Maryland Archives - Saving Seafood

Court Denies Motion for Injunction of BOEM’s Review of Maryland COP

December 17, 2025 — A federal court judge in Maryland has denied a request by offshore wind developer US Wind for a preliminary injunction against the federal government in its ongoing fight to save its planned offshore wind project off Ocean City, Maryland. It is the latest twist in the ongoing court battle over Maryland’s first offshore wind project and the broader battle against the Trump administration’s efforts to derail the industry and revoke existing permits.

US Wind, which is a partnership between investment firm Apollo Global Management and Italy’s Renexia, is planning a large wind farm off the Maryland coast that would include 114 wind turbines. The company completed its federal-level reviews, receiving approval of its Construction and Operation Plan in December 2024, but has faced local opposition and the new administration’s declared goal to end offshore wind energy.

The company has found itself caught up in multiple legal battles, including a jurisdictional dispute between the federal and state environmental protection authorities. Ocean City, Maryland, has also sued the federal government, challenging the approval of the wind farm’s plans.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

MARYLAND: Maryland Calls for Offshore Wind Proposals Days After Court Victory

December 15, 2025 — The State of Maryland celebrated the victory in the courts against the Trump administration’s order halting licensing for wind energy projects by launching a new call for Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) from the licensed developers. The state reiterated its commitment to wind energy despite the ongoing struggles with federal regulators.

Maryland published the details of the call open to leaseholders. The state will be conducting an information conference this upcoming week. Proposals are due by January 16.

At the beginning of the week, the 17 states and the District of Columbia, which had filed a complaint in May, won a court order that vacated Donald Trump’s Executive Order halting sales and licensing for the wind power industry. The January order had directed federal agencies to pause their effort and to begin an open-ended review of the process. The administration argues that wind power was unfairly advantaged by the Biden administration and that licensing was rushed without full consideration of the impact of the projects.

A U.S. District Court Judge, however, found that the order was “arbitrary and capricious.” U.S. District Court Judge Patti Saris in Massachusetts found that the Executive Order violated the Administrative Procedures Act that governs how agencies administer programs.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

In a Baltimore courtroom, US Wind fights for its life against the Trump administration

December 11, 2025 — Offshore wind company US Wind battled the Trump administration in a Baltimore courtroom Wednesday, defending its Maryland project against the government’s plans to revoke and reconsider a construction permit issued under President Joe Biden (D).

For US Wind, the threat is existential, attorneys said Wednesday. Not only would the government’s revocation of the permit threaten to upend the project along Ocean City’s coast, it also could send the entire company heading toward bankruptcy.

“We’re not there yet,” US Wind CEO Jeff Grybowski said Tuesday outside the U.S. District Courthouse. “We’re in this fight because we made a promise to Maryland that we’re going to build the biggest renewable energy project in the state’s history.”

US Wind’s project is the closest to development along the Delmarva coast. Other companies — Ørsted and Equinor — have leases offshore, but do not have approved construction plans, like US Wind. But having an approved permit did not stop the Trump administration from trying to stop the project — one of a number of offshore wind projects that have been targeted, including some where stop-work orders have stalled construction.

Wednesday’s hearing is the latest twist in a case that began with the parties in entirely different roles. It began in October 2024, when Ocean City challenged the Biden administration’s approval of the permit, called a Construction and Operations Plan, or COP.

The Interior Department initially defended its issuance of the permit. But it reversed course after President Donald Trump (R) took office this year, and in September it asked U.S. District Court Judge Stephanie Gallagher to remand the permit back to the agency for reconsideration, saying it was not properly evaluated under Biden.

Read the full article at Maryland Matters

Chesapeake Bay region leaders approve revised agreement, commit to cleanup through 2040

December 4, 2025 — State and federal leaders from around the Chesapeake Bay have given the final stamp of approval to an agreement that sets the tone for the next 15 years of cleaning up the nation’s largest estuary.

The Chesapeake Executive Council, which directs the massive restoration effort, met in Baltimore Tuesday to celebrate the latest iteration of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement.

“It is not just a renewal of commitment, but it is a redoubling of our efforts to make progress that is not only aspirational, but progress that is fast,” Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said at the meeting, his last as a member of the council. “The huge effort that we have made over many years is the foundation.”

Virginia and other states in the region signed onto the most recent agreement in 2014. It set benchmarks for participants to voluntarily achieve by 2025, such as cutting pollution and boosting seagrass and crab populations. Officials failed to meet about a third of the targets by this year’s deadline.

Read the full article at VPM

Offshore wind fight lining lawyers’ pockets

November 7, 2025 — With a lawsuit still in court, Ocean City continues to rack up legal bills in its fight against offshore wind, with more than $350,000 spent so far.

City Manager Terry McGean said the city has paid $332,815 in legal fees to its outside legal counsel, the Washington, D.C. firm Marzulla Law, which was hired last year to fight the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval of the US Wind project off Maryland’s coast. Another $24,372 has been paid to the city solicitor’s law firm, Ayres, Jenkins, Gordy & Almand.

“These are all paid from the city general fund,” he said.

Read the full article at OC-Today-Dispatch

Delaware AG enters Delmarva offshore wind farm fight

November 6, 2025 — Delaware’s Attorney General Kathy Jennings filed a motion in federal court in support of a company seeking to build a controversial wind farm off the Delmarva coast as it fends off a lawsuit preventing the project from moving forward.

