Saving Seafood

Offshore wind energy watchdogs expanding to West Coast

January 17, 2020 — A fishing industry coalition dealing with offshore wind energy development has launched a West Coast venture, as a first step toward giving Pacific fishermen more voice in how those projects can be compatible with seafood production.

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance announced it created a new Pacific Advisory Committee, to address Pacific fishermen’s “significant concern over the lack of communication and collaboration necessary to inform coexistence among ocean users.”

The new effort aims to “improve science and policy approaches to development, while also increasing and improving communication to help strengthen ties between Pacific fishermen and fishing communities across the country,” the alliance said in a statement Thursday.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

RODA Expands West Coast Fisheries Engangement with Launch of Pacific Advisory Committee

January 16, 2020 — The following was released by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance:

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) is excited to announce the launch of a Pacific Advisory Committee, which brings RODA’s mission of improving the compatibility of new offshore development with commercial fishing to the West Coast.

As discussions of offshore wind development in the U.S. continue to progress, Pacific fishermen have expressed significant concern over the lack of communication and collaboration necessary to inform coexistence among ocean users.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has identified 3 Call Areas off of California as areas of interest for offshore wind development. The strongest wind speeds are located along the North Coast, near the BOEM Humboldt Call Area. The other two sites, Morro Bay and Diablo Canyon, for possible development are located on the Central Coast (For more information visit the California Offshore Wind Energy Gateway). BOEM has also initiated a process for siting offshore wind projects off of Oregon, although it has not yet identified Call Areas there.

The RODA-Pacific Advisory Committee is comprised of leaders from several West Coast fisheries throughout California and Oregon. Its purpose is to improve science and policy approaches to development, while also increasing and improving communication to help strengthen ties between Pacific fishermen and fishing communities across the country.

As of January 1st 2020, the RODA West Coast advisory committee consists of:

  • Mike Conroy, West Coast Fisheries Consultants
  • Hugh Link & Tim Novotny, Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission
  • Mike Okoniewski, Pacific Seafood Group
  • Noah Oppenheim, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations
  • Peter Flournoy, International Law Offices of San Diego
  • Steven Scheiblauer, Marine Alliances Consulting
  • Lori Steele, West Coast Seafood Processors Association (WCSPA)
  • Susan Chambers, WCSPA and Southern Oregon Ocean Resource Coalition

Additional Pacific fishing industry organizations and representatives are invited to contact RODA for inquiries about membership.

RODA is a membership-based alliance of fishing businesses and communities that provides a “strength in numbers” approach to advocacy on issues of mutual interest to seafood harvesters, processors, and affiliated entities. It works on behalf of fishermen with regulators, offshore developers, science experts, and others to coordinate science and policy approaches to proposed ocean development in a way that minimizes conflicts with existing traditional and historic fishing.

About RODA

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) is a broad, membership-based coalition of fishing industry associations and companies working to improve the compatibility of new offshore development with their businesses. It seeks to coordinate science and policy approaches, through public and private partnerships, to manage development of the Outer Continental Shelf in a way that minimizes conflicts with existing traditional and historical fishing.

Pending Federal Report Key to Offshore Wind’s Future

January 13, 2020 — The forthcoming report from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) on the cumulative environmental impacts of the Vineyard Wind project will determine the future of offshore wind development.

BOEM’s decision isn’t just the remaining hurdle for the 800-megawatt project, but also the gateway for 6 gigawatts of offshore wind facilities planned between the Gulf of Maine and Virginia. Another 19 gigawatts of Rhode Island offshore wind-energy goals are expected to bring about more projects and tens of billions of dollars in local manufacturing and port development.

Some wind-energy advocates have criticized BOEM’s 11th-hour call for the supplemental analysis as politically motivated and excessive.

Safe boat navigation and loss of fishing grounds are the main concerns among commercial fishermen, who have been the most vocal opponents of the 84-turbine Vineyard Wind project and other planned wind facilities off the coast of southern New England.

Last month, state Sen. Susan Sosnowski, D-New Shoreham, gave assurances that the Coast Guard will not be deterred from conducting search and rescue efforts around offshore wind facilities, as some fishermen have feared.

Read the full story at EcoRI

Offshore wind in New Hampshire: Now what?

January 10, 2020 — One year after Governor Sununu announced plans to investigate offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine, much has been accomplished.

The first official Intergovernmental Task Force meeting — established to gauge the technology’s potential — was held on Dec. 12. Convened by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM for short), the meeting was well attended and provided a great deal of information and clarification on what the Task Force’s next two years will entail.

Still, this meeting was just the beginning — an inflection point that has since sparked the beginning of many other initiatives throughout the region. All with the aim of establishing greater understanding of the gulf’s marine environment and how offshore wind might fit in.

Over the next three to five years, the states of New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts will be gathering information to determine the most appropriate siting locations for offshore wind development. While this data-collection effort includes many moving parts, one word in particular looms largest of all: assessment.

Read the full story at the New Hampshire Business Review

VIRGINIA: Dominion chooses turbine supplier for $7.8B offshore wind farm

January 9, 2020 — Richmond-based Dominion Energy has selected Spanish renewable energy engineering company Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy S.A. as the preferred turbine supplier for its proposed $7.8 billion offshore wind farm off the coast of Virginia Beach, Dominion announced Tuesday.

Dominion announced plans in September 2019 to build a 220-turbine wind farm 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach by 2026. The wind farm, which would be the largest in the nation, is being proposed as part of Dominion’s initiative to reduce its carbon emissions by 55% in the next decade and 80% by 2050. The project would produce enough zero-carbon electricity to power 650,000 Virginia homes.

