Saving Seafood

NEW JERSEY: Fight Intensifies Against Offshore Wind Farm in South Jersey

October 22, 2023 — Cape May County’s legal and political battle against a proposed offshore wind energy farm is gaining public support across New Jersey, a state lawmaker told Ocean City business leaders during a forum Thursday that touched on a series of hot button issues.

“We’re fighting against the industrialization of our ocean,” Sen. Michael Testa said in remarks to the Ocean City Regional Chamber of Commerce about the Ocean Wind 1 project planned 15 miles off the South Jersey coast.

Testa and his fellow Republican members of the First Legislative District team, Assemblyman Antwan McClellan and Assemblyman Erik Simonsen, appeared before the Chamber at the Ocean City Yacht Club to discuss the wind farm project, ongoing efforts to curb rowdy teenage behavior at the shore and New Jersey’s controversial health and sex standards in public schools.

Cape May County, Ocean City and other groups have filed multiple lawsuits against federal and state agencies in hopes of blocking the project proposed by the Danish energy giant Orsted. The latest suit was filed this week against the federal regulatory agencies that approved the environmental and construction permits for the wind farm.

The litigation alleges that the federal government violated laws that protect the environment and endangered species, while also failing to properly consider the possible negative impacts on Cape May County’s tourism industry.

Ocean City Mayor Jay Gillian and Sea Isle City Mayor Leonard Desiderio, who also serves as director of the Cape May County Board of Commissioners, are among the most prominent opponents of the wind farm.

Orsted’s project would include 98 wind turbines stretching along the coast between Atlantic City and Stone Harbor. Scheduled to be completed by December 2025, the project would be the first in a series of wind energy farms built off the New Jersey coast.

“Cape May County is ground zero for this issue nationally,” Testa declared of the Orsted project. “All eyes are on us.”

Read the full article at OCNJDaily

NJ county, groups sue federal government over offshore wind

October 19, 2023 — Cape May County and several local groups have filed a lawsuit against the federal government, hoping to bury plans to erect a wind farm off of New Jersey’s southern coast.

At the same time, an ocean advocacy group is calling on leaders in New Jersey to quit green-lighting any offshore wind development for the future.

Plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday argue that federal regulators rushed approval of permits for Orsted’s Ocean Wind 1 project and are putting the environment and local marine life in harm’s way.

Read the full article at New Jersey 101.5

New Jersey faces lawsuit over offshore wind project

October 19, 2023 — A coalition of groups are suing to block New Jersey’s first offshore wind project, arguing that it will hurt marine life, the state’s fishing and tourism industries and the local economy.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, argues that the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management fast-tracked approval of the Ocean Wind 1 project without conducting a required federal review of the potential impact to the environment, historic properties along the coastline and the state’s commercial fishing industry.

In the 71-page complaint, lawyers for the plaintiffs claim that in the push to develop offshore wind, the Biden administration has “shortcut the statutory and regulatory requirements that were enacted to protect our nation’s environmental and natural resources, its industries, and its people.”

The coalition argues in the legal filing that developing offshore wind farms in New Jersey raises “significant concerns” about the impact on the fishing industry, whales and other marine life and tourism in coastal communities. They say it will negatively impact property values, tax revenues and the local economy.

Read the full article at the Center Square

Jersey Shore is at risk if feds keep rushing 1st offshore wind farm, lawsuit claims

October 18, 2023 — In its first federal lawsuit against agencies that have so far pushed ahead New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm, Cape May County in a coalition with others alleged Tuesday in a lawsuit that the development has been rushed at the peril of ocean life, the fishing industry and the local economy.

No offshore wind turbines currently spin along the Jersey Shore but that could change in the next two years.

The latest series of project approvals for Ocean Wind 1 — from Ørsted, a Danish wind developer — include Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s “Record of Decision” in July and the OK at the end of September to start onshore construction.

Plans for Ocean Wind 1, one of at least two Ørsted projects, call for as many as 98 offshore wind turbines reaching more than 850 feet about 15 miles from the coasts of Cape May and Atlantic Counties.

In its own September authorization, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, laid out rules to ensure Ørsted protects whales and dolphins while installing wind turbines.

Ørsted said last week, behind a $100 million guarantee, that Ocean Wind 1 is on schedule to reach commercial operation in stages in 2024 and with a 2025 deadline in mind.

Read the full article at NJ.com

 

Orsted offshore wind farm hit with lawsuit by New Jersey county

October 18, 2023 — A southern New Jersey county on Tuesday challenged federal approvals for a major wind farm in U.S. waters off the state’s coast, saying the project’s turbines and construction will harm endangered animals like whales, kill birds and impact local tourism.

The County of Cape May and several local tourism and fishing business groups sued the U.S. Department of the Interior in New Jersey federal court, seeking to stop construction on Danish developer Orsted’s multi-billion dollar Ocean Wind project.

The county said the government violated federal environmental review and endangered species protection laws when it finalized a host of environmental and construction permits for the project earlier this year.

Reviews for those permits failed to adequately account for potential environmental harms from the project and should be vacated, according to the lawsuit. The county said underwater noise and vessel strikes during construction will harm endangered North Atlantic right whales and sea turtles, and that rotating wind turbine blades would kill migrating birds.

Read the full article at Reuters

Rutgers Scientists Help Shore Fish Harvesters Implement Adaptive Strategies to Climate Change

October 18, 2023 — New Jersey’s coastal fishers vulnerable to some of global warming’s harshest effects

For hundreds of years, business owners engaged in New Jersey’s commercial fisheries industry have weathered adversity, from coastal storms to species shifts. Recognizing this resilience, and acknowledging the challenges posed by global climate change, Rutgers scientists have come to their assistance.

One of the results of recent efforts is a guide that researchers have developed for marine businesses, A Resilience Checklist for New Jersey’s Commercial Fishing Industry.

Lisa Auermuller, director of the Megalopolitan Coastal Transformation Hub, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and based in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences in the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences (SEBS), worked with a number of Rutgers scientists on the effort, including Douglas Zemeckis, a marine extension agent, and Eleanor Bochenek, the retired director of the Fisheries Cooperative Center, and Richard Lathrop, director of the Rutgers Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis.

Read the full article at Rutgers

Cape May County, fishermen challenge approval of Ørsted wind project

October 18, 2023 — Led by Cape May County, N.J., elected officials, a coalition of fishermen, tourism businesses and environmental activists filed a lawsuit Tuesday in the Federal District Court for the District of New Jersey challenging federal government approvals for Ørsted’s Ocean Wind 1 project.

The court action is aimed “against multiple federal agencies and the leadership of those agencies, alleging that federal regulators have abandoned their obligations to protect the environment and Atlantic coastal marine life in favor of an inappropriate collusion with Big Wind interests,” according to a statement issued by county officials.

Plaintiffs on the complaint include the Cape May County Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Wildwood Hotel Motel Association, the environmental group Clean Ocean Action, the Garden State Seafood Association, LaMonica Fine Foods, Lund’s Fisheries, and Surfside Seafood Products.

Cape May officials and seaside communities like Ocean City, N.J., have opposed the planned 1,100-megawatt turbine array as a threat to their tourism economy, while Clean Ocean Action activists see New Jersey’s wind power ambitions as a threat to the marine environment.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Cape chamber, Board of Commissioners sue federal government over offshore wind approval

October 17, 2023 — A group of plaintiffs that includes the Cape May County Board of Commissioners and the county Chamber of Commerce is suing the federal government over claims it failed to factor in impacts to the county’s $7.4 billion tourism industry when it granted approvals for offshore wind development.

The suit names the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Department of the Interior and the National Marine Fisheries Service, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It was filed Tuesday in Camden federal court, records show.

BOEM declined to comment on pending litigation. NOAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit follows Ørsted, the Danish energy company building wind turbines off the coast, putting down a $100 million guarantee that the first windmills of its 161,000-acre Ocean Wind I project will begin generating power by December 2025.

Read the full article at The Press of Atlantic City

NEW JERSEY: Orsted puts up $100M guarantee that it will build New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm by 2025

October 15, 2023 — The Danish wind energy company Orsted has put up a $100 million guarantee that it will build New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm.

But it will lose that money if the project is not operating by Dec. 2025 — a year after the deadline approved by state utility regulators.

New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities approved an agreement Wednesday with Orsted under which the company would forfeit the money if the project is not up and running within 12 months of a series of deadlines previously ordered by the board.

Those deadlines call for the project to reach commercial operation in stages by May 1, Sept. 1 and Dec. 1, 2024. But it would forfeit the guarantee money if the project is not operational by December 2025.

Read the full article at the Associated Press 

Lund’s Fisheries, PAFCO cease business with Chinese processors named in Outlaw Ocean report

October 15, 2023 — Cape May, New Jersey, U.S.A.-based Lund’s Fisheries has ceased its business relationship with a Chinese supplier in the wake of a report by the Outlaw Ocean Project on the use of Uyghur laborers at seafood companies in China.

Lund’s Fisheries, in a statement released on 13 October, said that upon hearing questions and criticisms about Rongcheng Haibo – one of several Chinese companies named by the Outlaw Ocean Project in its report – it initiated an internal investigation and “resolved not to renew existing contracts with Rongcheng Haibo until that work was complete.” Now, although the company said it did not find any evidence of illegal activity or forced labor at Rongcheng Haibo, the company will continue to maintain the cessation of new business “pending further investigation.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource