Saving Seafood

Offshore wind advocates, fishermen push last arguments for BOEM study

July 27, 2020 — With the public comment period closing near midnight, advocacy groups for the offshore wind and commercial fishing industries marshaled their supporters for a last push to influence federal regulators on the future of the new power supply.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is closing the 45-day comment period on its supplemental environmental impact statement for the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project proposed off southern New England.

With the clock ticking to 11:59 p.m. Monday, a coalition of East Coast fishermen and seafood businesses called for a five-year moratorium on all offshore wind power development, until an array of issues raised by the fishermen’s coalition is addressed.

“All energy, including ‘clean energy,’ has environmental impacts that must be fully understood and weighed in the context of an overall power strategy. While protecting our air and climate is important, so is protecting marine ecosystems and biodiversity,”  declared a preamble to an online petition circulating in recent days.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

MASSACHUSETTS: Two Cape Lawmakers Call For Vineyard Wind Proposal Approval

July 23, 2020 — State legislators teamed up earlier this month to advocate for the Vineyard Wind project and the broader implementation of offshore wind technology.

In a letter, the lawmakers called upon the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to approve the Vineyard Wind 1 proposal and move forward in the permitting process.

Falmouth State Representative Dylan Fernandes and Cape and Islands State Senator Julian Cyr led the efforts.

“Massachusetts has no fossil fuels and survivors of our winters know that the sun is not our strongest resource,” said Fernandes.

“We do have wind, and a lot of it, and to transition to a clean energy future and energy independence we must move forward with deep-water offshore wind, the future of our planet is at stake and it’s beyond time to move this project forward.”

“Offshore wind projects present a cutting-edge opportunity for both economic growth in our region and long-term sustainability in our energy production,” said Cyr.

“Representative Fernandes and I would like to thank the large, bipartisan coalition of legislators who lent us their support in urging the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to approve the first utility-scale wind farm in our nation with the urgency that it deserves.”

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

US Interior Secretary Bernhardt meets fishing leaders to discuss offshore wind project solutions

July 22, 2020 — U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary David Bernhardt sat down with a number of fishing industry leaders on 21 July to discuss the industry’s concerns related to a number of offshore wind energy projects.

The projects are located off the coast of New England, and groups representing fishing industry interests in the area have repeatedly objected to the proposed layouts of the projects, particularly Vineyard Wind, one of the largest proposed projects. The groups have called for greater inclusion in the decision-making on the project, which they said has been lacking.

“Ultimately, I need to have a development program that’s done in a way that’s sustainable for everybody,” Bernhardt said in a press conference after the meeting. “You don’t start with a lot of conflict. That’s not the recipe for success, and the consequences of these are significant. They’re significant to families, they’re significant to people, they’re significant for safety issues. We need to do everything right. That’s our obligation.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Bernhardt eager for offshore wind ‘that works’

July 21, 2020 — Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt flew into Boston on Tuesday where he defended putting Vineyard Wind, the nation’s first large-scale wind farm, on hold for more than a year and promised a key permitting decision on the project in December that will work for both wind developers and fishing interests.

Bernhardt, whose boss, President Trump, has shown little interest in offshore wind, said he is eager to launch the offshore wind industry. “I am very eager to do it, but I am eager to do it in a way that works,” he said. “Let me give you an example. In the West we do wind. You know where we don’t put a windmill? In the middle of a highway. You can drive all the roads in the west and you’re not going to drive into a windmill.”

His comment appeared to be a reference to concerns of fishing groups that wind turbines would block access to fishing grounds and hamper navigation.

“We don’t whack people with an unnecessary burden if we can avoid it and do things sustainably,” he said. “I need a development program that is done in a way that’s sustainable for everybody.”

Read the full story at Commonwealth Magazine

Fishing industry leaders flag offshore wind concerns to Trump interior secretary

July 21, 2020 — Today, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt met with representatives of the commercial fishing industry to discuss their concerns with offshore wind at a roundtable organized by Saving Seafood’s National Coalition for Fishing Communities. The roundtable included representatives from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and North Carolina:

Members of New England’s commercial fishing industry who feel they’ve been cast aside in the rush toward offshore wind took their concerns straight to the top of the Trump administration Tuesday in a Seaport sit-down with Interior Secretary David Bernhardt.

“The fishing industry is not anti-wind. But the fishing industry’s not been part of this process from the beginning,” said Lund’s Fisheries Chairman Jeff Reichle. “Let’s do it the right way.”

Industry representatives voiced a raft of concerns with offshore wind, including the safety of commercial and recreational boaters navigating the waters, issues towing fishing nets through the farms and the potential for disrupting marine life.

Bernhardt said he’s not looking to “whack people with an unnecessary burden if we can avoid it” but noted he’s “very eager” to pursue offshore wind “in a way that works.”

Read the full story at the Boston Herald

Support for 1-mile offshore wind turbine spacing in BOEM’s first ‘virtual’ public hearing

June 29, 2020 — Supporters of the Vineyard Wind offshore wind energy project came out online June 26 to call on the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to approve the 800-megawatt plan in southern New England waters, with spacing turbine towers in a 1 nautical mile grid.

