Saving Seafood

NEW YORK: Bonnie Brady: A Diversity of Experience

October 25, 2019 — “What you see is what you get,” is how Bonnie Brady, a longtime Montauk resident and EH Fusion Party candidate for East Hampton Town Board, described herself in an interview with Star staff this week. “I’d like to think of myself as a fair, honest person, someone who would work their butt off” for constituents.

As executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, Ms. Brady has long been a proponent of that industry’s interests, which in recent years means she is also a vocal opponent of the proposed South Fork Wind Farm, which fishermen fear will disrupt or destroy their livelihood.

But Ms. Brady’s résumé illustrates a diversity of experience that may have few equals among East Hampton candidates past and present. She holds a degree in journalism from the University of South Carolina and worked as a reporter for The Star in the early 1990s. Living in Washington, D.C., she worked for then-Senator Bill Bradley, a Democrat from New Jersey. While living in the nation’s capital, she applied to the Peace Corps, and in 1991 went to Cameroon, in West Africa, where she coordinated primary health care for pre- and postnatal women and their infant children.

Read the full story at The East Hampton Star

NEW YORK: Long Island Offshore Wind Farm Moves Forward, Despite Local Opposition

October 4, 2019 — New York inches closer to its first offshore wind farm as developers reached a lease option agreement with a Montauk fishing cooperative.

Orsted, the Denmark-based developer, announced the agreement to build an operations and maintenance facility for the South Fork Wind Farm on property owned by Inlet Seafood in Montauk.

The wind farm’s employees will use the facility to dock their vessels and transfer personnel to and from the turbines.

Dave Aripotch is a commercial fisherman and a co-owner of Inlet Seafood. His wife, Bonnie Brady, is with the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association. Brady says Aripotch didn’t sign the agreement and will refuse any profits from it.

Read the full story at WSHU

NEW YORK: Orsted Wind Plans Montauk Operations Site

October 3, 2019 — An operations and maintenance facility for the proposed South Fork Wind Farm will be sited adjacent to Inlet Seafood, just inside Montauk Harbor, the wind farm’s developers announced last week. But whether the facility represents a meeting of the minds or merely a business arrangement depends on whom you ask.

Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind and Eversource, partners in the 15-turbine installation that would be constructed approximately 35 miles off Montauk, announced on Sept. 25 that they had reached a lease option agreement with Inlet Seafood to locate the facility adjacent to the latter’s commercial fishing and packing operation off East Lake Drive.

Orsted-Eversource crew transfer vessels will be based at Inlet Seafood and used to transport the wind farm’s maintenance crew to and from the wind farm, the developers said. The facility is being designed to ensure that the vessels do not impact the existing commercial fishing fleet or packing operations there, the Sept. 25 announcement said.

“We are pleased to be locating an operations and maintenance facility in Montauk to service our South Fork Wind Farm and bring additional jobs to the area,” Thomas Brostrom, chief executive officer of Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind and President of Orsted North America, said in the Sept. 25 announcement.

Read the full story at The East Hampton Star

Judge dismisses NY’s lawsuit over commercial fluke quotas

September 3, 2019 — A federal judge has dismissed New York’s lawsuit seeking to challenge the state’s relatively small portion of the East Coast commercial fluke quota as a. congressman called for local fishermen to not comply with the restrictive allotment.

With little fanfare, U.S. District Judge Sandra Feuerstein on July 30 issued an order dismissing the case, allowing the state 10 days to file a notice to reargue its claims by next April. Court records showed no such filing had been made. New York’s original complaint was filed Jan. 14. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo first threatened to sue over New York’s low quota at an event in Montauk in 2013.

Meanwhile, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) on Friday recommended that New York commercial fishermen go out of compliance with the fluke quota system in what would be a clear signal to Washington of their frustration with the process.

Read the full story at Newsday

Ørsted Wins Bid From New York State For Large New Wind Farm Off Montauk

July 25, 2019 — State officials announced last week that energy supply contracts will be awarded to two offshore wind farm developers for the construction of giant wind farms in the waters off Long Island—including one southeast of Montauk that could bring power ashore onto the South Fork, possibly Hampton Bays.

Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office said it will seek to ink contracts with two projects, known as Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind, that could lead to the construction of more than 200 turbines in two areas of ocean, producing enough power for as many as 850,000 homes.

The Sunrise Wind project was proposed by Ørsted U.S. Offshore and Eversource, the companies that now own Deepwater Wind and the plans for the South Fork Wind Farm.

The Sunrise Wind proposal calls for as many as 100 turbines to be erected in the same general area of ocean as the much smaller South Fork Wind Farm, about 30 nautical miles southeast of Montauk. The company’s pitch to the state says it expects that the project could be constructed and operational by 2024, just two years after the South Fork Wind Farm is supposed to come online.

Read the full story at the Sag Harbor Express

As wind giants set sights on NY, fishermen demand a role

UK fishermen tell locals of their experiences in Europe with offshore wind farms and how to organize.

April 10, 2019 — As global wind-energy interests set their sights on more than a dozen offshore U.S. energy areas, two longtime British fishermen who act as go-betweens to the offshore wind industry and the fishing community advised Long Island fishermen to stay vigilant and demand a seat at the table when waters are divvied up.

Two dozen Long Island fishermen gathered in Montauk Monday to hear how two veterans of Europe’s maturing offshore wind industry worked to bring their industry into discussions on siting projects in waters that have traditionally been their workplace. It hasn’t been easy, and successes have come only recently, they said.

