The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected an attempt by commercial fishermen to stop a large-scale offshore wind energy development project.
Vineyard Wind, which is to be located off the coast of the U.S. state of Massachusetts, is intended to be an 800-megawatt project built across 75,000 acres. The lawsuit, originally filed in 2022, was filed by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) against several federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), and NOAA Fisheries and claimed the agencies took shortcuts past statutory and regulator requirements intended to protect the environment.
That lawsuit was dismissed in October 2023 after the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled RODA didn’t have standing to sue the agencies. RODA appealed the case to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld that dismissal on 5 December, effectively ending the alliance’s challenges against the project.
"Today, RODA is extremely disappointed following the First Circuit Appellate Court’s issuance of a ruling regarding the Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind energy project,” RODA wrote in a release following its loss.
RODA had argued that when federal agencies approved the project, they failed to comply with federal laws, including considering the project’s potential impact on endangered species like the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.
“Despite the comments and data available regarding the significant losses fisheries will suffer and that these losses could have been mitigated, the project was approved at the expense of fisheries,” the original lawsuit stated.
The appeals court largely upheld the original court ruling which found RODA lacked standing to push against the project by citing the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
“The Alliance does not explicitly engage the particulars of the court's standing and mootness rulings,” the appeals court wrote.
RODA claims the decision went to great lengths to find any evidence to support the government’s decisions and that it will set a precedent that decisions on projects like Vineyard Wind can be “fast tracked and ‘figured out later’ in order to push projects through more quickly.”
“This approach jeopardizes the integrity of environmental reviews and undermines the precautionary principle that should govern decisions with potentially devastating long-term impacts,” RODA said.
RODA also argues the court’s ruling ignores events that have happened since the project has been built – including an incident that saw a wind turbine blade fail, leading to demands of quality assurance.
“Our briefs called attention to BOEM’s inadequate review of certain environmental risks, including the ability of turbine blades to withstand local environmental conditions. Yet, community members witnessed firsthand the shards of fiberglass littering where they fish and on their beaches when a turbine failed last summer,” RODA said. “It is deeply troubling that we didn't even have to wait a year to see our concerns come to fruition.”
RODA said the ruling also effectively held that fishermen are unable to bring complaints to the court regarding environmental or aesthetic impacts.
“This ruling ignores the deep, direct connection that our members, who work on the water every day, have with the ocean environment, falsely construing them as merely profit-seeking business owners,” RODA said. “It is both perplexing and troubling that the court’s decision suggests that a hobbyist or casual nature observer has more standing to understand or challenge potential environmental harm than professional fishermen whose livelihoods, communities, and very identity depend on the health of the sea.”
