By Colin A. Young, State House News Service
March 8, 2021
Federal environmental officials have completed their review of the Vineyard Wind I offshore wind farm, moving the project that is expected to deliver clean renewable energy to Massachusetts by the end of 2023 closer to becoming a reality.
The U.S. Department of the Interior said Monday morning that its Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed the analysis it resumed about a month ago, published the project’s final environmental impact statement, and said it will officially publish notice of the impact statement in the Federal Register later this week.
The commercial fishing industry has been among the most vocal opponents of aspects of the Vineyard Wind project and the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) has repeatedly urged the new administration to ensure the voices of the industry are heard throughout the licensing and permitting process.
In comments submitted earlier this month in response to a BOEM review of an offshore wind project that is expected to deliver power to New York, RODA said the present is “a time of significant confusion and change in the U.S. approach to offshore wind energy (OSW) planning” and detailed mitigation measures it wants to see incorporated into all projects.
“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,” the group said in a press release last week. Some of RODA’s suggestions were analyzed as part of BOEM’s Vineyard Wind review.