Fishing Industry Hopes to Take Vineyard Wind to the Supreme Court
The Vineyard Wind project is also under review by President Donad Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
The saga of Vineyard Farms’ offshore blade failure near Nantucket continues. Last summer, the facility was closed because of the failure of Vineyard Wind’s newly installed wind turbines, and the city was poised to sue.
After one blade failed and ended up in the water, the beaches were cluttered with sharp fiberglass shards, a sub-optimum condition at the height of the summer tourist season. A continuing investigation into the cause of this environmental contamination incident determined that a manufacturing flaw in the blade was responsible for the failure.
Then, a “flotilla” of about two dozen commercial and recreational fishing vessels steamed to the wind farm to protest offshore wind development.
The fishing industry is continuing the fight by escalating its legal battle against Vineyard Wind, the country’s first large-scale offshore wind project, by petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to review lower court decisions.
The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), a national coalition of fishing industry associations and companies, along with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, filed separate petitions in this month requesting the Supreme Court to reconsider the project’s approval.
Both organizations unsuccessfully petitioned to shut down Vineyard Wind — the first large-scale offshore wind project approved in the U.S., located 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard — in the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston last year.
The petitioners say the project was rushed through by the Biden administration in an effort to establish an American offshore wind industry, without considering the consequences.
RODA, which also names offshore wind projects Revolution Wind and South Fork Wind in a different court filing, alleges that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the agency responsible for permitting offshore wind projects, failed to adequately analyze the impact of offshore wind projects, and didn’t engage fishermen enough.
In particular, RODA argues that approving the project was based on the Interior Secretary’s 2021 “reinterpretation” of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. RODA argues the secretary must ensure that the sea and seabed for a fishery be protected from any approved activities. The plaintiffs say the secretary ignored Vineyard Wind project’s “devastating impacts” on the fishing industry.
President Donald Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is also reviewing the Vineyard Wind project and all other offshore wind projects per an executive order that also froze all offshore wind permitting and leasing.
Action by Burgum may be the industry’s best bet, as the chances of this making it on the Supreme Court docket seem small.
Burgum is explicitly tasked with conducting a “comprehensive review of the ecological, economic, and environmental necessity of terminating or amending any existing wind energy leases.”
The Supreme Court receives 7,000 to 8,000 petitions per year, and only hears and issues opinions on fewer than 100. That’s less than 1.5%.
Per a federal guide, it takes six weeks on average once a petition has been filed for the justices to act on it. The other party to the suit also has 30 days to file a response to the petition.
The Supreme Court in January, just before Trump was sworn in, declined to take a case from ACK For Whales, a group suing several federal agencies for permitting the Vineyard Wind project. The group had filed a similar petition, called a writ of certiorari, that September with the highest court after it lost its case in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts.
Hopefully, our nation’s fishing industry and marine wildlife will get some relief soon. It is quite clear that the goal of the Biden administration was to spend as much of our tax dollars as possible propping up Democrat-preferred industries…especially those connected to the climate cult. That these large wind farms are devastating to both aquatic and terrestrial habitats was clearly not a concern.
#11
December 29, 2024, 50 miles due south of Vineyard wind offshore wind farm. pic.twitter.com/wzj4zz91h2— Bonnie Brady (@mtkblb) December 30, 2024
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Comments
Taking case to the Supreme Court:
These days taking a case to the Supreme Court is like gambling at a casino which is weighted in favor of the house.
Or like going to a butcher where the man behind the counter has his thumb on the scale—I’m referring to John Roberts.
Offshore wind is a terrible idea.The last I knew the martha’s vineyard wind project was put on a hold because of the defects with the wind blades.
I’m not sure. If this is true, but I’ve been told by people who should know that the small wind farm off of block island bearings’ aren’t lasting anywhere near as long as they were touted to last, And when they freeze up, they leak oil into the ocean.
See: green_oceans.org
I won’t bother to list all the problems of putting complex mechanical and electrical equipment into an ocean environment, but it seems pretty obvious that none of the people who approved this have ever owned a boat.
They talked repeatedly on FOX about washing the newly recovered space capsule with fresh water.
For those who are not boaters, the definition of “boat”:
A boat is a hole in the water into which one pours money.
Given the liberals’ and Senator Kelly’s attitude toward Tesla, shouldn’t we assume that Climate Change is no longer a “thing” and get rid of all these projects?
put elon musk in charge of wind “collection” and lefty will be burning it down too
I’m actually in favor of wind power. I’d like to put a nice big wind farm off Obama’s Marthas Vinyard and Hawaii estates and the Kennedy compound. Also off of Bernie Sanders lakeside vacation home and the Biden’s seaside vacation home. We can probably find many other such locations. Imagine all the wind blowing from those properties.
Wind turbines are poorly thought out scheme. They generate negative cash flow and must be taxpayer subsidized. They damage wildlife habitat. There’s no data to suggest they mitigate global warming.
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