Saving Seafood

Feds begin environmental review of Vineyard Wind

April 3, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — The federal government is gathering public comments for an environmental report on the Vineyard Wind offshore wind proposal.

Five public meetings are scheduled this month in New Bedford, Vineyard Haven, Nantucket, Hyannis, and at the University of Rhode Island.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management plans to prepare an environmental impact statement on Vineyard Wind’s construction and operations plan. Vineyard Wind, a partnership between Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Avangrid Renewables, has proposed an 800-megawatt project off the coast of Massachusetts.

The project could include up to 106 wind turbines, beginning about 14 miles southeast of Martha’s Vineyard.

A 30-day comment period runs through Monday, April 30.

Federal Agency To Study Effects Of Electric Pulses From Proposed Wind Farm On Fish

March 28, 2018 — Federal officials say they are looking at new studies of fish species that migrate off the coast of Long Island and their potential reactions to electric pulses from the transmission cables of the proposed South Fork Wind Farm, in response to concerns raised by fishermen and the East Hampton Town Trustees.

Concerns about how fish might react to the electric magnetic field, or EMF, given off by the wind farm’s foot-thick power cable when it comes ashore have become the main objection from the East Hampton Town Trustees and the South Fork’s commercial baymen.

Fishermen rely on the annual migrations of fish through the relatively shallow waters within a couple of miles of the shore on their way to summer haunts in the bays. They worry that even if the EMF pulses given off by the sort of cable that would connect to the wind farm were minor—as studies suggest—the subtle impulses could be enough to divert fish in their migrations and away from the near-shore areas.

In the earliest discussions of the issue over the last several months, representatives of Deepwater Wind have presented the results of studies conducted at the existing wind farm off Block Island and by scientists around the giant offshore wind farms in Europe, as well as laboratory tests that show the effects of EMF on migrating fish to be inconsequential.

But fishermen and their supporters have said those studies are of little reassurance to them, since they involve different scales, different types of sea floor or different species of fish than those that are of the utmost importance to local baymen.

“What they tested in Europe is not that relevant. What they tested at Block Island, with a cable one-quarter the size of this, is not that relevant,” said Gary Cobb, an East Hampton man who has been reviewing the work done thus far on EMF and other details of offshore wind development on behalf of fishermen. “And you need several years of data for any of it to be useful.”

Earlier this winter, the Town Trustees issued a call for more studies—along with an aggressive demand for financial support from Deepwater for fishermen who are impacted by the project—to examine the effects of EMF on fishes that migrate to Long Island in summer.

Read the full story at 27 East

 

Deepwater considers Massachusetts’ South Coast for major offshore wind development

March 28, 2018 — Deepwater Wind will assemble the wind-turbine foundations for its Revolution Wind in Massachusetts, and it has identified three South Coast cities – New Bedford, Fall River, and Somerset – as possible locations for this major fabrication activity.

The offshore wind developer is committed to building a local workforce and supply chain for its 400-MW Revolution Wind project, now under review by state and utility officials. Deepwater Wind says it plans to create 2,300 regional jobs and nearly $300 million in regional economic impact.

“No company is more committed to building a local offshore wind workforce than us,” said Deepwater Wind CEO Jeffrey Grybowski. “We launched America’s offshore wind industry right here in our backyard. We know how to build offshore wind in the U.S. in the right way, and our smart approach will be the most affordable solution for the Commonwealth. This is about building a real industry that lasts.”

The construction activity will involve welding, assembly, painting, commissioning, and related work for the 1,500-ton steel foundations supporting the turbine towers. This foundation-related work will create more than 300 direct jobs for local construction workers during Revolution Wind’s construction period. An additional 600 indirect and induced jobs will support this effort.

In addition, Deepwater Wind is now actively seeking proposals from Massachusetts boat builders for the construction of purpose-built crew vessels for Revolution Wind. Several dozen workers are expected to build the first of these vessels at a local boat-building facility, and another dozen workers will operate this specialty vessel over the life of Revolution Wind. (Deepwater Wind commissioned America’s only offshore wind crew vessel – Atlantic Wind Transfer’s Atlantic Pioneer – to serve the Block Island Wind Farm.)

The company will issue a formal Request for Information to local suppliers in the coming weeks. Deepwater Wind’s additional wind farms serving Massachusetts will require the construction of additional vessels.

Read the full story at Windpower Engineering & Development

 

Opponents say Block Island wind farms are causing problems across prime fishing grounds

March 19, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — The five enormous turbines that have been generating electricity off Block Island over the past year are considered a model for the future of offshore wind.

But the nation’s first ocean-based wind farm also has exposed what fishermen say are serious threats to them caused by scattering massive metal shafts and snaking underwater cables across prime fishing grounds.

