Marzulla Law is pleased to represent a national coalition of commercial fisherman who are challenging the placement of a massive windmill project off the shore of New England. This challenge in federal district court has been brought under the Administrative Procedures Act, specifically challenging the Government’s actions to allow construction of the offshore wind turbines as arbitrary and capricious.
This matter raises a number of important issues, including:
- The impact on commercial fisheries and loss of economic income,
- The impact on marine species and habitats, and
- The question of whether there might be less environmentally destructive energy alternatives that should be considered.
The scope and intensity of this wind farm project is evident in government records, economic studies, and even the recent appearance of dead whales on Atlantic beaches, some of which are endangered species.
Pictured: A juvenile humpback whale found beached on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, on Christmas Day, 2022.
Together, the thousands of turbines of this project will stand as tall as Boston’s Hancock Building and will require foundations that span 26,000 square feet of the ocean floor, not to mention additional space for infrastructure like electrical substations. All told, 3,398 acres of the seafloor will be disturbed or destroyed.
The government’s own records indicate it had not considered the cumulative effects of leasing, constructing, and operating 16 more wind turbine projects just like this one, that together will occupy over a million acres of ocean from Maine to North Carolina.
Impact on Commercial Fishing
The placement of thousands of wind turbines off the shores of Massachusetts likely will cause a fishing territory 25 times the direct footprint of the turbines to be abandoned. Although the turbines themselves will cover just over three thousand acres, heavy congestion across 76,614 acres will create hazardous condition for fishing vessels due to the lack of properly spaced and dedicated transit lanes for boats to pass.
The government’s own records indicate it had not considered the cumulative effects of leasing, constructing, and operating 16 more wind turbine projects just like this one, that together will occupy over a million acres of ocean from Maine to North Carolina. Over the 30-year lifetime of the project, commercial fisheries—the lifeblood of many coastal communities and a staple of New England identity—will lose an estimated $14 million in revenue, as well as untold opportunity costs.
Impact on Marine Wildlife and Habitats
Beyond directly harming commercial fishermen, the project will compromise basic oceanic life, including the destruction of marine life habitats and the destabilization of the delicate marine ecosystem.
It is staggering to quantify all the species, ecosystems, and ocean-derived economies that would be negatively impacted by this massive development, such as:
- loggerhead sea turtles
- the North Atlantic Right Whale
- Atlantic sturgeon
- whiting
- horseshoe crabs
- squid populations
But these animals—and their delicate habitats—appear to be the tip of the iceberg, as evidenced by what’s happening in New Jersey, where more whales have died in three months than normally do in a year.
Together, the thousands of turbines of this project will stand as tall as Boston’s Hancock Building and will require foundations that span 26,000 square feet of the ocean floor, not to mention additional space for infrastructure like electrical substations.
Since December 2022, nine whales have washed up on the Jersey shore, surpassing the average annual rate of seven. Among the dead are two endangered species: the North Atlantic Right Whale and the Humpback Whale. Save Long Beach Island, a group challenging wind turbine installation off the New Jersey coast, believes that the preparation for wind turbine installation alone has been killing whales at unprecedented rates. Save LBI contends that high-intensity noise released by survey instruments “to characterize the seabed for future wind turbine placement” are injuring whales’ hearing as well as disrupting their ability to forage, find mates, and perform other functions essential to survival. Massachusetts can expect the same types of disruptions to begin along its Atlantic coast, even before any turbines are installed.
Clearly, the government does not know or has not admitted to all the prospective harms that this novel, enormous development project will cause. Our work in challenging this project under the APA, and our collaboration with an amicus group focused on the protection of whales, hopefully will lead to more answers and better outcomes. We will keep you posted about future developments.
