Saving Seafood

NEW JERSEY: Offshore wind project clears key federal hurdle

May 29, 2024 — New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm is one major step closer to reality with the release of a critical federal study.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management last week released its Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Atlantic Shores South Wind Project. The company behind the development, Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, is a joint venture between Shell and EDF Renewables.

Plans for Atlantic Shores South call for up to 200 wind turbines across a lease area that spans more than 100,000 acres and is less than nine miles from Long Beach Island at its closest point to shore. The transmission cables that will carry electricity generated by the turbines are planned to come onshore in Atlantic City and Sea Girt.

Read the full article at NJ Spotlight News

NEW JERSEY: Would offshore wind turbines save or ruin the Jersey Shore? Debaters rumble in Berkeley

May 29, 2024 — Police officers filled Central Regional High School on Tuesday night, where tensions ran high as critics and proponents of electricity generated by offshore wind faced off with impassioned speeches during a hearing held by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

The state agency held the event to collect public feedback on permit applications for proposed landfall sites for cables that, if approved, will transmit electricity from the Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind South project to the mainland power grid.

Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind — which is looking to erect about 200 wind turbines between Atlantic City and Barnegat Light — needs a series of permits from the state environmental protection agency before the company can build transmission lines and electrical substations at landfall sites along the Jersey Shore. The company has proposed its electric cables come onshore at Atlantic City, Sea Girt and Egg Harbor Township in Atlantic County.

Read the full article at Asbury Park Press

NEW JERSEY: Wind Farm Opponents Vow to “Stay in the Fight”

May 28, 2024 — Opponents of offshore wind energy farms warned during a rally Saturday in Ocean City that the legal battle is far from over in their efforts to prevent what they called the “industrialization of our ocean.”

Last year, the Danish energy company Orsted scrapped plans to build two wind farms off the South Jersey coast after concluding that the projects would not be worth the enormous development cost.

However, opponents stressed during the rally that Orsted still holds the leases giving it rights to build the wind farms and could either revive them or sell them to another company that would develop the projects.

“It’s not over. Stay in the fight,” said former Superior Court Judge Michael Donohue, who has headed Cape May County’s legal strategy to block the wind farms.

Read the full article at OCNJDaily

BOEM Releases Final Environmental Statement on First NJ Offshore Wind Farms

May 28, 2024 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is continuing its efforts to push forward with the review and approval of U.S. offshore wind projects. In the latest step, they are releasing the final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for two New Jersey projects which are critical to the state’s efforts to jump-start its renewable wind energy efforts.

Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, a joint venture partnership between Shell New Energies US and EDF-RE Offshore Development, submitted a combined Construction and Operations Plan for two wind energy facilities and associated export cables on the Outer Continental Shelf offshore New Jersey. If approved, the two projects could generate about 2,800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power almost one million homes.

“We are encouraged to see forward progress and getting another step closer to delivering New Jersey’s first offshore wind projects,” said Joris Veldhoven, chief executive officer of Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind.

Read the full article at The Associated Press

NEW JERSEY: Wind Farm Opponents to Host Rally in Ocean City

May 22, 2024 — Opponents of offshore wind farms are holding a rally Saturday to continue their fight against what they believe could harm the environment, the tourism industry, commercial fishing operations and marine life.

The second annual “Stop Offshore Wind” rally will begin at 9:30 a.m. in Mark Soifer Park, across from City Hall in Ocean City. The rally will proceed with a march across the Route 52 causeway bridge connecting Ocean City and Somers Point.

Danish wind farm developer Orsted announced on Oct. 31 that it was halting its Ocean Wind 1 and Ocean Wind 2 projects. Representatives of the company maintained that it wouldn’t be financially feasible to do the projects.

The Ocean Wind 1 project was proposed 15 miles off the coast between Atlantic City and Stone Harbor, passing by Ocean City, Sea Isle City and other beach towns in the process.

In a rally flyer advertising Saturday’s event, opponents cautioned that they must continue to speak up against wind farms with the words, “The fight is not over,” despite Orsted withdrawing from the local project.

Read the full article at OCNJDaily

Big Pharma visit to Bayshore may help protect horseshoe crabs

May 22, 2024 — Officials from five major pharmaceutical companies met at a Delaware Bayshore house to hear how they can help save the horseshoe crab and to watch the annual spectacle of spawning horseshoe crabs and migrating shorebirds along a remote part of the New Jersey coastline.

