Saving Seafood

Two Sides to Wind Farm Debate: Ocean Perils vs. Much-Needed Renewable Energy

September 23, 2023 — The Pulitzer Center supported this story through its Connected Coastlines project.

A Rhode Island citizen activist made a powerful pitch about the dangers of offshore wind projects to a mostly supportive audience in Westport, Mass., on Tuesday, and a small group of pro-offshore wind observers pushed back afterward, accusing the speaker of bias and distortion.

The speaker at the Sept. 19 event, Lisa Knight, is one of the founders and leaders of Green Oceans, a Little Compton-based citizens group that is using media, small-group meetings, and promises of forthcoming legal actions to block wind projects in development off the coast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

She said, “People believe what they want to believe,” a comment that was heartily seconded by a wind-farm supporter.

Knight’s comments were delivered to a live audience and were also livestreamed on YouTube, one of a series of gatherings Green Oceans had hosted since the start of this year. She touched on many topics, including the fossil fuel industry origins of some wind developers; potential harms of wind farms to the ocean environment and animals; dangers to fishermen; costs of electricity created by wind power; and the permitting decisions of federal and state agencies that, she said, are giving wind developers a free pass.

About 60 people attended the talk, and a few dozen more watched online.

During the Q&A period, a man in the audience said, “Listening to this, I don’t know who the bad guys are.” Knight replied, “They are the same people,” pursuing her earlier theme that wind farm developers are former oil industry people.

At present, the South Fork and Vineyard Wind projects are permitted and under construction from bases in Long Island, N.Y., and New Bedford, Mass. Revolution Wind, to be constructed from ports in Rhode Island, has received most of its permits and hopes to begin construction next year. SouthCoast, Sunrise, Revolution 2, and other wind projects are grinding through the permitting process. Regardless of where the wind-generated electricity makes landfall, the turbines will be built in a giant patch of the ocean, or wind lease area, southeast of the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.

Stephen Porder, a professor at Brown University, the associate provost for sustainability, and part of a group of pro-wind industry activists, watched the session online and commented afterward. He said Knight’s talk was riddled with examples of cherry-picking data “to make it appear that something is happening when it is not.” Porder also said Knight often would “mistake correlation with causation,” meaning that she assigned causes to events that simply happened at the same time.

“I’m getting older and the planet is getting warmer, but global warming is not causing me to get old,” Porder said, by way of illustrating many of Knight’s arguments.

Read the full article at ecoRI News

What do Orsted’s financial problems mean for Rhode Island’s stake in offshore wind?

September 11, 2023 — Orsted A/S, the offshore wind developer anchoring Rhode Island’s place in the industry, is facing rough seas.

The Danish wind giant said in an Aug. 29 announcement that it may write off $2.3 billion in its upcoming, third-quarter earnings. The warning, on the heels of the company’s  $87.8 million second-quarter loss, comes as supply chain slowdowns and interest rate hikes hamper a trio of East Coast projects, including the Revolution Wind project that will power Rhode Island. At best, costs are going up and schedules are behind, with the Ocean Wind project planned for New Jersey, now delayed from 2025 to 2026, executives said.

At worst, the company may abandon the project altogether.

Read the full article at Rhode Island Current

RHODE ISLAND: CRMC Fisherman’s Advisory Board Resigns in Protest

September 10, 2023 — Rhode Island fishermen are sounding the alarm about offshore wind farms. Last week, the nine-member Fisherman’s Advisory Board to the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) resigned in protest of the council’s offshore wind approval process.

Members of the now-defunct board claim the CRMC has abandoned the state’s Ocean Special Area Management Plan and sidelined the fishing industry in its race to meet renewable energy procurement goals with rapid and massive industrial-scale offshore wind development.

Lanney Dellinger, a crab and lobster fisherman out of Newport and the chairman of the Fisherman’s Advisory Board, provided an overview of the motivation behind the mass resignation to Newport This Week on Sept. 2, detailing a multitude of complaints from recreational and commercial fishing interests.

