The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), along with environmental groups and fishing charter businesses, filed a new lawsuit last week against federal agencies that approved two offshore wind projects 20 nautical miles south of the Island.
Concern over impacts to the marine environment and mammals, especially the North Atlantic right whale, as well as adverse visual and cultural effects in areas of tribal significance from New England Wind 1 and 2 pushed the Tribe to join the lawsuit.
“We joined the lawsuit because this issue is so very important to us. Like all the other plaintiffs, we as individual Tribal Members and our Tribe as a whole are being harmed by these giant wind farms, making an industrial park out of our waters,” the Tribe’s Chairwoman Cheryl Andrews-Maltais said in a statement. “However unlike the other plaintiffs, the negative impacts to us go back as far as time immemorial and as deep as to who we are as Aquinnah Wampanoag People; harming our culture, traditions and spirituality, which connects us to the lands, waters, sky and all living things. Since individually we weren’t being listened to, we hope that maybe now with this lawsuit our collective voices will be heard.”
The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced it approved the two offshore wind projects in July last year, following authorization by the Department of the Interior in a Record of Decision on April 2, 2024. Together, both projects, which will include up to 129 turbines, are projected to have the capacity to produce up to 2,600 megawatts of renewable energy and could power more than 900,000 homes.
But plaintiffs — which include Nantucket-based nonprofit ACK for Whales, Rhode Island-based nonprofit Green Oceans, a group of charter fishing companies, and individual fishermen — argue that government agencies violated several federal laws in authorization of the offshore wind projects. The case was filed in federal district court in Washington D.C.
The plaintiffs assert officials from the U.S. Departments of Commerce and the Interior, National Marine Fisheries Service, and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management breached the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the National Historical Preservation Act, and the Administrative Procedures Act when they approved the wind farms.
They claim that the best available science wasn’t used to determine if the projects would harm or injure federally-listed species, such as the North Atlantic right whale, and mitigation protocols, such as vessel speed restrictions, species observers, and seasonal restrictions, are deficient. Charter fishing groups and commercial fishermen involved in the suit also claim environmental and economic harm from development.
The plaintiffs are seeking declaratory and injunctive relief and ask that the court vacate the authorizations made by the federal agencies.
One of the plaintiffs is William “Buddy” Vanderhoop, Tribal member and owner of Tomahawk Charters out of Menemsha, who said in the complaint that his business is already economically harmed from the development of Vineyard Wind 1, partially constructed south of the Island, as well as from pre-construction surveys of New England Wind 1 and 2 that he said decrease available fish in the area.
ACK for Whales is behind other lawsuits against offshore wind projects, including one against Vineyard Wind 1 that the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to hear after it was dismissed by lower courts. The Nantucket group most recently asked the U.S. District Court of New Jersey to halt the Empire Wind 1 offshore wind project in a separate lawsuit on June 3 and filed petitions to the Environmental Protection Agency to reopen and revoke air permits for Vineyard Wind 1 and the New England Wind projects.
The two leases are developed by Avangrid, an energy company headquartered in Orange, Connecticut, which partnered with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners to develop Vineyard Wind 1.
Though some of the persons involved in this suit are good people, basically they’re having a nimby attitude. The benefits of these wind farms will be tremendous and the dangers have for the most part been greatly exaggerated or even fabricated. So many Bay State residents will receive electricity from these wind farms and they will prevent the neccesity of constructing fossil fuel burning plants. I ask these people to see the huge benefits. It’s in all our best interests.
We should all support lawsuits to stop further construction of all offshore wind turbines because they are ineffective, intermittent and destructive. Every turbine should be dismantled and remediated with the full cost paid by the developers,
Providing 900,000 homes with offshore wind is impressive, but it is not sufficient when one considers that worldwide there are 7,200,000 homes that need to be powered. To cover all of these homes would require approximately 8,000 such windfarms, and losses and the construction phases of CO2 have not been considered in this estimate.
Homes use about 27% of electrical worldwide. But electrical energy is only one of our problems. Simply poot there are also food, transportation, construction, propane and oil heat for homes, and wars along with construction of weapons of wars, and many more categories.
On top of this our population is increasing and 2 billion more people are expected not very long from now. So what exactly are we doing with offshore wind?
Realistically, offshore wind, or for that matter any clean energy source, is not decreasing our overall consumption sufficiently to reduce overall carbon. I have to agree with the fishermen. Leave our oceans alone.
Thank you for this legal effort and I wish you the best of luck. OSW is nothing less than a wolf in sheep’s clothing — a way for liberal elites to promote sketchy energy production in order to maintain high consumption patterns ($$$) rather than advocating for changes in lifestyle habits. At the expense of ocean life.
Now . . . I must get off-line before Elon Musk removes his satellite connections . . .
These wind farms were originally suppose to supply free power to the Vineyard, but it appears off shore magnates have mostly taken them over. So they only indirectly provide any benefit, if any, to the Island. Yet they detract from our view, are a potential source of an oil spill or debris field, and harms the fishing or tourism industry. But I wonder since the public hearings were closed over a year ago, and they were allowed, how does one file a claim now? Unless there is new evidence or evidence was withheld?
An oil spill? Each turbine has about 50 gallons of oil. Fishing boats carry how much fuel?
“These wind farms were originally suppose to supply free power to the Vineyard”
Source?
“potential source of an oil spill or debris field, and harms the fishing or tourism industry.”
Oil drilling does not?
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