The gathering on Tuesday, at Reeds Beach, Cape May County, was the first time that pharmaceutical industry officials trekked to the rural bayshore to discuss the arguments for dropping a testing method that uses the blood of horseshoe crabs, and to walk the beaches where the crabs spawn and thousands of birds feast on their eggs for a couple of weeks each spring.

Advocates for the protection of both horseshoe crabs and red knots hope that the combination of chemistry and conservation will persuade the officials to recommend the companies switch from the crab-based LAL reagent most use now to a synthetic substance called rFC when testing for endotoxins in medical products.

An industry-wide switch away from the crab-based reagent would end a significant source of demand for horseshoe crabs. That would give the ancient creatures a better chance of fully recovering from a drastic over-harvest in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when they were taken from bay beaches in huge numbers by the commercial fishing industry, which uses them for bait. The over-harvesting caused the population of red knot, a federally threatened shorebird that depends on the crab eggs, to crash, raising fears the bird would go extinct unless its favorite food source was also protected.

Read the full article at NJ Spotlight News

NEW JERSEY: Public Hearings Set For Wind Farm Off Atlantic County Coast

May 14, 2024 — Residents will have several chances to voice their opinions on a proposed offshore wind farm through virtual and in-person hearings.

Atlantic Shores South is proposing up to 200 wind turbines about 8.7 miles off the coast of Atlantic City. Also proposed are up to 10 offshore substations, a permanent meteorological tower, cables and more. An export cable would make landfall in Atlantic City and connect to a proposed onshore substation located on Fire Road in Egg Harbor Township.

Read the full article at the Patch 

Trump vows ‘day one’ executive order targeting offshore wind

May 13, 2024 — Donald Trump vowed to issue an executive order targeting offshore wind development if he wins a second term as president, making his most explicit threat yet toward the growing industry.

The presumptive Republican nominee derided offshore wind projects as lethal for birds and whales during his oceanfront rally Saturday in Wildwood, New Jersey, and committed to take action.

“We are going to make sure that that ends on day one,” he said. “I’m going to write it out in an executive order.”

While Trump has made no secret of his animus to wind power, he had adopted a mostly hands-off posture during his first term in the White House. The remarks in New Jersey suggest he may take a more aggressive stance if given a second.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

Offshore Wind Opponents Sue NJDEP Over Planned Project

May 8, 2024 — A local grassroots organization opposed to the current offshore wind farm planned off the coast of Long Beach Island is among three groups to sue the N.J. Department of Environmental Protection over its approval of the Atlantic Shores project.

Save LBI is joined by Protect Our Coast New Jersey and Defend Brigantine Beach, said Bruce Afran, who is the attorney of record in the legal proceeding.

“DEP’s approval flies in the face of federal regulators’ environmental impact statement that says the Atlantic Shores project will damage marine habitat, compress and harden the seafloor, damage marine communities, compromise migration corridors for endangered species and cause commercial fishing stocks to decline,” he said.

Saying the current scope of the Atlantic Shores project would be fully visible from beaches;  crush and destroy the seabed; interfere with the mitigation of the endangered blue whale and right whale; result in the loss of native species and cause economic damage to the state’s prime fishing grounds and tourist regions, the groups filed suit in appellate court on April 26.

The blue whale is the largest animal on the planet, according to NOAA Fisheries. Blue whales, which are found in every ocean except the Arctic, are listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act and are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Read the full article at The Sand Paper

Three groups are suing New Jersey to block an offshore wind farm

May 6, 2024 — Three anti-wind power groups are suing New Jersey to overturn a key environmental approval for a wind energy farm planned off the coast of Long Beach Island.

Save Long Beach Island, Defend Brigantine Beach and Protect Our Coast NJ filed suit in appellate court on April 26 challenging a determination by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection that the Atlantic Shores wind farm project meets the requirements of a federal coastal protection law.

Atlantic Shores is one of three proposed wind farms off New Jersey’s coast that have preliminary approval.

Bruce Afran, an attorney for the groups, said the state’s “approval flies in the face of the federal regulator’s environmental impact statement that says the Atlantic Shores project will damage marine habitat, compress and harden the seafloor, damage marine communities, compromise migration corridors for endangered species, and cause commercial fishing stocks to decline.”

Read the full story from AP News