Saving Seafood

NEW BEDFORD STANDARD-TIMES: BOEM should do ocean study before awarding NY wind leases

September 24, 2018 — Sometimes big issues seem to appear as if out of nowhere.

Residents of SouthCoast may have been feeling that way this week upon learning that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is about to decide on the future of some of the New Bedford scallop fleet’s prime fishing grounds just next month, in October.

Mayor Jon Mitchell and others gave their testimony to BOEM Tuesday about the plans of New York state to award wind turbine leases in a 2,300-square-mile section of ocean known as the New York Bight. The area just happens to be the spot where 40 to 50 percent of the scalloping grounds fished by New Bedford’s fleet are, according to scalloper Eric Hansen.

The federal agency has indicated to developers that 80,000 of the 1.5 million acres contained in the region would be a reasonable turbine size but local officials are worried.

Mitchell called for a scientific study and analysis of where the turbines should go, and recommended against a hasty awarding of leases.

“These decisions are permanent,” he said, explaining that the North Atlantic is far larger and more complex than the areas of Northwest Europe where previous wind turbine studies have been done. There needs to be a hard assessment of the cumulative effects of the wind farms and the locations of the scallops, squid and other species.

In just one area where a lease is being considered, over the last five years New Bedford has taken an annual average of 56 million scallops. That’s a good chunk of the 354 million scallops the city fleet has taken on average over the last five years.

“This is a big deal,” Mitchell told the BOEM officials.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times

NEW JERSEY: Offshore wind energy: Fishermen ask for relief

September 21, 2018 — Offshore windmills may be the future of energy here, but they’re presently a source of agitation to commercial fishermen.

A vocal group of them, who aren’t necessarily opposed to windmills but just the placement of them on or near fishing grounds, which if you ask them is anywhere the water is salt, gave the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management their two cents at a public meeting Thursday.

BOEM oversees offshore wind for the U.S. Department of Interior and is in the planning stages of selecting ocean floor off the New Jersey coast for windmill placement.

The agency was at the Long Branch Public Library to present information collected in a recent public comment period and call for interest among offshore energy companies.

“All of these areas are prime scallop grounds. We’re not going to take any of this lying down,” said Arthur Osche, a member of the Point Pleasant Fishermen’s Dock Co-operative.

Osche was referring to fishing grounds in Hudson North and Hudson South, two designated wind farm lease sites that start about 17 miles east of the coastline here.

The two sites are grouped into the New York Bight Call Area, which also contains two lease sites off the Long Island. The four sites total 2,047 square nautical miles, which is equivalent 2,710 square miles on land.

BOEM’s officials announced they have nine energy companies waiting to potentially make a bid on the lease areas.

Scallops are the state’s most valuable seafood commodity. In 2016, the commercial scallop harvest brought in $123 million, according to National Marine Fisheries Service data.

Fellow co-operative dock member Jim Lovgren said if their access to the grounds is restricted by the windmills then they should be paid for the economic loss.

“Mark off the area and then compensate us,” said Lovgren.

U.S. commercial fishermen can be compensated for property and economic loss due to energy development on the outer continental shelf through the Fishermen’s Contingency Fund.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

‘You’re impacting the whole resource’

September 19, 2018 — Fishermen and city officials raised the alarm Tuesday about potential wind turbines in prime fishing and scalloping grounds south of Long Island.

About 55 people attended a meeting with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to discuss the agency’s evaluation of possible offshore wind locations within a 2,300-square-mile portion of the New York Bight, between Long Island and New Jersey.

Scalloper Eric Hansen said 40 to 50 percent of the scalloping grounds fished by New Bedford scallopers is within the area the federal government is considering leasing to wind developers, and if fishing there becomes dangerous, people will fish harder in the remaining places.

“You’re impacting the whole resource,” he said.

Bureau staff said they want to narrow down the areas to be leased for wind turbines, not use the entire space.

“We have no intention of leasing that whole area,” BOEM spokesman Stephen Boutwell said in an interview before the meeting.

But fishermen were skeptical.

“That’s a hope and not a promise right now, from our perspective,” David Frulla, a scallop industry attorney, said in an interview. “We think this is way overboard and needs to be reconsidered. And we’re actively opposing it.”

New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell addressed the meeting, calling the potential effect on fishing “very alarming.”

“There’s a right way and there’s a wrong way to allow for the development of offshore wind,” he said.

