

“We have to improve our engagement with the fishing industry,” said Lefton. “We are doing our best to makes changes.”

Some changes are coming in how BOEM will review plans for the New York Bight – the arm of the Atlantic between Long Island and New Jersey, adjacent to the voracious New York regional energy market and already targeted for major offshore wind projects.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Feds to begin review of wind farm off Long Beach

June 25, 2021 — A $3 billion proposal to build what would be New York state’s largest offshore wind farm is taking shape, with plans to run an underground cable through Long Beach to a substation near the E.F. Barrett Power Station in Island Park. A precise location for the cable has not yet been determined.

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will soon begin an environmental review of the construction and operation of what would be called Empire Wind, off Long Island’s South Shore. The review is expected to take two years, and the project would need state approval as well. Work on Empire Wind would begin no sooner than 2023. Long Beach would not be involved in the approval process, but would help determine the location of the underground cable.

The wind turbines would be about 15 miles offshore.

The Long Island Commercial Fishing Association is strongly opposed to the project, claiming that fish, and fishermen, will be adversely affected.

Equinor, a company based in Norway, has been awarded contracts by New York state, the first in 2019, to supply 816 megawatts of power to the state grid, connecting in Brooklyn. A second contract, for 1,260 megawatts, was awarded in January, for Long Island’s South Shore.

Read the full story at the LI Herald

Amid negotiations, R.I. fishing industry remains concerned over offshore wind impact, compensation

May 7, 2021 — What is the price of loss of livelihood?

This question is at the center of negotiations between local fishing industry representatives and offshore wind developers. And despite recent efforts to strike a better deal, some local fishermen say no number is high enough to justify the devastation they believe the projects will create for their jobs and industry.

The R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council at the urging of Gov. Daniel J. McKee delayed its approval of the South Fork Wind Farm to give developers Orsted A/S and Eversource Energy more time to reach an agreement with the fishing industry, the Associated Press has reported.

The CRMC through its Ocean Special Area Management Plan gets a say in the federal certification process for wind farm projects within a certain distance of the state coastline. Compensation is intended to offset losses from the construction and operation of the projects to the fishing industry.

The payouts help Rhode Island and Massachusetts fishermen, but there are no such benefits for fishermen in other states, even though many also fish in these areas. Other states also get no say in the federal approval process, unlike Rhode Island.

“Rhode Island holds the keys to the kingdom,” said Bonnie Brady, executive director for the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association.

Read the full story at the Providence Business News