Saving Seafood

Lawsuit challenges Vineyard Wind approval

February 1, 2022 — A lawsuit challenging the federal approval of the nation’s first industrial-scale offshore wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts raises questions about the haste with which the project was approved and the fallout it will have on endangered right whales and the fishing industry.

The lawsuit, filed on Monday in federal court in Washington, DC, by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, which represents fishing interests, also highlights the dramatic scale of the wind farm and questions whether taxpayers were shortchanged by the leases the federal government negotiated with the developer, Vineyard Wind.

The lawsuit is one of a handful challenging the project on the grounds that several environmental statutes were violated in the Biden administration’s rush to kickstart the offshore wind industry.

Vineyard Wind filed its construction and operations plan initially in 2017. The Trump administration decided to extend its review indefinitely in 2019 to take into account the many offshore wind farms planned up and down the coast.

Read the full story at CommonWealth Magazine

 

Responsible Offshore Development Alliance Files Complaint in Vineyard Wind Lawsuit

January 31, 2022 — The following was released by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance:

Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), a broad membership-based coalition of fishing industry associations and fishing companies, filed suit today challenging the Interior Department’s approval of a massive offshore wind project to be constructed on a 65,000-acre tract in federal waters south of Martha’s Vineyard. The suit, filed in U.S. district court for the District of Columbia, names the U.S. Interior Department and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, among others. The suit alleges that government agencies violated numerous environmental protection statutes in authorizing the Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind energy project.

Annie Hawkins, Executive Director of RODA, stated: “In its haste to implement a massive new program to generate electrical energy by constructing thousands of turbine towers offshore the eastern seaboard on the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf and laying hundreds of miles of high-tension electrical cables undersea, the United States has shortcut the statutory and regulatory requirements that were enacted to protect our nation’s environmental and natural resources, its industries, and its people.” She added, “The fishing industry supports strong action on climate change, but not at the expense of the ocean, its inhabitants, and sustainable domestic seafood.”

On October 19, 2021, RODA issued the government agencies a 60-day Notice of its Intent to Sue if they did not comply with the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, and other federal environmental statutes. “The Alliance received no reply, and the environmental violations were not remedied,” Hawkins stated. “The decisions on this project didn’t balance ocean resource conservation and management, and must not set a precedent for the enormous “pipeline of projects” the government plans to facilitate in the near term. So we had no alternative to filing suit.”

 

New Bedford says wind boundary changes just a start

January 18, 2022 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management made minor boundary adjustments in its New York Bight wind lease areas to reduce conflicts with the scallop fleet. That’s just a small start toward reducing the impact of wind development on the nation’s seafood industry, New Bedford port officials say.

The 480,000-acre wind lease offering – the first of the Biden administration and biggest to date – has brought on a wave of proposals, from both the fishing and wind power industries, for how they could co-exist.

Six lease areas outlined by BOEM in a final offering notice Jan. 12 include a westward shift of 2.5 miles to the Hudson South wind energy area, and a reduction of the so-called Central Bight area. The modest adjustment responds to requests last year from the scallop industry and the East Coast’s highest-earning fishing port – now also a base for offshore wind developers.

It could be a baby step toward better avoidance of conflicts between the Biden administration’s aggressive push to open more ocean spaces to wind energy development, and urgent warnings from the fishing industry and some ocean environmental advocates that regulators need to build more foresight and safeguards into the permitting process.

Those tweaks in the New York Bight auction plan came as a surprise, said New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell.

“We didn’t know that had happened until we actually dug into it,” said Mitchell, who wrote to BOEM during 2021 in support of the Fisheries Survival Fund recommendation to move the southwest boundary of Hudson South by five miles, aimed at giving a buffer zone between turbine arrays and scallop grounds.

The Fisheries Survival Fund and Responsible Offshore Development Alliance – both well-established coalitions of fishing interests – presented highly detailed recommendations to BOEM for dealing with those issues. The American Clean Power Association, an influential group in the renewable energy sector, likewise came out with its own proposals.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

U.S. Seafood Organizations Recommend Steps to Reduce Impacts from Offshore Wind Energy

January 13, 2022 — The following was released by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance: 

On Friday, January 7, 2022, Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), along with many other commercial fishing associations and businesses across the country issued recommendations to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) for reducing impacts from offshore wind energy development to fishing, coastal communities, and sustainable domestic seafood production.

Guidelines alone cannot achieve strong oversight

Strong mitigation requirements must be standardized to protect marine resources and existing uses of the Outer Continental Shelf. The most important step for BOEM to take immediately is to implement effective processes to mitigate fisheries impacts during offshore wind planning and project design. These must be supported by regulations and strong federal oversight, rather than deferring to developers’ voluntary measures to accommodate fishing safety and resiliency.

Mitigation must follow a step-wise approach 

The “mitigation hierarchy” outlined by the National Environmental Policy Act requires an agency to evaluate whether a project has taken effective actions to, in sequential order, avoid, minimize, mitigate, and compensate for impacts. Fishing industry groups urged BOEM to prioritize immediate action on the first step, avoidance, including developing measurable criteria to site offshore wind infrastructure off of fishing grounds.

Read the full release here

The Answer Is Blowing In The Wind

January 12, 2022 — The US Department of the Interior is scheduled to hold its first offshore wind lease sale this week. The move is important as one of many necessary mechanisms to lower reliance on fossil fuels and mitigate warming levels. As a renewable energy source, turbines blowing in the wind have few effects on the environment. Pervasive in Europe, they reduce the amount of electricity generation from fossil fuels, which results in lower total air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions.

