Panel representing fishermen alleges state favors offshore wind developers - The Providence Journal

Panel representing fishermen alleges state favors offshore wind developers

This board advises the state on offshore wind's impacts on fisheries. They all just resigned.
Alex Kuffner

PROVIDENCE – All the members of the panel that advises state coastal regulators on the impacts of offshore wind on fisheries have resigned in protest of what they charge is a process that unfairly favors developers.

A resignation letter signed by the nine members of the Fishermen’s Advisory Board was sent to the Coastal Resources Management Council Thursday night.

“It has become abundantly clear that the Rhode Island CRMC has made deference to offshore wind developers its top priority regardless of the requirements of the Ocean SAMP, the cost to the environment, or the impacts to Rhode Island’s fishing industry,” they wrote, referring to the Ocean Special Area Management Plan, the state document that guides offshore wind permitting.

'Wholesale ocean destruction'

They say the council has ignored the board’s concerns and downplayed the potential negative impacts on fish stocks and marine habitats of the construction of large wind farms in the Atlantic ocean waters off the Rhode Island coast.

“We will not allow our names to be connected in any way to Council approvals now amounting to wholesale ocean destruction,” the board members wrote. “Rhode Island is supposed to be the Ocean State, not the Windmill State.”

The letter was signed by Lanny Dellinger, Chris Brown, Michael Marchetti, Greg Mataronas, Chris Lee and Brian Thiebault, all commercial fishermen; Rich Hittinger, a recreational fisherman; charter boat captain Rick Bellavance; and Meghan Lapp, fisheries liaison for seafood distributor SeaFreeze.

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The coastal council did not immediately comment on the resignations. Ørsted and Eversource, the companies behind several of the projects that have been the subject of the board's concerns, declined comment.

What led to the resignations

The resignations come after a series of decisions by the coastal Council over the past four-and-a-half years that have helped clear the way for the development of four utility-scale wind farms in an area of ocean between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard.

Two of the projects – 84-turbine Vineyard Wind and the 12-turbine South Fork Wind Farm – are being built offshore this summer and are expected to begin at least partial operations before the end of the year. A third, 65-turbine Revolution Wind, started onshore construction late last month. The fourth, 84-turbine Sunrise Wind, received authorization from the coastal Council just last week. They're coming after construction of the first offshore wind farm in the nation, a five-turbine test project in state waters near Block Island that went into operation in 2016 and was planned with deep involvement from the fishing community.

While all the new projects are located in federal waters and require final approval from the U.S. Department of the Interior, the coastal Council was awarded authority more than a decade ago to review all offshore energy proposals in the region that would impact Rhode Island’s interests. Those interests are primarily related to fishing.

Under the permitting process, the Council decides whether projects are consistent with state coastal policies. In each case that has come before the coastal Council so far, its members, who are nearly all appointed by the governor’s office with approval from the Senate, have voted in favor of certification.

The votes have come despite the objections of members of the fishermen’s board, who argue that offshore wind development will not only shut them out of important fishing grounds during construction but would also interfere with navigation and pose safety risks after wind farms go into operation.

They’ve accused both Governor Dan McKee and his predecessor, Gina Raimondo, of ignoring their concerns, with at least one member going so far as accusing the former of making an appointment to the coastal Council to ensure a favorable decision for one of the offshore wind projects.

Trouble started with Vineyard Wind because the project location occupies waters valued for squid, Rhode Island’s biggest fishery. Tensions grew with the next three projects because they are located around a submerged area known as Cox Ledge, a rocky habitat known to be a critical spawning habitat for Atlantic cod and other valuable species.

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Avangrid Renewables, the developers of Vineyard Wind, agreed to set up a fund to compensate fishermen for any losses, and so too have Ørsted and Eversource in relation to their projects.

But the developers and the fishermen’s board have been far apart on how much those funds should be worth. In the latest application for Sunrise Wind, the board asked for a $177 million compensation fund while the developers offered $17.6 million. The coastal Council agreed to the latter figure.

Hittinger, a retired environmental consultant who is first vice president of the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association, also wrote a separate resignation letter. He said that in his previous work he reviewed development proposals under the National Environmental Policy Act and that the review process for offshore wind is not nearly as comprehensive.

He argued that oversight has been sacrificed to clear the way for the Biden administration’s push to develop 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by the end of the decade.

The permitting process, he wrote, has become “a one-sided push by developers with no requirement for realistic discussion of or consideration of potential impacts of these major changes in our shared marine environment, effectively a rubber stamp of the political desires of Washington, D.C.”