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Fisherman, Landowners Hope To Stymie Biden Admin’s Pursuit Of Offshore Wind With Lawsuits

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Lawsuits from landowners and fishing groups threaten to undermine the Biden administration’s offshore wind goals, according to E&E News.

A major 62-turbine offshore wind project planned for construction in the waters near Martha’s Vineyard is being challenged by four separate lawsuits, which argue that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) did not conduct an adequate environmental review prior to approving the project, E&E News reported. Concerns revolve around the project’s impact on fishermen and threats to whales living in the waters, particularly the endangered North American right whale.

The Vineyard Wind project, approved in 2021, is a central part of the Biden administration’s goal to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030. It was also the first major offshore wind project approved to be constructed in the U.S.

Two of the lawsuits brought by landowners have already gone before a Massachusetts federal judge for oral arguments, and the same judge will hear the other two brought by fishing groups during consolidated oral arguments on Monday, according to E&E News.

Texas Public Policy Foundation Executive Director & General Counsel Robert Henneke, who is representing the fishing groups, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the lawsuit is about protecting its clients from “unproven offshore wind farm operations that actually cause environmental harm to our oceans” and threaten to eliminate “a way of life they’ve had for generations.”

The complaint says that the government disregarded its legal responsibilities in its “unintelligent pursuit” of increasing renewable energy generation at “any cost,” requesting the court “enjoin further construction of the Vineyard Wind project.”

“[Plaintiffs] livelihoods and economic futures depend on fishing in the Vineyard Wind project area,” the complaint states.

Biden’s recent budget proposal allocated $60 million to expanding offshore wind permitting activities, which fishermen say threatens their businesses.

“Offshore wind will put American fishermen out of business,” Jerry Leeman, a commercial fishing captain, previously told the DCNF. “Developers and public officials are laying plans for wind farms that cover 10 million square acres off the coast of Maine alone. Those are highly productive waters that will be permanently closed to our boats.”

BOEM told the DCNF it is not their policy to comment on litigation.

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One Comment

  1. Everything the climate alarmists say is a lie and a horrible hoax. They want windmills and solar everywhere, knowing that they will be the real environmental disaster. Each wind turbine can require up to 80 acres and it takes 350 wind turbines to equal the electricity generated from one coal fired plant. So, imagine, it would take 280,000 acres of wind turbines to generate the same electricity as one 400 acre traditional power plant. And now we learn that the sonar mapping needed for offshore windmills is killing the whales like the land windmills are killing our endangered eagles. We can watch in real time Europe collapsing and miles long gas lines after decades of their “Green New Deal” policies made them totally dependent on Russian gas and oil. In some places, energy costs have increased 1000% and businesses are closing because they can’t afford their utility bills. Now they are clear cutting their forests and desperately digging again for coal.
    What’s even more insane is that Biden and the Democrats passed their 730 billion dollar Green Energy bill, laughably called the “Inflation Reduction Act”, to institute all these proven failed policies here. It’s nothing but a Green New Deal slush fund that includes such insanity as 60 billion dollars for “environmental justice”. And then there’s the four or five states that want to ban gas powered cars by 2030. Never mind that most of the rare earth minerals for car batteries are mined in China or in Africa by child slave labor. Or that the cobalt and lithium mines are a dangerous environmental hazard. And never mind that windmills and solar only have an effective shelf life of about twenty years and there is no environmentally safe way to dispose of them when they expire (how do you dispose of tens of thousands of 351 ft. indestructible and non-degradable windmill blades). Or that almost all of our solar panels come from China. Or that China is the worst polluting country in the world and is building coal fired plants (1140 so far) as fast as they can and laughing at our idiocy and how we will continue to make them rich.

    Americans need to wake up before it’s too late and realize that the middle class will be bankrupted by our own government’s never ending money printing (which is the main cause of inflation) and ever increasing taxes and higher and higher energy costs that will result from their idiotic “Green” policies and mandates.

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