US Wind, a Maryland-based company, hopes to build 121 turbines off the coast of Ocean City, Md., but has been targeted in the courts by both city leaders and the Trump administration. The project has been the subject of years of scrutiny in both southern Delaware and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Now, Jennings has stepped in, supporting US Wind’s efforts to stop the federal government from pulling its construction permits. If the Trump administration succeeds, it would effectively kill the project and bankrupt US Wind.

Last week, Jennings’ office filed a brief in the ongoing lawsuit challenging the legality of the proposed wind farm. She expressed support for the project and outlined the benefits it would have in Delaware.

Read the full article at News From The States

Stakeholders nearing update on Chesapeake Bay Agreement with multiple goals for fisheries

November 6, 2025 — Federal and state stakeholders are getting close on an update to the Chesapeake Bay Agreement – a voluntary accord that sets goals for conservation and clean water – laying out desired outcomes for some of the region’s fisheries.

First established in 1983, signatories to the agreement include the governments of Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware, New York, and the District of Columbia, along with the Chesapeake Bay Commission and federal agencies.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Striped bass status quo remains as harvest reduction voted down

November 4, 2025 — The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted Oct. 29 to maintain the current striped bass management rules for 2026.

The board voted against a proposed 12% coast-wide cut in commercial and recreational harvest, which opponents said would have significant economic ramifications for the Chesapeake Bay area.

Without that reduction, organizations like the Chesapeake Bay Foundation are concerned the striped bass population will not rebuild by 2029, the target set after the species was declared overfished in 2019.

“It’s a requirement of the ASMFC (Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission) to rebuild that population to its target in 10 years… That is what the board itself has set forward as its own guidelines and targets,” Chesapeake Bay Foundation Executive Director Allison Colden said.

Though board members voted against the reduction at the Oct. 29 meeting, the fisheries commission granted Maryland the option to review and adjust its recreational fishing seasons through the Department of Natural Resources.

Read the full article at Southern Maryland News

MARYLAND: Maryland Democrats back offshore wind project awaiting key court decisions

November 3, 2025 — Top Maryland Democrats are coming out in full force to support a massive offshore wind project currently tied up in federal court.

Baltimore-based US Wind has faced an onslaught of challenges in recent months keeping the company from starting construction on a 114-turbine wind farm off the coast of Ocean City, which is estimated to generate enough power for 718,000 Maryland homes.

In October 2024, the Town of Ocean City and numerous plaintiffs representing the fishing and tourism industry filed a lawsuit against the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), challenging the federal permit approval process for US Wind’s project.

This September, the Trump administration asked the court to vacate the project’s Construction and Operations Plan — approved under the Biden administration — and send it back to BOEM for reevaluation, signaling plans to reverse approvals of the necessary permits.

If the court approves such a move, Ocean City’s lawsuit could become moot.

Read the full article at WYPR

Coastwide Menhaden Catch Limit Cut by 20% as Potential Bay Cuts Loom

October 29, 2025 — In a marathon four-hour fishery management meeting on Tuesday, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC)’s Menhaden Management Board grappled with menhaden catch limits up and down the East Coast. Under pressure from environmentalists to cut catch limits and from menhaden fishermen to protect their livelihoods, board members for the ASMFC voted to reduce the coastwide menhaden catch by 20% in 2026, allowing fishermen to land 186,840 metric tons. The total allowable catch will be revisited in time for the 2027 and 2028 seasons. This motion passed 16-2, with only Virginia and Pennsylvania voting against it.

Inside the Chesapeake Bay, however, the rules are different. The Virginia menhaden reduction fishery, led by purse seine operator Ocean Harvesters, adheres to its own limit, known as the “Bay Cap”, which is currently set at 51,000 metric tons of fish. But environmentalists argue that a much lower Bay Cap is needed to protect the environment. They want to cut the reduction fishery’s limit by 50%. Groups like the Chesapeake Bay Foundation believe menhaden are in trouble, and since menhaden are an important forage fish, that there isn’t enough food to go around for predators like osprey and rockfish. The Virginia menhaden fishing industry disputes the claim that menhaden are in trouble, or that the Bay’s osprey and rockfish population struggles are directly related to a lack of menhaden.

The Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS) just funded a new project that will pull together all of the existing research on menhaden in the Bay, identify gaps in the research, and propose new study methods to fill these gaps. This would lead to solid research for setting a meaningful Bay harvest cap for that is based on data and is scientifically defensible.

Scientists from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, Maryland, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and NOAA, will lead the project to develop a “research roadmap” for Bay fishery managers.

Since that future research won’t be available for some time, the ASMFC Menhaden Management Board moved to initiate a new addendum that would potentially change how the Bay Cap is used, or lower the limit. This addendum would “develop periods for the Chesapeake Bay Cap that distributes fishing effort more evenly throughout the season” and it would also develop “a range of options to reduce the Bay Cap.” These options could be anything from keeping the cap at its current level to a 50% reduction. The hope is to have a draft of the addendum ready to present at ASMFC’s next meeting this winter.

Read the full article at the Chesapeake Bay Magazine