With state officials poised to announce the winners of bids to develop much larger wind farms south of Martha’s Vineyard, fishermen across the region have been pressing officials for answers to their concerns about where the turbines will be located, how far apart they’ll be built, and the placement of the cables to the mainland.

“It’s true that the area where the turbines are have created habitat that attracts fish, which is good; but in the area where the cable lines extend to the mainland, it’s completely devoid of fish,” said Michael Pierdinock, chairman of the Massachusetts Recreational Alliance, which represents about 50,000 recreational fishermen. “Theseused to be fruitful fishing grounds.”

The opposition of the fishing industry, a powerful interest group in New England, could prove a hindrance for developers of the proposed wind farms, which will be chosen next month.

Those projects, which could ultimately span hundreds of thousands of acres some 14 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, are expected to generate 1,600 megawatts of power within a decade, or enough electricity for about 800,000 homes.

At a meeting last month in New Bedford of fishermen, developers, and state and federal officials, Pierdinock and commercial fishermen urged regulators to study the potential impact of the proposed wind farms on marine mammals, spawning grounds of herring and squid, and other species that inhabit the area.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

 

Ocean City’s effort to keep windmills far offshore fails as Maryland delegates reject proposal

March 13, 2018 — Maryland House of Delegates committee on Friday rejected a proposal that called for prohibiting wind farms from being built within 30 miles of Ocean City’s coast, a blow to the resort town’s effort to preserve beach vistas.

But town officials aren’t done fighting.

Ocean City officials have said that the sight of windmills on the horizon could dampen tourism spending and send visitors to the Jersey Shore or Virginia Beach. Two offshore wind developers are planning to build turbines off Maryland’s coast, after state regulators last year approved ratepayer subsidies for the projects that could cost typical utility customers $1 a month.

Mayor Rick Meehan said he had expected the proposed legislation to fail as lawmakers have fought for years over whether to allow wind farms off Maryland’s coast until the General Assembly in 2013 approved a process for constructing them that still has broad support. Meehan and other town officials are now turning their attention to efforts at the federal level, and potentially a second state-level review, to press regulators to keep wind turbines as far from beaches as possible.

“We support wind energy. We support clean energy,” Meehan said. “We just don’t want to see it at the detriment to Ocean City, our property owners and our economy.”

Read the full story at the Baltimore Sun

 

Wind energy eyes restart in N.J. with Gov. Phil Murphy in office

March 8, 2018 — ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — After building New Jersey’s only wind-energy complex here in 2005, Paul J. Gallagher teamed up with a group of commercial fishermen on an even more ambitious project: building the nation’s first offshore wind farm within sight of the city’s famous Boardwalk.

Fishermen’s Energy LLC spent millions of dollars to obtain permits to build a demonstration project in state waters three miles off Atlantic City. But Gov. Chris Christie, concerned about the high costs of offshore wind, declined to create the rules needed to get the industry off the ground. Fishermen’s closed its office last year and let go its staff after a $47 million federal grant expired.

“Last year was hard,” said Gallagher, 67, Fishermen’s chief operating officer. “We just slowed to a crawl and cut a lot of expenses.”

The political winds have shifted in New Jersey, and Gov. Murphy’s inauguration in January has dramatically revived prospects for the state’s offshore wind industry, which advocates hope could supply up to a third of the state’s power by 2030.

The new governor signed an executive order directing the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to restart the process to create the rules governing the offshore wind market, which was authorized under the state’s landmark 2010 Offshore Wind Economic Development Act but stalled under Christie.

Gallagher has returned to the public circuit, selling Fishermen’s as the only fully permitted shovel-ready offshore project in New Jersey, though it lost the title as America’s first offshore commercial project to a Rhode Island wind farm in 2016.

“We’re maybe the only offshore project in the United States that can be built in the next 24 months,” Gallagher said.

Read the full story at the Philadelphia Inquirer

 

New Jersey: Gov. Murphy Fills Sails of Fishermen’s Energy Wind Farm

March 1, 2018 — A new governor with a commitment to renewable energy is good for the proponents of off-shore wind energy, but has Gov. Phil Murphy’s tenure come too late for Fishermen’s Energy, which has all the permits to install six Siemens 4-megawatt turbines at a site 4.5 kilometers off the Atlantic City coastline?

Fishermen’s Energy, a consortium of commercial and recreational fishermen, has been trying since 2005 to build a demonstration project of five wind turbines off Atlantic City. Over the years, it has jumped through all the federal and state regulation hoops and received all their permits. However, it became embroiled in a dispute with the N.J. Board of Public Utilities over whether the project was eligible to secure a “power offtake agreement” that would set up a system of Offshore Renewable Energy Certificates that could be sold to power companies to offset their carbon footprint, much as solar power SRECs do today.