The complaints fell into two main categories: the board’s conclusion that the fishing communities and industries they represent have been sidelined and ignored despite their specified role in the state’s Ocean Special Area Management Plan to the point that there is no longer any point in participating in the process; and fears of what some fishermen are describing as nearly apocalyptic outcomes for New England’s fisheries if the Vineyard Wind, South Fork Wind, Sunrise Wind and future offshore leases are constructed on Coxes Ledge (an offshore fishing ground about 20 miles south of Pt. Judith) and other special habitat areas off the Rhode Island coastline.

Read the full article at Newport This Week

RHODE ISLAND: RI fishermen’s board resigns en masse over Biden admin-backed offshore wind farm: ‘Wholesale ocean destruction’

September 6, 2023 — A plan backed by the Biden administration to OK a string of wind farms off Rhode Island has prompted every member of a fishing regulatory board in the state to resign.

The entire Rhode Island Fisherman’s Advisory Board quit en masse Friday to protest the 84-turbine Sunrise Wind project after the state’s Coastal Resources Management Council approved the third offshore wind farm in two years off the Ocean State’s waters.

The project falls under President Biden‘s executive order authorizing his Interior Department to double US offshore wind capacity by 2030. With the project’s approval, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is on track to finish reviews for 16 wind farms by 2025.

But foes including the fishing board say the Sunrise plan ignores environmental regulations and anglers’ concerns

Read the full article at the New York Post

RHODE ISLAND: R.I. fishing panel resigns en masse over offshore wind approvals

September 5, 2023 — Fed up with state coastal regulators’ perceived “deference” to offshore wind developers, all nine members of an advisory panel of Rhode Island fishing industry representatives have quit.

In a letter sent Thursday, Aug. 31, to Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) Executive Director Jeff Willis, the entire Rhode Island Fishermen’s Advisory Board (FAB) declared its members were resigning effective immediately. The decision comes amid mounting tension between offshore wind developers and fishermen over the slew of offshore wind projects planned in and around Rhode Island waters.

“We will not allow our names to be connected in any way to Council approvals now amounting to wholesale ocean destruction,” the letter, which was obtained by Rhode Island Current, stated. “Rhode Island is supposed to be the Ocean State, not the Windmill State.”

Laura Dwyer, a spokesperson for the CRMC, said in an emailed response Friday that the agency was “disappointed” by the news.

“The FAB has provided valuable information and insight to the CRMC for its federal consistency reviews of offshore wind energy projects,” Dwyer said. “While unfortunate, these resignations do not affect the CRMC’s review scope, obligations and timelines as contained in the federal [regulations]. The CRMC remains hopeful that the Rhode Island fishing community will continue to participate in the public process for reviewing offshore wind energy projects, as well as any other projects affecting the fishery resources of the State.”

Read the full article at the Rhode Island Current

RHODE ISLAND: Fishermen’s Protests Muted as R.I. Coastal Board Approves Sunrise Wind Project

August 28, 2023 — After four and a half hours of expert presentations and audience pushback, the Coastal Resources Management Council unanimously approved the Sunrise Wind project that developers hope to build in 2025 on the Outer Continental Shelf.

The 84 turbines of Sunrise Wind would be built about 16 miles from Block Island in federal waters and would pipe electricity to Long Island, N.Y. But because of the wind facility’s location, Rhode Island has some limited approval powers under federal law.

A surprising thing about the Aug. 22 hearing were the scanty and muted objections voiced by Rhode Island fishermen, especially compared to the hours of boisterous arguments they aimed against Revolution Wind, another proposed offshore wind project, before the same board earlier this summer. (That project passed the CRMC and, this week, won a major federal approval.)

Fishermen at the recent Sunrise Wind hearing raised some of the same objections lobbed against Revolution Wind, including: loss of fishing income; dangers to fishermen working in and around the wind facility; problems with radar; the need for more onboard manpower for safety; and claims that CRMC is getting out ahead of yet-unpublished federal studies. They also claimed CRMC was flouting its own oversight regulations.

