The executive directors of three federally established fishery councils along the East Coast expressed concern last year about the threats posed by offshore wind energy projects.
In an Aug. 22 letter to former Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Director Amanda Lefton, the three officials — who respectively lead the New England, Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic Fishery Management Councils — expressed concern about current processes for approving offshore wind development. They also made a series of recommendations to help the federal government mitigate impacts on 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,” they stated in the letter. “The multiple wind energy projects planned along the east coast will have cumulative and compounding effects on our fisheries.”
“The synergistic effects of multiple projects may be more than additive and this may not be sufficiently identified in project-specific documents; therefore, losses may be undercompensated by taking a project-by-project approach,” they continued.
In addition, the Pacific Fishery Management Council, which represents the region encompassing the entire West Coast, penned its own letter to Lefton, similarly warning about the impacts of offshore wind development on 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.
The letters from the regional councils — which Congress established in 1976 to manage the nation’s marine fishery resources — came after BOEM proposed guidance in June to ensure offshore renewable energy development “occurs in a thoughtful manner” and that its conflicts with fisheries are minimized. Lefton said at the time the agency was seeking “open and honest conversations focused on finding solutions.”
BOEM is expected to finalize the guidance in the coming weeks.
The draft guidance, though, was criticized by the regional fishery management councils and a series of fishing industry groups that said it fell short.
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