'Immediate moratorium': US Atlantic mayors call for offshore wind halt after whale deaths
New York and New Jersey community leaders write to state and federal officials demanding stop to all activities in nascent sector pending investigation
A group of mayors from communities on the US Atlantic coast as well as a congressman have written to high-ranking Biden administration officials in key federal departments of commerce and interior, calling for a moratorium on offshore wind development activities following a spate of whale deaths in the region’s waters.
“Repeated instances of dead whales washing up on New Jersey’s shoreline and the proximity of nearby offshore wind development has raised concerns that ongoing activity on these projects maybe be contributing to [these] fatalities,” said representative for the state of New Jersey Chris Smith to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
In a letter to selected US Senators, the mayors demanded “an immediate moratorium on all offshore wind activities until an investigation is held by federal and state agencies that confidently determines these activities are not a contributing factor to recent whale deaths”.
Coastal resiliency advisory Warwick Group Consulting, which is working closely with the mayors, said an additional five city heads are set to publicly support an offshore wind pause.
Scientists with the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society (AMCS), a volunteer organisation dedicated to marine mammal rescue and preservation, however, believes the link between offshore wind development work and the recent whale deaths may not be connected.
“We will continue to gather data and go where the science leads us,” the conservation society added.
The reassurances haven’t mollified sector opponents, who maintain that insufficient research on the cumulative impacts of ongoing survey work on marine mammals and other wildlife.
“Is there any consideration of the cumulative effect of having project after project after project doing their sonar and other kinds of activities?” Cindy Zipf, head of environmental activist group Clean Ocean Action, a consortium of environmental groups also calling for a pause in offshore wind development.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries department (NOAA-Fisheries) has 11 active and five pending Incidental Take Authorizations in the region, which permit the unintended harassment of marine mammals and other wildlife while conducting survey operations but does not authorise accidental deaths.
NOAA-Fisheries is one of the key federal partners in the approval of offshore wind and other development in US waters and works closely with Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the lead regulator of energy development in coastal waters.