Not all constituents are in favor of the New York Bight project. The fishing industry is especially in opposition, revisiting their previous contention about the 5 Rhode Island offshore wind turbines in the Block Island Wind Farm. Fast forward to 2022. Within the bight, commercial fishermen fish for scallops, summer flounder, and surf clams, among other species. In a letter sent in April, 2021, New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell wrote the Central Bight and Hudson South were established on “significant” scallop fishing grounds. He proposed the removal of a five-mile strip along the eastern boundary of Hudson South to minimize fishery impacts.

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), which is a broad membership-based coalition of fishing industry associations and fishing companies committed to improving the compatibility of new offshore development with their businesses, has risen as a main oppositional voice to the New York Bight offshore wind project. The group has argued that fishers should receive compensation for losses caused by turbines in commercial fishing grounds.

For example, the group filed a Petition for Review in the First Circuit US Court of Appeals regarding the Secretary of the Interior’s 2021 decision approving the Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind energy project, a 62-turbine project under construction off Martha’s Vineyard.

Read the full story at CleanTechnica

Biden Clean Power Push Hits New York With Offshore Wind Sale

January 12, 2022 — The Biden administration is preparing to sell offshore wind rights near New Jersey and New York, a down-payment on its bid to decarbonize the U.S. power grid and generate renewable electricity from nearly all U.S. coasts.

Under the auction, which could be announced as soon as Wednesday, the U.S. government aims to sell leases to install wind turbines in shallow Atlantic waters between New Jersey and New York’s Long Island, with the potential to generate some 7 gigawatts of carbon-free electricity.

As a sign of the opposition, a conservation group on Monday sued the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, asking a federal court to reverse the agency’s March 2021 decision to recommend five areas for offshore wind projects in the New York Bight.

Save Long Beach Island told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that the bureau failed to study the effects the projects would have on the environment. The group also faulted the agency for failing to consult with the National Marine Fisheries Service to determine if any wind project would affect North Atlantic right whales or other protected species.

Separately Tuesday, groups representing fishing interests, including the Responsible Offshore Development Association, urged the bureau to take more steps to limit the impacts of offshore wind development, including by developing formal benchmarks to assess projects.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

 

The first offshore wind lease sale under Biden is coming soon. Will the fishing industry intervene?

January 11, 2022 — The Interior Department is expected to greenlight the first offshore wind lease sale under President Biden as soon as this week, a move that would lower the nation’s reliance on the fossil fuels that are dangerously warming the planet.

But the effort has sparked concern from the fishing industry, which contends that towering turbines in the waters off New England could harm fishermen’s catches and livelihoods. It’s the latest sign of tensions between Biden’s ambitious clean-energy agenda and industry interests concerned about its economic impact.

The details: Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is poised to issue a final sale notice for the New York Bight, a nearly 800,000-acre area of the Atlantic Ocean south of Long Island.

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance has emerged as the fishing industry’s main voice in disputes over offshore wind. The group has argued that fishermen should receive compensation for losses caused by turbines in commercial fishing grounds.

Annie Hawkins, executive director of the alliance, told The Climate 202 that the group remains concerned about offshore wind development in the New York Bight. She said the turbines could prevent fishing altogether if they are spaced less than a mile apart.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Work starting on 1st commercial-scale US offshore wind farm

November 19, 2021 — U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland joined with Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker on Thursday to mark the groundbreaking of the Vineyard Wind 1 project, the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in the United States.

The project is the first of many that will contribute to President Joe Biden’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030 and to Massachusetts’ goal of 5.6 gigawatts by 2030, Haaland said at the event in the town of Barnstable on Cape Cod.

The first steps of construction will include laying down two transmission cables that will connect Vineyard Wind 1 to the mainland.

The commercial fishing industry has pushed back against the wind farm.

In September, the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance — a coalition of commercial fishing groups — filed a legal challenge to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval of the Vineyard Wind 1 project with the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

The approval of the wind farm “adds unacceptable risk to this sustainable industry without any effort to minimize unreasonable interference with traditional and well-managed seafood production and navigation,” the group said at the time.

Read the full story at the AP

Coalition intends to sue feds over offshore Massachusetts wind project

October 29, 2021 — Massachusetts fishermen worried for their livelihoods and the ocean’s ecology are suing the federal government over an offshore wind project called Vineyard Wind.

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), a coalition of fishing industry associations and fishing companies, recently filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the federal government, according to a news release. This follows a petition for review filed in the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals last month, which is pending.

The notice gives the government 60 days to address statutory and regulatory violations RODA asserts the wind project will cause, including violating the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act, the press release said.

RODA Executive Director Annie Hawkins said the government has not done enough investigation into the effects of offshore wind projects.

Read the full story at The Center Square

 

RODA gives 60-day notice on possible suit regarding Vineyard Wind project

October 19, 2021 — A consortium of commercial fishing industry stakeholders announced on Tuesday, 19 October, it intends to file a lawsuit against federal officials over their approval of the Vineyard Wind 1 offshore energy development project if the U.S. government fails to address violations the stakeholders allege were made in its approval process.

The law firm representing the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) sent a 27-page letter Tuesday to six federal officials, as well as the CEO of Vineyard Wind, and attorneys general in three states, saying the group will file a lawsuit if federal officials do not make changes to the project that brings it into compliance with the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other federal laws.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource