FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date Published: October 28, 2024
Washington, D.C. Tuesday, October 28, 2024 – Today, BOEM will be auctioning off over 850,000 acres of the environmentally and economically important Gulf of Maine, in the largest U.S. offshore wind energy auction to date. Without a doubt, fishing communities reliant on the region for their livelihoods will be greatly impacted by the forthcoming floating offshore turbine structures and transmission cable corridors.
The fishing industry and many others have been raising important environmental issues, concerns, and questions to BOEM for years, and yet there is still no holistic approach to impact reduction and mitigation, or reasonable consideration of seafood production. Little has been done to resolve the great scientific, environmental, and economic uncertainties of offshore wind, despite the fishing industry reasonably requesting such action for over a decade.
RODA has repeatedly called for a programmatic environmental analysis for the Gulf of Maine before any offshore wind decisions and investments are made. The conservation community has echoed our programmatic analysis request and questions about the cumulative ecological impacts of large-scale ocean habitat conversation. Unfortunately, BOEM has decided to proceed with the auction without conducting this critical step.
We encourage future lease holders to engage with the fishing industry, listen to impacted communities and consider regional level impacts in all steps of their development process. These corporations must be willing to take a flexible approach to mitigation based on the financial commitments they are willing to invest in a paper lease. The lease siting did not avoid impacts, so a willingness to spend millions of dollars on leases must entail an equal commitment to minimize and mitigate the environmental and socioeconomic impacts to small business owners.
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About Responsible Offshore Development Alliance
Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) is a broad membership-based coalition of fishing industry associations and fishing companies — across the United States — committed to improving the compatibility of new offshore development with their businesses. The Alliance works to directly collaborate with relevant regulatory agencies, scientists, and others to coordinate science and policy approaches to managing development of the Outer Continental Shelf in a way that minimizes conflicts with existing traditional and historical fishing.
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Contact: lane@rodafisheries.org