Fishing Industry Hopes to Take Vineyard Wind to the Supreme Court
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.
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