PORTLAND, Maine — The federal government issued on Monday the nation’s first floating offshore wind research lease to the state of Maine, comprising about 23 square miles (60 square kilometers) in federal waters.

The state requested the lease from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for a floating offshore wind research array with up to a dozen turbines capable of generating up to 144 megawatts of renewable energy in waters nearly 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of Portland, Maine.

The research array will use floating offshore wind platforms designed by the University of Maine and deployed by partner Diamond Offshore Wind. But construction is not likely for several years.

The research is key to growing the ocean wind energy industry in Maine.

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills signed a bill last year that aims to see Maine procure enough energy from offshore wind turbines to power about half its electric load by 2040, and the state has selected a site to build, stage and deploy the turbine equipment. In the next decade, University of Maine researchers envision turbine platforms floating in the ocean beyond the horizon, stretching more than 700 feet (210 meters) skyward and anchored with mooring lines.

“Clean energy from offshore wind offers an historic opportunity for Maine to create good-paying jobs, reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, and fight climate change by cutting greenhouse gas emissions,” Mills said.

The state requested the lease in 2021. The roughly 23 square miles (60 square kilometers) in the federal lease is larger than the state’s request of about 15 square miles (39 square kilometers). It will allow the state, the fishing community, oceanography experts and the offshore wind industry to thoroughly evaluate the compatibility of floating offshore wind.

Floating turbines are the only way some states can capture offshore wind energy on a large scale. In the U.S. alone, 2.8 terawatts of wind energy potential blows over ocean waters too deep for traditional turbines that affix to the ocean floor, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That’s enough to power 350 million homes — more than double the number of existing homes in the U.S.

President Joe Biden has made offshore wind a key part of his plans for fighting climate change.

Since the start of his administration, the Department of the Interior has approved the nation’s first nine commercial scale offshore wind projects with a combined capacity of more than 13 gigawatts of clean energy — enough to power nearly 5 million homes.

(BDN) — Floating camps are popping up more and more in Maine’s lakes, ponds and rivers.

These floating structures aren’t houseboats, and many don’t have motors at all. They resemble camps that you would see on shore, except they float, and are anchored to the bottom or tied to something onshore. They come with decks, planter boxes and second stories or vaulted ceilings.

Cool, right? Well, not exactly.

The state says the floating camps are blocking the views from houses and camps onshore, posing pollution risks, and creating congestion at public docks and boat ramps. Some are even being used as seasonal rental properties.

Because they are not solidly onshore, these camps are beyond the reach of private property boundaries and shore regulations that protect the water and fishery from pollution. And because Maine doesn’t have a clear definition of what is a boat and what isn’t, there’s no consensus of what regulations apply to the structures.

That could soon change, because the topic is expected to come up in discussions in the Legislature’s upcoming session, according to Mark Latti, spokesperson for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Until regulations are in place, the number of these offshore camps will continue to grow. And unless they’re a private lake or pond, there’s not much Maine can do to stop them.

A group involving multiple state agencies recognized the severity of the problem more than two years ago. It submitted a report, including its recommendations, to the Legislative Committee on Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry in the spring 2023 session of the 131st Legislature.

“The group identified a need to define and regulate these non-water-dependent floating structures in order to protect Maine’s waters, and this will take a collaborative approach involving the public, the Legislature and various state agencies,” DIF&W Deputy Commissioner Tim Peabody said.

In practice, Maine generally allows anything that has a motor to be registered as a boat, even though the state has no universal definition for a recreational boat. Houseboats, which have been allowed legally on Maine’s inland waters for decades, have a fairly solid definition and depend on being on the water.

“Watercraft is defined throughout Maine statutes, and there are multiple definitions regarding watercraft depending on where it is found” in each agency, Latti said.

The reason for the loophole in the state’s laws and regulations mostly has to do with how authority over what happens on Maine waters is divided between multiple agencies.

The bottoms of lakes and ponds are under the jurisdiction of the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands. The water and its quality is the Maine Department of Environmental Protection’s responsibility. The fish, wildlife and plants, plus boats on inland waters, are regulated by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. In unorganized territories, the Land Use Planning Commission has some say in what can be built where, but no authority for enforcement. If it’s in an intertidal region, the Maine Marine Patrol becomes involved. The Land Use Planning Commission and Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands both fall under the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry.

Confused yet?

On top of that, towns bordering inland waters have a right to establish a harbormaster to enforce municipal mooring rules, but rely on the state to have clear regulations around watercraft. That gets the Maine Municipal Association and the Maine Harbormasters Association involved as well.

Some towns have established their own definitions of houseboats and floating camps. But they often have no capacity to address disputes over lake and pond usage and there may be multiple towns that surround one body of water, according to a state report.

Everyone has a stake in Maine’s lakes and ponds, but no one has the authority to remove a floating camp.

The challenge, the report submitted to the Legislative Committee on Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry said, is “the lack of a clear violation of law or regulation for the unauthorized placement” of floating camps. If there’s agreement that the floating camps should not be allowed, “a clear prohibition in statute would allow for enforcement of this prohibition.”

