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Letter from top officials warns Biden admin of wind projects’ potential harm to fisheries

April 21, 2023 | | Print Article

Last year, the executive directors of three federally established fishery councils along the East Coast reportedly penned a letter to then-Bureau of Ocean Energy Management director Amanda Lefton warning that the Biden administration’s wind energy projects could hurt their fisheries.

“As we have stated in several past comment letters to BOEM, we are very concerned about the cumulative impacts of multiple wind energy projects on the fisheries we manage. The multiple wind energy projects planned along the east coast will have cumulative and compounding effects on our fisheries,” they wrote, according to Fox News.

Moreover,  the Pacific Fishery Management Council, which represents fisheries along the West Coast, penned its own letter to Lefton also warning about the risks these projects pose to fisheries.

“The council said every proposed offshore wind lease area with multiple projects could negatively impact the ecology of the marine ecosystem, the fisheries the council manages and local fishing-dependent communities,” Fox News notes.

These letters reportedly came after BOEM proposed new guidance last summer calling for new offshore renewable energy development to “occur[] in a thoughtful manner” so that conflicts with fisheries are minimized.

“Lefton said at the time the agency was seeking “open and honest conversations focused on finding solutions,” according to Fox News.

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The guidance, which is expected to be finalized soon, reportedly prompted clapback from several fishery councils and fishing industry groups.

“We recognize the need for renewable energy and the role these energy sources will play as we work to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. However, addressing climate change should not require significant negative impacts to food producers or to our ocean environment,” Seafood Harvesters of America, a national organization that represents thousands of fishermen nationwide, wrote to Lefton.

“We remain deeply concerned that these guidelines are simply recommendations and hold no promise of any actual mitigation or compensation for the fishing industry. Any potential effectiveness of these guidelines is negated by the fact that they are only suggestions for offshore wind energy developers, rather than binding requirements,” the organization continued.

In a separate letter, U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy Chief Counsel Major Clark reportedly said he’d heard concerns from “small commercial fishermen, port operators, marine equipment retailers, onshore processors, fish markets, and other fishing industry representatives.”

“Small businesses renewed their concerns regarding their inability to adequately comment on mitigation measures without knowing the impacts that offshore wind development activities will have. There are simply too many unknowns for the current guidance to be effective,” he wrote.

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The Biden administration’s wind projects have also faced criticism because of their impact on whales.

“Since the beginning of the year, more than 20 humpback whales and endangered North Atlantic right whales have been discovered dead along the East Coast with most beaching in New Jersey, New York and Virginia, according to federal data. The uptick in deaths has led to calls from lawmakers, local officials and conservation organizations for a federal moratorium on wind development in the Atlantic Ocean,” according to Fox News.

“While administration officials and some environmental groups have said there is no evidence suggesting wind turbine construction is killing whales and that the deaths are part of an “unusual mortality event” for both whale species dating back years, the region is on pace to far surpass death figures set since the mortality events were declared,” Fox News notes.

All this comes following the release last month of a joint study by two federal government scientific agencies and the commercial fishing industry that found “numerous impacts that offshore wind power projects have on fish and marine mammals, including noise, vibration, electromagnetic fields and heat transfer that could alter the marine environment,” as reported by the Associated Press.

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“We wanted to document what was known and not known. As far as we know, this is the first cooperatively developed report that cites all aspects of the potential interactions between fisheries and offshore wind,” Fiona Hogan, the research director for the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, said in an interview.

However, the study is just a first step and only dealt with “fixed-location wind turbines,” so more research is needed. Ergo a second planned study “will examine wind projects that float on the water’s surface.”

Vivek Saxena
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