RI - What has Ocean State Lost? A story of Squandered Opportunity
In 2009 I started working on ocean planning with a group of dedicated ocean planning experts at the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) and the Coastal Resources Center (CRC) at University of Rhode Island. I was representing local saltwater anglers and giving input regarding how we use coastal waters for fishing.
We were one of many groups who CRMC and URI asked for input. We had many meetings and drafted a comprehensive document that became the basis for the first ocean planning document in the United States. It was the beginning of the Ocean Special Area Management Plan (Ocean SAMP).
In 2010 we had many productive meetings and finalized the first draft of the Ocean SAMP. My input was primarily in Chapter 5: Commercial and Recreational Fisheries. Many research projects by scientists from URI and other institutions were conducted to provide the essential scientific basis for the Ocean SAMP. These projects gave us a better understanding of many natural processes in the Ocean SAMP study area. Scientists completed detailed fishery studies, marine geologic studies, evaluation of existing uses, measurement of currents and bathymetry, and evaluation of human perception of the idea of offshore development.
It was no secret that one of the key reasons for the Ocean SAMP was to provide a thoughtful process for the future siting and permitting of offshore wind power generators. At the Baird Symposium in November 2009 there was much discussion about the possibility of locating a wind turbine project near Block Island with five to eight turbines. For this reason, it became important to draft regulatory standards that would give serious consideration of potential interactions between these new uses and existing uses such as commercial and recreational fishing.
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Read also
Coastal county and groups sue to overturn federal approval of New Jersey's 1st offshore wind farm, Newsday / October 24, 2023
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These regulatory standards were developed carefully to assure that no project would be allowed to cause undue impact on the marine environment or to existing users of coastal and offshore waters. The process set forth is very prescriptive and detailed. It was done in this fashion to assure a smooth permitting process for any future development applications. This set of regulations is detailed in Ocean SAMP Section 11.10 Regulatory Standards.
The entire Ocean SAMP was held up nationwide as a model program and several other coastal states began to use it as a model for similar planning. This made it all the more disappointing to me when I was part of the CRMC Fisheries Advisory Board (FAB) and it seemed that someone high in the chain of command had decided that the offshore wind projects were too important to be slowed down by the rigorous process defined in the Ocean SAMP. That process would be too slow and/or too expensive to follow, according to the huge foreign corporations who were pushing rapid development of offshore wind energy (OWE) projects.
Compared to the interaction with stakeholders and the detailed scientific studies conducted during the planning, permitting, and development of the five-turbine Block Island Wind Farm, permitting of Vineyard Wind, South Fork Wind, Revolution Wind, Sunrise Wind, and other subsequent OWE projects “must push forward quickly” we were told.
A new player stepped in — the federal agency Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). BOEM was going to run the leasing, oversee the permitting, and control the construction schedule. We were told that BOEM had firm timelines and if state approvals were not granted in the BOEM timelines then the default answer was that BOEM would say that state approval was granted by default. We had no option to protest this process at a state level, so if we didn’t think that something was fair or in accordance with laws and regulations, our only option would be to go to federal court at great expense.