It has identified two possible directions for legislation it says would help.

The first, which is what the report recommends, would be to ban floating camps whose primary use is habitation, not navigation. It would require changing sections of other laws, rules and policies in multiple agencies to close loopholes. It would still allow true houseboats, which would have specific criteria to be met regarding structure, size, navigation and pollution control. This is thought to change what will and won’t be registered as a motorboat.

The second option would be to establish a new program within an existing agency to oversee a permitting and enforcement system that would regulate but not ban floating camps.

There is no current proposed legislation to the knowledge of the Maine departments of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife or Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, according to their respective spokesmen.

The multi-agency report distinguishes between non-water dependent floating structures and water dependent. A non-water dependent structure would be a floating camp, because it could exist and be functional on land. Water-dependent would include boats and true houseboats.

That distinction, and whether the floating object is used primarily for human habitation or navigation, will be key in how definitions for boats, houseboats and floating camps are crafted.

DIF&W also proposes changes to the motorboat registration process that will define and set standards for legal houseboats to distinguish them from floating camps anchored in the water.

This change would make it harder for floating camps to be registered as boats, and for their owners to avoid DEP regulations that protect the environment around the shoreline.

It also proposes a clear definition of what can be registered as a boat and what cannot.

This summer, despite the long-term warming of the Gulf of Maine and a long-term increase in the severity of weather events, conditions were so uneventful that Seal Island set a record for breeding puffins. Derrick Z. Jackson/Maine Monitor

From a bird blind on Seal Island, I watched as puffins zoomed in from the sea with a rainbow of fish drooping from their beaks.

They carried copper and golden juvenile haddock, redfish and white hake. Others had pink krill from massive upwellings that created magenta blotches just offshore.

A puffin returns to Seal Island with a fresh catch. Derrick Z. Jackson/The Maine Monitor

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Some even carried bright silver herring: juicy fish that were once key prey for puffins in Maine. Atlantic herring are also a prime commodity for humans, who have overfished the species so badly that the fishery in New England has routinely been shut down early in recent years.

To see a number of puffins bringing herring to chicks was a stirring reminder of what the ocean can still offer.

Seal Island, which sits 21 miles off Rockland, was once home to the largest Atlantic puffin colony in the Gulf of Maine. It is now managed by the Audubon Seabird Institute, and was the second island that Audubon’s Project Puffin restored puffins to after a century’s absence spurred by hunting in the late 1800s. The first was Eastern Egg Rock, 6 miles off Pemaquid Point.

Both islands were seeded with puffin chicks brought from Newfoundland. Puffins began breeding anew on Eastern Egg Rock in 1981 and Seal Island in 1992.

This summer, despite the long-term warming of the Gulf of Maine and a long-term increase in the severity of weather events, conditions were so uneventful that Seal Island set a record for breeding puffins.

The crew of Coco Faber, Amiel Hopkins, Liv Ridley, Reed Robinson and Nacho Gutierrez counted 672 active puffin burrows, about 100 more than the last census five years ago. The total number of known burrows surpassed 1,000 for the first time.

Other birds also did well. Razorbills, a larger cousin of the puffin, established a record of 101 active burrows.

“The weights for the puffin chicks were just so good,” said Faber, 30, the crew supervisor. “Unlike many recent years when there were big shifts or drops in what puffin parents could find, this was a summer where they steadily found fish.”

That buoyant mood was shared on Matinicus Rock, another island 23 miles from Rockland, also managed by the Seabird Institute. Crew supervisor Tracey Faber, Coco’s sister, said that not only were the puffin chicks doing well, but Arctic tern and common tern nest numbers were up.

Common murres, another bird re-established in Maine after being gone for more than 100 years, fledged a record 16 chicks.

“We saw some great growth in some birds,” Tracey Faber said.

But elsewhere there were reminders that seabird islands in the Gulf of Maine are highly vulnerable.

Earlier this month, researchers at the Gulf of Maine Seabird Working Group gathered at a conference hosted by the Seabird Institute in Bremen.

One topic was the damage caused by last winter’s violent storms, particularly on Petit Manan Island, which sits off a stretch of Downeast coastline that got hammered in January.

Island supervisor Amanda McFarland and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Linda Welch said the vast majority of natural sod burrows under relatively small rocks and artificial nesting structures were destroyed.

The artificial structures had been built by Welch over the years to entice puffins to breed higher up on the island.

This winter’s obliteration left puffin parents competing for available space, with multiple eggs in the same burrow complex and parents trying to roll unwanted eggs out of the way – puffins hatch and raise only one chick at a time.

“There was a nest of a 30-year-old nesting pair that was shot down the shoreline 30 feet. We found burrow markers tossed all over the island,” said McFarland. “It was so ironic and sad because the food for the puffins was so good.”

The island’s puffins saw one of their lowest birth rates in recent years.

“When I saw the damage, I almost started to cry,” Welch said. “We really need to think more than ever about taking a hard look at climate resilience for seabirds.”

This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from the Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.

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