The BPU denied the consortium’s OREC application twice. Although the Legislature got involved and passed two bills in 2016 that would have sidestepped the BPU’s negative stance, then-Gov. Chris Christie pocket-vetoed them.

Since then, Fishermen’s Energy’s hopes have been left hanging in the wind, but the project is still alive, according to Barnegat Mayor Kirk Larson, whose Viking Village Seafood company invested in Fishermen’s Energy along with partners Atlantic Cape Fisheries, Cold Spring Fish and Supply Co. out of Cape May, Dock Street Seafood out of Wildwood and Eastern Shore Seafood out of Mappsville, Va.

Larson directed all future calls about Fishermen’s to the company spokesman and COO Paul Gallagher.

On Tuesday, Gallagher said Murphy’s proposals mean things are looking up for Fishermen’s.

Read the full story at the Sand Paper

 

Commercial fishermen question wind farm video

February 16, 2018 — BOSTON — Offshore wind proponents are touting new undersea footage that suggests a vibrant marine habitat is growing around the nation’s first offshore wind farm — a five-turbine operation off Rhode Island’s waters.

The American Wind Energy Association, an industry trade group, says the roughly two-minute clip it posted on YouTube this week shows the potential for the nation’s fishing industry as larger projects are envisioned up and down the East Coast.

“The turbine foundations are now acting as an artificial reef,” said Nancy Sopko, the wind energy association’s director of offshore wind and federal legislative affairs. “This is a success story that can be replicated all along our coastlines.”

But the video does little to temper the concerns of commercial fishermen, who are worried about navigating dense forests of turbines to get to their historic fishing grounds, says Jim Kendall, a former scallop fisherman in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

“This is nice and fun to see, but it doesn’t tip the conversation,” Seth Rolbein, of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance in Chatham, Massachusetts, said of the video.

Offshore wind developers from New England to the Carolinas are racing to build the nation’s first large-scale wind farm. Many of the projects call for hundreds of turbines to be built miles away from shore, sometimes within or along the path to lucrative fishing spots.

The wind energy association video shows beds of mussels taking shape and small fish swimming around the turbine bases. The brief underwater footage is juxtaposed with longer testimonials from local recreational fishermen and charter boat owners who say the Deepwater Wind project has been a boon for them since opened it more than a year ago.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

Massachusetts: Vineyard Wind wins state nod for undersea transmission cable

February 14, 2018 — BOSTON — One of three offshore wind developers hoping to score major Massachusetts utility contracts has made progress in its state environmental review.

Vineyard Wind LLC gained an Environmental Notification Form certificate for a transmission cable from a spot in the Atlantic Ocean to a substation on Cape Cod, the company announced Monday. The ENF certificate lists the issues that must be addressed in an upcoming Draft Environmental Impact Report.

Vineyard Wind plans an 800-megawatt wind farm 34 miles from Cape Cod. The planned transmission cables would travel 40 miles underwater and six miles underground to a switching station in Barnstable, where they would connect to New England’s bulk power grid.

In December, three entities — Baystate Wind, Deepwater Wind and Vineyard Wind — submitted proposals under the Massachusetts Clean Energy RFP. The solicitation seeks up to 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind power. The winner, to be announced in April, will gain valuable long-term power contracts with Eversource, National Grid, and Unitil.

Vineyard Wind says it is further along than its competitors, could begin construction in late 2019, and is “the only proposed offshore wind project in Massachusetts that has begun the process of obtaining state and federal permits.”

Read the full story at MassLive

 

Massachusetts: SMAST meeting brings fishing, offshore wind in same room

February 13, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Offshore wind developers spent the majority of a 3-hour meeting Monday attempting to win over the local commercial fishing industry.

For much of the meeting, the fishermen in attendance rolled their eyes, scoffed at various PowerPoint slides and even went as far as to say offshore wind is unwanted.

“Nobody wanted this,” one fisherman out of Point Judith said. “Nobody wanted the problems. We were assured there would be none. And here we are.”

Twenty members of the Fisheries Working Group on Offshore Wind Energy sat around a table at SMAST East hoping to solve various issues between the two ocean-based industries.

The meeting, which featured representatives from Deepwater Wind, Vineyard Wind, and Bay State Wind and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, was called to discuss a plan for an independent offshore wind and fisheries science advisory panel.

“It’s not too late,” said David Pierce of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. “As much as we’re working on, now, can be offered up to BOEM and to the different companies specific to the search of projects and specific search of scientific endeavors. We need the research. And we need research to help us address the questions that are being asked by the industry as well as ourselves.”

The science advisory panel would act independently to identify fishery-related scientific and technical gaps related to the future development of offshore wind projects. The panel could also identify offshore wind’s effects on the fishery within Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

The panel’s members have yet to be comprised. Debate regarding who should be on the panel began Monday. Everyone agreed experts from all backgrounds should have a seat at the table.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times