Read the full article at ecoRI News

RHODE ISLAND: RI coastal regulators affirm NY wind farm project

August 26, 2023 — Another mammoth offshore wind farm planned off Rhode Island’s coastline received the stamp of approval from coastal regulators on Tuesday.

The Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council’s (CRMC) 6-0 vote affirms that the Sunrise Wind project meets state coastal policies, while imposing a half-dozen conditions aimed at minimizing disruption to native species, the ocean environment, and the fishermen whose livelihoods depend upon it.

The 924-megawatt project is being co-developed by offshore wind power duo Orsted A/S and Eversource Energy, the same companies behind Revolution and South Fork Wind farms, among others. Though Sunrise Wind will power New York, the area where the turbines would be built sits 17 miles southeast of Block Island.

Which is how the CRMC gets a say, since its Ocean Special Area Management Plan offers regulations for any development within 30 miles offshore of the state coastline. While federal regulators still have the final authority over all offshore wind projects, the CRMC can also recommend mitigation measures to help minimize losses to the fishing industry from the construction and operation of the projects.

Read the full article at Rhode Island Current

US approves major Rhode Island offshore wind farm

August 23, 2023 — The U.S. Interior Department on Tuesday approved the construction of a 704 megawatt (MW) wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island, the fourth offshore wind project the agency has greenlighted as the Biden administration targets bringing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power online by 2030.

The Revolution Wind project off Point Judith, Rhode Island, could power nearly 250,000 homes and create 1,200 local jobs during the construction phase, the Interior Department said.

Owned by wind energy developers Orsted (ORSTED.CO) and Eversource (ES.N), the project includes up to 79 possible locations for the installation of 65 wind turbines and two offshore substations.

Read the full story at Reuters

Biden administration approves Revolution Wind project off Rhode Island

August 23, 2023 — Revolution Wind, a 704-megawatt turbine array planned for 15 miles off Rhode Island, gained final approval from the Department of Interior Tuesday. The joint venture by developers Ørsted and Eversource is the fourth offshore wind project to be greenlighted by the Biden administration, which now expects to have 16 project plans reviewed by 2025.

Under intense scrutiny for the project’s anticipated environmental and economic effects, the final review by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and other federal agencies focused on BOEM’s “Alternative G” as the “preferred alternative,” which could rearrange wind turbine locations on the lease tract “to reduce impacts to visual resources and benthic habitat.”

The alternative includes up to 79 possible positions for the installation of 65 turbines and two offshore substations to fulfill the project’s designed total nameplate rating of 704 MW within a 1-nautical mile grid spacing.

“This flexibility in design could allow for further refinement for visual resources impact reduction on Martha’s Vineyard and Rhode Island, or for habitat impact reduction in the NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) Priority 1 area,” according to BOEM’s environmental assessment report issued in July.

That analysis foresaw “long term moderate to major adverse impacts depending on the fishery and fishing operation. If BOEM’s recommendations related to project siting, design, navigation, access, safety measures, and financial compensation are implemented across all offshore wind energy projects, adverse impacts on commercial fisheries due to the presence of structures could be reduced.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Why are we seeing more black sea bass in Rhode Island and Massachusetts?

August 12, 2023 — Charlie Borden, a commercial fisherman from the Rhode Island town of Little Compton, got his start targeting lobster when he was just a kid. His dad taught him to fish.

“We used to fish together out of a skiff,” Borden said.

Now 44, Borden still targets lobster, but has since added black sea bass to his repertoire. He was one of the first to target black sea bass in the region. And, as their populations have grown, so has the size of his boat and his crew. He has graduated to his own 47-foot fishing vessel “Drake.”

One of his workers, Providence resident Rob Sherman, was beginning to mix up giant vats of clams —bait for black sea bass — at about 5:30 am one morning in late July.

“These are big surf clams. I’d say a little over 400 pounds,” he said.

The sun is hazy red with Canadian wildfire smoke and it’s just finished blooming over the eastern horizon. The still half-frozen clams smell sweet — for now.

“When it’s sitting in the sun gasses build up and it can be pretty damn nasty,” Sherman said.

Read the full article at wbur