The federal agency has indicated to developers that 80,000 acres would be a reasonable project size — compared to the nearly 1.5 million acres contained within the four areas under consideration: Fairways North, Fairways South, Hudson North and Hudson South.

The mayor cited government data showing a quarter-billion dollars’ worth of scallops were harvested in the four areas over a five-year period ending in 2016. He said a small fraction of the total acreage would satisfy New York’s renewable energy goals, and that those goals could be satisfied by unused areas off Massachusetts that have already been through this process.

Amy Stillings, an economist with BOEM, said Mitchell framed the conversation well, and research does show a lot of fishing happens in the New York Bight.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Public Meetings on New York Bight Offshore Wind

September 14, 2018 — The following was released by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management:

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will be hosting three public meetings and a webinar to discuss feedback that we have received from a recently published Call for Information and Nominations (Call) for potential offshore wind energy leasing and development in the New York Bight.

The meetings will be held at the following locations:

Monday, Sept. 17, 2018
Riverhead, NY
Shade Tree Community Center
60 Shade Tree Lane
Aquebogue, NY
5:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2018
New Bedford, MA
Waypoint Event Center at Fairfield Inn & Suites
Sea Loft Room
185 MacArthur Drive
New Bedford, MA 02740
5:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Thursday, Sept. 20, 2018
Long Branch, NJ
Long Branch Library
328 Broadway
Long Branch, NJ 07740
5:00 -7:45 p.m.

Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2018
Webinar hosted by BOEM
https://orep.adobeconnect.com/nybightareaid/
1:00 – 4:00 p.m.

At each meeting, BOEM will present its most recent analysis that incorporates comments received from the Call. In addition, there will be an opportunity to ask questions and provide feedback to help inform BOEM’s decision-making process.

Read more from BOEM

Committee votes to let states receive more money from offshore drilling

September 14, 2018 — A House committee voted Thursday to increase the money coastal states receive from offshore oil and natural gas drilling off their coasts.

The bill, from Rep. Garrett Graves (R-La.), would give Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama half of the fee and royalty payments that companies give the federal government to drill for oil and gas in a set of new wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

That would be an increase from the current 37.5 percent, which last year amounted to 0.4 percent of the government’s total income from offshore drilling going to Louisiana last year, or $11 million, Graves said.

At a meeting of the House Natural Resources Committee, Graves framed the issue as one of shoring up states’ coasts. All of the money Louisiana gets from offshore drilling goes to coastal resilience, and Graves said his bill would mandate a quarter of the money go for that purpose for all four states.

“We’ve got to stop the stupidity of spending billions of dollars after disasters instead of millions before,” Graves said.

The panel passed the bill by voice vote after an intense debate over whether Gulf states should get special treatment for the drilling that occurs off their shores.

In one exchange, Rep. Raul Grijalva (Ariz.), the panel’s top Democrat, wanted the money to go to all coastal states for resilience, not just the Gulf of Mexico ones.

Read the full story at The Hill

New York’s offshore wind plan faces commercial fishing opposition

September 13, 2018 — The plan to turn ocean wind into energy calls for anchoring 15 wind turbines, each one a little taller than the Washington Monument, into the sea floor more than 30 miles off the coast of Montauk, Long Island.

They’ll be far enough out in the Atlantic that they won’t be seen from Long Island’s beaches, so far in fact, that it will require miles and miles of cable to deliver their 90 megawatts of energy – enough to power 50,000 homes – from ocean to land.

And that’s right smack in the middle of where Chris Scola makes his living.

Several days a week, Scola motors his rusting trawler – the Rock-n-Roll III — into the waters off Montauk’s coast, drops a dredging net onto the ocean floor and scoops up hundreds of pounds of scallops.

Once those cables go in, Scola fears his nets will get entangled, making dredging so difficult he’ll need to find a place to fish further offshore with a larger boat, sending himself deeper into debt.

“This isn’t just about fishermen,” said Bonnie Brady, the executive director of the Montauk-based Long Island Commercial Fishing Association. “This is about the environment. You’re industrializing the ocean floor.”

Brady said developers have failed to properly account for the impact that two processes essential to the Montauk wind farm project will have on fishing habitats. One is the pile driving required to anchor 590-foot tall turbines in the ocean floor and the other is jet plowing, which liquidizes sediment so cable can be dug four to six feet into the ocean floor.

The project’s developer, Deepwater Wind, says the processes might have an initial impact on fishing habitats but over time things will return to normal.

Read the full story at the Poughkeepsie Journal

Fishermen’s Energy, EDF Renewables to Start Ocean Wind Power Off New Jersey

September 12, 2018 — On Sept. 5, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities deemed the application by EDF Renewables and Fishermen’s Energy for the Nautilus Offshore Wind project is complete.

The BPU has 90 days from Aug. 1 to review the project and make a decision on whether to approve the small-scale project to be located approximately 2.8 miles off the coastline of Atlantic City.

According to a press release from EDF and Fishermen’s Energy, once approved construction would start immediately and could be completed in 2020.

The project is expected to be comprised of three wind turbines with a combined capacity of up to 25 megawatts (MW).

“It’s a crucial first step toward implementing the Offshore Wind Economic Development Act and building a workforce capable of meeting Gov. Phil Murphy’s statewide goal of 3,500 MW of offshore wind generation by 2030,” said EDF spokesperson Cathy Rought.

Nautilus Offshore Wind is expected to employ about 600 workers for a year during construction, as well as additional jobs during operation and maintenance. New Jersey residents across the state could expect to begin receiving power generated by Nautilus Offshore Wind as early as 2021. The company estimates that for the average New Jersey electric consumer, the additional cost of power will amount to about $1.76 per year. At the same time it would offset 40,000 tons of carbon dioxide. It will also serve as a laboratory for new avian monitoring (bird strikes) and marine mammal impacts.

“Nautilus will make it possible for Atlantic City to become the birthplace of an emerging industry, creating new jobs and sustainable economic growth,” said New Jersey Assemblyman Vince Mazzeo (Atlantic County). “When approved, the project will be the start of an energy transformation that will allow for a brighter and cleaner future here in Atlantic City, in Atlantic County and across the state.”

According to EDF and Fishermen’s Energy, an independent analysis showed that Nautilus is expected to increase New Jersey’s total economic output by $150 million with construction by 2020. Maintaining the offshore wind project could add $16 million annually for the state, with a projected economic and environmental net benefit of $235 million.

Read the full story at The Sand Paper

Developers see value in California offshore wind development

September 11, 2018 — Now that offshore wind energy has taken a strong position in New England’s future power planning, due in part to unexpectedly competitive prices, developers are looking toward new markets.

State mandates and contractual commitments promise to make offshore wind a key part of the East Coast power mix by the mid-2020s. But offshore wind is not limited to the east. A Sept. 17 meeting of a federal-state Energy Task Force could clear federal permitting obstacles, bring thousands of California coastal wind MWs into the market, and pioneer floating turbine technology.

Regulators are saying little ahead of the meeting but the Trump administration sees wind energy as “affordable and reliable,” Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Chief of Staff Alex Fitzsimmons told Utility Dive. And because of its high capacity factors, offshore wind “has the potential to contribute to reliability,” he added. “It is a critical resource for the future.”

First, however, developers will need the rights to build. That remains in doubt until at least Sept. 17. If they get those rights, a three-step plan may allow California to bring prices down enough to begin harvesting wind, just when it will be needed the most.

Read the full story at Utility Drive

US East Coast could build nearly 9 GW of offshore wind capacity over next decade

September 10, 2018 — The US East Coast is leading the nation’s charge toward developing an offshore wind industry, and while the country only has 30 MW of offshore wind capacity installed currently, if goals are met and announced projects are built, the East Coast could have nearly 9 GW of offshore wind capacity by the 2030s.

The US has a long way to go in closing the gap with Europe in terms of offshore wind capacity, but with several East Coast states committing to achieve aggressive offshore wind development goals, the country could make considerable progress over the next decade.

Europe had nearly 16 GW of total installed offshore wind capacity at the end of 2017, according to trade group Wind Europe, compared with just one operating facility in the US — Deepwater Wind’s 30-MW Block Island Wind Farm in Rhode Island.

New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts are leading the way when it comes to setting offshore wind development goals. New York has a target to receive 2.4 GW of offshore wind power by 2030 and plans to issue requests for proposals for 800 MW in fourth-quarter 2018.

Not to be outdone, New Jersey has a goal of 3.5 GW of offshore wind generation by 2030. The state’s Board of Public Utilities Wednesday accepted an application from EDF Renewables and Fishermen’s Energy for the small-scale 25-MW Nautilus Offshore Wind project that would be located off the Atlantic City coast and could be generating power by 2021. Building a smaller project first has been touted by the companies as a way to kick start New Jersey’s offshore wind industry.

Read the full story at S&P Global