Maine leaders to meet with feds about future offshore wind projects

PORTLAND, Maine — Maine has an opportunity to take a giant step ahead in its plans for offshore wind turbine manufacturing, however some fishermen and lawmakers have been weary of proposals for years.

Greater than a dozen supporters held a rally on Portland’s Japanese Promenade Wednesday, pushing state leaders to safe analysis and, finally, leases to put huge wind generators in federal waters within the Gulf of Maine.

Audio system included Jason Shedlock, president of the Maine State Constructing & Building Trades Council; Dana Connors, president of the state’s chamber of commerce; Jack Shapiro of the Pure Assets Council of Maine; and Sarah Haggerty, a biologist with Maine Audubon.

They gathered a day earlier than the Gulf of Maine Intergovernmental Process Drive of the federal Bureau of Ocean Power Administration (BOEM) deliberate to satisfy with representatives from Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. Will probably be the primary such assembly since 2019.

Governor Janet Mills, D-Maine, has already pushed to limit initiatives in Maine waters, signing a 2021 regulation forbidding new initiatives in state waters for 10 years. Maine assumes stewardship over the primary three miles away from its coast and islands.

Within the water past that, BOEM plans to lease wind initiatives, and Mills is on board.

Final October, she despatched an software to BOEM requesting a lease for 15 sq. miles of ocean to arrange an array of floating analysis generators, developed on the College of Maine, to determine what’s possible.

She adopted that up with a November letter to Inside Secretary Deborah Haaland, partly asking Haaland to “contain Maine fishermen” in lease selections off Maine’s coast.

Fisherman and Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham, R-Winter Harbor, oppose offshore wind. Faulkingham believes the state is shifting too quick with expertise that hasn’t but been confirmed, and in waters which have been closely regulated for fishermen, he fears disturbing wildlife.

“The center floor can be to do the analysis first,” he stated. “There’s completely no motive in any way why there can be a way of urgency like that, to hurry forward with out doing the analysis.”

It is nonetheless unclear, previous to Thursday’s BOEM assembly, how a lot analysis can be performed within the area forward of potential lease grants

In a press release to NEWS CENTER Maine on Wednesday, the Governor’s Environmental Workplace wrote, partly, “With BOEM having introduced its intention to pursue business leasing for offshore wind within the Gulf of Maine by 2024, we look ahead to listening to extra particulars about BOEM’s method to this course of, significantly relating to its engagement in Maine’s helpful fishing business and coastal communities.” 

“We additionally want to interact BOEM on furthering essential baseline analysis within the Gulf of Maine, on par with research accomplished elsewhere on the Outer Continental Shelf,” the assertion continued. “And analysis on easy methods to keep away from and mitigate impacts from offshore wind by way of the state’s proposed floating offshore wind analysis array.”

Whereas Faulkingham opposes any potential encroachment in Maine’s working water and believes the state and federal governments are shifting too rapidly, Maine Audubon biologist Sarah Haggerty stated the combat towards local weather change hasn’t moved quick sufficient.

“It truly is a giant balancing act,” she stated. “Local weather change is the largest menace to Maine’s wildlife. It truly is. We’re already seeing adjustments; we’re already seeing impacts to species everywhere in the state, on land, within the ocean.”

“We’ve got to be doing one thing,” she continued. “We must always have been doing this 20 years in the past.”

The digital all-day assembly with the Bureau of Ocean Power Administration is open to the general public and begins at 9 a.m. The assembly may be accessed right here.