“Vineyard Wind 1 is the most significant step we can take” for reducing carbon emissions in Massachusetts, said Tom Soldini of Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., adding that the company will provide 40 to 50 permanent jobs to the island community.

Friday’s public hearing – staged using the Zoom virtual meeting app with public comment by telephone – was the first step in a 45-day public comment period on BOEM’s new supplemental environmental impact statement on the Vineyard Wind project, and its broader look at the cumulative impacts of 15 more offshore wind projects planned along the U.S. East Coast.

The agency plans to arrive at recommended alternatives for Vineyard Wind in November and finalize those with a formal record of decision by Dec. 18.

BOEM is looking at one scenario for four-mile-wide vessel transit lanes through wind energy leases off southern New England – referred to as alternative F in its supplemental environmental impact statement. That concept was proposed in January by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a coalition of commercial fishing groups.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

BOEM report points to strict conditions for Atlantic offshore wind projects

June 12, 2020 — A new environmental assessment of offshore wind power projects issued by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management could lead to stricter conditions for developers seeking to build new facilities off the Northeast coast.

BOEM’s new supplement to the draft environmental assessment for the Vineyard Wind facility, planned off the coast of Massachusetts, found the project posed potentially “major” adverse impacts to sea life and other industries, particularly commercial fishing.

The document is an update to the draft Environmental Impact Statement for Vineyard that BOEM issued in 2018. Last year, the agency announced it would extend the permitting process for the 800 MW facility so it could assess the impacts not just of that wind farm, but others planned by Northeastern states to meet clean energy targets.

The report released Tuesday assesses an array of construction scenarios for Vineyard and 22 gigawatts of other facilities planned in New England waters. It considers the creation of a transit lane for fishing and other sea traffic, as well as changes to the project’s turbine layout and the siting of a substation to connect the project to the onshore power grid.

Read the full story at Politico

Long-awaited federal report issued on Vineyard Wind

June 12, 2020 — The long road to construction of what may be the nation’s first utility-scale wind farm appears to be reaching the end as the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on Thursday released its report on the impacts of the proposed Vineyard Wind project.

The report marked the last major hurdle faced by the 800-megawatt project of 57 to 100 turbines rising nearly 500 feet at the hub from the ocean. The wind farm is located about 40 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. This report, along with a Coast Guard report released late last month, represent additional measures required after the Coast Guard, National Marine Fisheries Service and the Environmental Protection Agency requested additional reports on the cumulative impacts on navigation, marine industry and the environment for the 1 million acres of ocean off Massachusetts and Rhode Island set aside for wind turbines.

The bureau’s report, a supplement to its original Environmental Impact Statement, looked at both local impacts and cumulative effects of offshore wind along the Atlantic seaboard. Environmental impacts were rated negligible, and deemed minor to moderate for marine mammals, birds, turtles, fish and marine and coastal habitats. The bureau found wind power would have a negligible to minor impact on local employment and economics, but would be beneficial when considering the wider Atlantic coast area.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

BOEM issues new draft environmental statement on Vineyard Wind

June 11, 2020 — A long-anticipated Bureau of Ocean Energy Management study of the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind offshore energy project – broadened to examine potential impacts of similar projects from Maine to Georgia – has been released for a 45-day public comment period.

The draft supplemental environmental impact statement acknowledges Vineyard Wind and other planned wind turbine arrays will have major impacts on the commercial fishing industry. That aspect was flagged as a failing of an earlier impact statement, when National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Greater Atlantic regional fisheries office refused to sign off on BOEM’s study.

“Our goal is that all users can successfully coexist,” BOEM Acting Director Walter Cruickshank said Thursday during the International Partnering Forum, an online event held by the Business Network for Offshore Wind.

Cruickshank, whose agency is viewed skeptically by many in the fishing industry, stressed BOEM recognizes fishing as a crucial maritime industry and is reaching out to commercial and recreational sectors.

With the covid-19 pandemic limiting public gatherings, BOEM began planning early on for alternatives to public hearings on the environmental statement. The process now includes five live virtual meetings from June 26 to July 9 for public comments and questions.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Feds release Vineyard Wind environmental assessment

June 10, 2020 — Federal regulators on Tuesday released a detailed, 420-page environmental assessment of the proposed Vineyard Wind project that includes predictions about the future of wind energy along the East Coast and suggests the impact on commercial fishing of six possible wind farm configurations would be roughly the same.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management put Vineyard Wind on hold last year to take a look at the project through the broader lens of what’s going on in offshore wind overall along the East Coast.  The resulting assessment, called a supplementl to the company’s draft environmental impact statement, forecasts 22 gigawatts of offshore wind development along the East Coast over the next 10 years, the equivalent of about 2 percent of current electricity production. The analysis estimates as many as 2,000 wind turbines will be installed over the 10-year period.

Vineyard Wind would be located off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard and consist of between 57 and 100 turbines producing 800 megawatts of power. The project is jointly owned by Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.

Read the full story at Commonwealth Magazine