FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date Published: March 3, 2021
Washington, DC — Last week, Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) submitted comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the South Fork Wind Farm project in federal waters off New England and Long Island. In 65 pages, addressed to new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) director Amanda Lefton, RODA detailed that the DEIS was issued “at a time of significant confusion and change in the U.S. approach to offshore wind energy (OSW) planning,” pointed out numerous analytical, factual, and typographical errors, and urged Lefton to “improve the broken federal OSW process before consideration of additional projects or lease announcements.”
Our letter urged the Biden Administration to create a national strategy that prioritizes food security, environmental protection, and participatory governance, along with a comprehensive energy plan that provides transparency regarding energy production, costs, and regional grid and transmission considerations for offshore wind. If such a plan is not adopted before project approval, basic mitigation measures should be enacted at a minimum. These include:
- Establish safe transit areas through the 1400 square mile New England lease areas;
- Ensure better federal environmental review analysis and clear identification of scientific unknowns;
- Monitor fisheries impacts for the life of projects and utilize adaptive management;
- Resolve impacts to National Marine Fisheries Service stock assessment surveys;
- Prohibit turbines in sensitive habitat including spawning areas and high-value fishing grounds;
- Improve communications with fishermen in culturally appropriate formats;
- Perform “micrositing” of turbines and cables with fishermen who know the ecosystem;
- Establish science-based, inclusive, and predictable plans for compensatory mitigation of impacts to fishing communities;
- Standardize processes for gear loss claims;
- Address interference from turbines to marine radar;
- Require deicing technology and practices;
- Ensure that any economic benefits of offshore wind accrue to the U.S.—not at some undetermined point in the future, but now.
To be clear, none of these requests are new—nor hardly radical. They have simply been ignored again, and again, and again in a political push/pull between multinational energy companies and the U.S. government, leaving world-famous seafood, and the communities founded around its harvest, off the table.
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. A Federal Register notice posted this morning indicates that BOEM is resuming the review of the Construction and Operations Plan for the Vineyard Wind project as the developer “has indicated that its proposed COP is ‘a decision pending before BOEM,’” in a private communication dated January 22, 2021- a far cry from “public” engagement. This is irreconcilable with the plain language of BOEM’s announcement terminating the project’s review last December.
BOEM’s duty as a federal agency is to provide a transparent, structured, legal, and public process for making decisions about public lands and resources that affect all Americans—not to allow one tentacle to wag the octopus. Adding to the confusion, the Biden Administration’s revocation of the “one federal decision” process for infrastructure projects such as these means the public has no information as to how decisions will be made. RODA commented at length on the defective Vineyard Wind process in our comments regarding the South Fork DEIS, and now again urge BOEM to at least hold public hearings explaining to the public how a private company can resume a project terminated by the federal government without further inquiry.
Unlike offshore wind advocates who lack an intricate understanding of our marine ecosystems, the late stages of the environmental review projects do not leave many commercial fishing communities with optimism, excitement, or hope for their existence. The process has been one-sided, without leadership, and riddled with lost opportunities for co-planning and mitigation.
BOEM is legally required to prevent unreasonable interference to fishing operations from offshore wind development. Recent experience has shown us that muddling through matters as important as energy security, food production, and environmental effects of large-scale industrialization without a clear path or understanding of unintended consequences is a recipe for disaster. Will we choose to do better?
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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 (e.g., National Marine Fisheries Service, Bureau of Ocean Energy management, U.S. Coast Guard, fishery management councils, and state agencies), offshore developers, 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.