Colin Warwick, chairman of the Fishing Liaison Offshore Wind and Wet Renewables, Crown Estate, said U.K. fishermen were initially caught flat-footed when wind-energy developers first started planning turbines for their fishing grounds. It’s taken time for fishermen to demand a seat at the table so that prime harvest grounds aren’t lost, and so that fishermen can be compensated if even temporary work limits access to those grounds.

“We had to find a way to bring the fishing industry into the discussion,” said Warwick. “Most importantly, you have to be organized.”

Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, said challenges continue. “We’re fighting on everything and we’re united as a group, but we can’t seem to get teeth in because wind farm companies keep saying, ‘I can’t hear you.’ ”

Read the full story at Newsday

 

It’s Official, Orsted Acquires Deepwater Wind

November 12, 2018 — Orsted, Denmark’s largest energy company and the world’s largest offshore wind developer, has completed the acquisition of Deepwater Wind from the D.E. Shaw Group. The $510 million transaction was announced last month.

As a combined organization, Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind becomes the leading American offshore wind platform, with a goal of delivering renewable energy to the eight states on the East Coast from Massachusetts to Virginia that have committed to a combined 10 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030.

The acquisition comes as Deepwater Wind’s proposed South Fork Wind Farm, to be constructed approximately 35 miles from Montauk, is undergoing review by federal and state agencies, and the East Hampton Town Board and trustees ponder whether to grant easements or leases allowing the 15-turbine wind farm’s transmission cable to make landfall at the ocean beach at the end of Beach Lane in Wainscott, the company’s preferred site. From there it would be buried along a route to the Long Island Power Authority substation near Cove Hollow Road in East Hampton.

Read the full story at the East Hampton Star

Closer scrutiny for offshore wind energy

November 9, 2018 — The first environmental impact assessment for a major offshore wind energy project in federal waters got underway this week.

The South Fork Wind Farm, Deepwater Wind’s plan for 15 turbines east of Montauk, N.Y., was the subject at a round of scoping meetings held in Long Island and southern New England by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

It is the first step in developing an environmental impact statement for what will be the second commercial East Coast wind project, following Deepwater’s Block Island Wind Farm, the five-turbine demonstration project that came in line in Rhode Island in late 2016.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

NEW YORK: Plea to Fund Fishing Survey

September 7, 2018 — Several months after they asked East Hampton Town for $30,000 to collect data aimed at protecting fishing grounds and compensating commercial fishermen when they are unable to work, that request has still not been granted, the director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association and the liaison chosen by East Hampton Town’s fisheries advisory committee to communicate with Deepwater Wind complained to the town board on Tuesday.

While the liaison, Julie Evans, and Bonnie Brady of the fishing association addressed the board, Deepwater Wind, the Rhode Island company planning to construct the 15-turbine South Fork Wind Farm approximately 30 miles off Montauk, is in the midst of a projected four-month survey at the site and along the transmission cable’s route to shore.

Commercial fishermen are mostly opposed to the wind farm, fearing damage or destruction of fishing grounds and potential alteration of migration patterns caused by the electromagnetic frequency emitted by its transmission cable.

A “mariners briefing” dated Tuesday and posted on Deepwater Wind’s website states that “all mariners transiting or fishing in the survey area are requested to give a wide berth to survey vessels as they will be limited in their ability to maneuver and towing gear out to 300 meters behind the vessel.”

Ms. Brady told the board that the purpose of a fisheries representative is to develop a mitigation-monitoring plan with a Deepwater Wind representative. “Unfortunately,” she said, “when it comes to Deepwater, their communication as far as the survey is ‘Get out of the way,’ and outreach is ‘Get out of the way now.’ ” Commercial fishermen who work in the survey area are now restricted, she said. “For how long? Who pays that? If you’ve got a day’s pay and have made that same day’s pay over the course of the last 10 or 20 years, and suddenly you can’t fish because the survey boat is there,” a mitigation plan is not only needed but should have been in place prior to commencement of the survey.

Read the full story at The Hampton Star

NEW YORK: East Hampton Trustees To Discuss Hiring Counsel for Deepwater Wind

August 9, 2018 — The Town Trustees in East Hampton will continue to debate the potential landing of a wind farm cable in Wainscott next week, as Deepwater Wind, the offshore wind company proposing the South Fork Wind Farm roughly 30 miles off the coast of Montauk, announced last week it will begin a seafloor survey of its leased sea bottom lands off Montauk and off the coast of Rhode Island to assist with the design and construction of proposed wind farms in both locations.

The Trustees are expected to hold an executive session during a meeting next Monday to discuss hiring special counsel to represent the body in negotiations over a community benefits package being floated by Deepwater Wind in connection to a request by the firm to land the South Fork Wind Farm power cable off Beach Lane in Wainscott. In order to do that, Deepwater Wind needs to secure easements from both the East Hampton Town Board and East Hampton Town Trustees.

In July, the East Hampton Town Board voted, 3-2, to hire its own counsel to draft an agreement to grant Deepwater Wind easement to run its cable from the beach under local streets to an existing LIPA substation off Cove Hollow Road. Members who voted in favor of the resolution also memorialized their support for the project in its resolution. Councilmembers Jeffrey Bragman and David Lys voted against the measure.

According to Trustee Clerk Francis Bock, the trustees, who manage wetlands, waterways and beaches in the town, are “pretty split” on whether to allow Deepwater Wind access to Beach Lane. A committee, made up of trustees Rick Drew, John Aldred, Susan McGraw Keber and James Grimes, has been formed to make a recommendation to the body on the hiring of outside counsel to represent the board in the state and federal review of the 15-turbine project. Mr. Bock said that counsel, if trustees do come to accord, would also be used to draft any agreement between trustees and Deepwater Wind specific to the benefits package.

Read the full story at the Sag Harbor Express