By Bruce Mohl, CommonWealth Magazine
March 3, 2021
WHEN THE TRUMP administration dragged its feet on the environmental permitting of Vineyard Wind, wind energy proponents in Massachusetts and across the country cried foul, claiming politics was driving the process.
But now that the Biden administration is in office, the same claim is surfacing as the president quickly moves in the opposite direction.
The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, which advocates for the US fishing industry, on Wednesday released comments it sent to Amanda Lefton, the new head of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, questioning how her agency could simply revive a regulatory process that had been terminated by the same agency (which was then under Trump’s oversight) in December.
“It would appear that fishing communities are the only ones screaming into a void while public resources are sold to the highest bidder, as BOEM has reversed its decision to terminate a project after receiving a single letter from Vineyard Wind,” the alliance said in a statement.