Lane County commissioners voice concern over potential offshore wind energy - KVAL

Lane County commissioners voice concern over potential offshore wind energy | KVAL

LANE COUNTY, Ore. — During a regularly scheduled weekly meeting, three members of the Lane County Board of Commissioners voiced their concerns over a potential offshore wind energy farm that would be built 35 miles off the coast of Florence, as part of a larger project which the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management calls the Draft Wind Energy Area - Coos Bay Call Area.

The Biden-Harris administration set a goal of 30 gigawatts from floating offshore wind farms by 2035, with BOEM heading the project.

The area off of Florence and Coos Bay would be approximately 60,000 acres in size.

Prior to the board of commissioner's meeting, a letter was drafted to BOEM with the following being written inside:
The Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians are very concerned about this project and have expressed extensive concern for BOEM’s process in determining the call areas, the concerns for marine and environmental impacts, impact to fishers, impact to cultural resources and viewsheds, and many other issues regarding wind energy as a whole. After reaching out to Travel Lane County, the City of Florence, and several other organizations in the coastal area, many of whom did not know about any outreach from BOEM regarding offshore wind energy efforts, we cannot offer support for this Draft WEA-Option A in the Coos Bay Call Area and we look forward to future opportunities to comment and engage communities in this endeavor. In addition, Lane County is in support of additional jobs in the area and in energy production, but we do not know enough to lend our support at this time.

Throughout the meeting, it was clear that both the county and its commissioners felt that they need substantially more time to discuss the project as a whole, as they felt they weren't given enough time to properly consider the long reaching effects of the project.

"I reached out to the mayor of Florence, and the Port of Siuslaw myself, and they don't have a lot of facts about [this]," said Ryan Ceniga, commissioner for District 1, which encompasses Florence. "They don't have a lot of facts about it, and for someone who is going to be looking at these, that's not sufficient [enough] for me."

Governor Kotek released a letter in June of this year asking for a pause in the process in hopes of getting additional time for collaboration, which resulted in a 60-day grace period to receive additional public comment period.

The letter itself also had some pushback from two commissioners, Laurie Trieger and Heather Buch, citing that the letter itself felt rushed, and that it didn't go through the usual formal processes that letters like this usually do.

More information can be found here.