Trump effort to kill offshore wind project hit by government shutdown
Judge had short shrift for pleas from government lawyers that shutdown meant they could not now appear in case in which they seek to terminate permit of offshore wind farm
The US government shutdown has thrown a spanner in the works of the Trump administration’s court bid to kill a huge offshore wind project, as a judge rejects pleas from federal lawyers who claim they are now prohibited from working.
The US government is experiencing its first shutdown for nearly seven years after Trump’s Republican party and the Democrats failed to find a way to resolve a budget dispute centring on healthcare funding.
That means that many US government services have been suspended, with a vast swathe of the federal workforce put on unpaid leave.
Trump has rejoiced at what he says is an “unprecedented opportunity” to fire federal workers as part of his broader efforts to gut government agencies. But the President will be less happy to hear the shutdown is now hampering his war on the country’s offshore wind sector.
The Trump administration has been working to cancel numerous offshore wind projects in US waters, one of which is US Wind’s Maryland Offshore Wind Project.
A judge in a Maryland district court on 2 October denied a request from the Department of Interior (DoI) to stay a lawsuit in which it is seeking to overturn the Construction and Operations Plan (COP) for the project in light of the shutdown.
The federally controlled Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) – part of the DoI – last month requested that a Maryland district court overturn the COP for the 2.2GW site.
The court had on 30 September scheduled a telephone conference for 7 October to hear arguments from the parties. However, on 2 October, DoI lawyers requested that the court stay the case in light of the shutdown.
The DoI said that federal attorneys are “prohibited from working, even on a voluntary basis, with few exceptions, including ‘emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property.’”
The DoI therefore requested a stay of the telephone conference until funding has been restored, adding that it “greatly regret[s]” the disruption caused to the court.
In its response, US Wind, which is owned by Italian developer Renexia and Apollo Global Management, said that while it “appreciates the exigent circumstances” the government finds itself in, “the Motion arrives in the midst of a different set of exigent circumstances that are unique to this litigation and that have been created by the government itself.”
The government had, it noted, asked the court on 12 September to overturn the COP – “an action that would effectively kill the Maryland Offshore Wind Project” while also causing US Wind “catastrophic and irreparable financial and reputational harm.”
US Wind said there remains a “very real risk” that the government could take adverse action against the approval “outside of this litigation.” Here, US Wind pointed to a previous submission from federal attorneys that a court overturn of the COP plan may not be “strictly necessary” for BOEM to reconsider it.
The government shutdown therefore “does not diminish” the risk the project is now in as it “would not necessarily prevent the government from taking extra-judicial actions” against the COP approval.
US Wind said the government had not claimed that the shutdown would stop the government’s operational personnel from “continuing their efforts to undermine the COP approval.”
“Indeed, such adverse actions by the Government would constitute an abuse of the judicial process; they would deprive this Court of its authority to decide the merits of US Wind’s COP approval prior to ruling on whether the Government is legally allowed to reverse such approval – whether through a court order or through well-established agency regulatory processes.”
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