Biscay, Spain-based Siemens Gamesa manufactured two 6-megawatt turbines for Dominion’s $300 million Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) pilot offshore wind energy project off Virginia Beach’s coast, which is the first step towards building the larger wind farm. Construction on the CVOW pilot project began in June 2019 and is expected to be complete by spring. The turbines will be brought online and producing power for up to 3,000 homes later this year, according to Dominion.

Read the full story at Virginia Business

Fishermen, wind farm developers at odds

January 8, 2020 — A group representing New England fishing interests on Tuesday called for special travel lanes through offshore wind farms proposed off the coast of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, putting the fishermen at odds with wind farm developers who want to retain as much space as possible for their turbines.

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance called for the creation of six travel lanes, each one four nautical miles in width, through the entire lease area off the coast of the two states. The offshore wind developers in November had proposed no special travel lanes, choosing instead to let fishermen navigate through turbines set one nautical mile apart traveling north and south and seven-tenths of a nautical mile going diagonally.

Federal regulators, who had hoped the two sides would find some common ground on their own, will now have to decide the best approach.

Annie Hawkins, executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, criticized federal regulators for leaving the issue of safe navigation through the wind farms to negotiations between fishermen and wind farm developers outside the regulatory process. She said it was disappointing that such an important safety issue is still being talked about so late in the regulatory process.

Read the full story at Commonwealth Magazine

Fishing advocates propose transit lanes for offshore wind

January 7, 2020 — A coalition of commercial fishing groups is calling for 4-mile-wide transit lanes through offshore wind turbine arrays off New England, as federal ocean planners and the Coast Guard consider maritime safety aspects of the projects.

In a Jan. 3 letter to those agencies, the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance proposed six vessel traffic lanes — each 4 nautical miles wide and up to 70 miles long — through wind turbine areas proposed by energy companies south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket off Massachusetts.

Those developers submitted their own proposal Nov. 1 to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Coast Guard, offering a consistent grid layout across their federal offshore leases that would space turbine towers 1 nautical mile apart.

Without endorsing that spacing — opposed by Rhode Island squid fishermen and others who say they cannot not work amid such arrays — the alliance letter is a counter-proposal that superimposes wider transit lanes on the developers’ plan.

“The proposal presented here utilizes the uniform 1×1 nm spaced turbines presented in the Nov. 1 proposal and includes transit lanes of adequate widths to preserve safe and efficient passage along the routes most often used by fishermen,” the letter states.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Fishermen call for 4-nautical-mile lanes between offshore wind turbines

January 7, 2020 — Northeastern commercial fishermen and seafood businesses are calling for transit lanes four nautical miles wide between rows of offshore wind turbines.

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a fishing lobby group whose members hail mainly from New England and New Jersey, wrote a letter to the U.S Coast Guard and other federal authorities to make its case for wider lanes, saying they would:

– Allow enough room for a vessel to make a significant alteration of course if needed;

– Provide space for vessels to pass one another;

– Compensate for reduced radar effectiveness; and

– Serve as passageways for marine life.

In November, wind developers proposed spacing turbines one nautical mile apart and laying them out in uniform rows.

With regard to the proposed spacing of one nautical mile, the fishing group wrote, “RODA reiterates, consistent with each of our previous comments on the record, that most fishing vessels will not be able to operate in this array and significant displacement will still occur due to (one-nautical-mile) spacing.”

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

MARYLAND: Turbine hearing set for Ocean City Convention Center

January 6, 2020 — Roughly three weeks ago, Maryland Public Service Commission granted a request from Ocean City, Md. officials to hold a hearing, set Saturday, Jan. 18, on the impact of a proposal to install taller turbines than originally planned as part of two proposed offshore wind farms including  Skipjack LLC wind farm, a project of the Danish company Ørsted, due east of the Delaware coast.

The commission has scheduled the hearing in rooms 215, 216 and 217 of the Ocean City Convention Center, 4001 Coastal Highway, Ocean City, Md.

In a Dec. 13 order, commission Executive Secretary Andrew Johnston said the issue of viewshed was a significant focus during the approval process for U.S. Wind and Skipjack LLC, the two companies awarded Maryland’s offshore wind renewable energy certificates in 2017. While the commission will accept comment on the size of the turbines, it denied a request to reopen the case or reconsider the granting of offshore wind renewable energy certificates.

Discovery at the hearing will be limited to this topic, said Johnson.

Read the full story at the Cape Gazette

Erich Stephens leaving Vineyard Wind

December 20, 2019 — Erich Stephens, the public face of Vineyard Wind before it won an offshore wind contract in 2018, is leaving the company.

Vineyard Wind announced Thursday that Stephens, chief development officer and a founding principal of the company, would be departing.

Stephens told The Standard-Times it seemed like the right time to make a transition while the company waits for federal permitting of Vineyard Wind 1, to be located off Martha’s Vineyard, and before things ramp up for its second project in Connecticut.

“It’s really just a personal decision about the positions I want to have in my career,” he said.

Vineyard Wind has grown out of the entrepreneurial phase of its history and become a more mature development company, he said. Stephens said it’s not uncommon for the success of a young company to mean that, “exactly because of its success, it turns into something different in terms of your day-to-day work and responsibility.”

The company has tapped Rachel Pachter, vice president of permitting affairs, to replace him as chief development officer.

Stephens said he is excited about Pachter’s promotion because it allows her to advance her career and maintains continuity for Vineyard Wind.

Stephens has held senior leadership positions in the company, formerly called OffshoreMW, since 2009. Following last year’s selection of Vineyard Wind to build Massachusetts’ first offshore wind farm, he was responsible for pre-construction development.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times