Act Now
The comment period for the BOEM document has closed. The Final Environmental Assessment is viewable here. Our comments and concerns were NOT considered. Your voice can still be heard by signing the petition to halt these Offshore Wind Leases off Cape Cod National Seashore and in the Gulf of Maine!
If you would like to sign the petition (but not through Change.org), please complete this form below:
Please also support the New England Fisherman’s Stewardship Alliance (NEFSA) by signing their petition as well!
Our friends at Green Oceans have a tremendous amount of important information to share as well!
The Gulf of Maine is home to a diverse ecosystem that is crucial for many protected and endangered species; including the North Atlantic Right Whale and other whales; many rare, threatened and endangered birds; and for the commercial and recreational fishing communities. The diverse ecosystem is crucial to the health of our oceans and the air we breathe. The Draft Environmental Assessment (EA), however, does not sufficiently address the potential impacts on these marine resources. The Draft EA fails to consider the long-term effects.
It is not acceptable to sell leases that use technologies not yet widely implemented, especially in an area known for its rich biodiversity and protected species without first understanding their impacts.
These issues and more have been highlighted by numerous environmental Non-Governmental Organizations, several federal agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and those who depend on the Gulf of Maine for their livelihood and recreation.
Furthermore the Draft Environmental Assessment overlooks the consequences of constructing and placing the large wind turbines that are proposed to be almost 1,200 feet high and the structures needed for floating technology. The proposed wind turbines in the Gulf of Maine would utilize floating technologies that have more complex anchoring systems and platforms compared to the existing wind turbines in shallower waters.
It is illogical to conduct an environmental review that only includes the impacts of surveying and meteorological buoys before selling the leases.
There are indeed Historic Properties that are Affected for the Issuance of a Commercial Lease within the Gulf of Maine on the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf Offshore Maine even though the Draft Environmental Assessment doesn’t assess this factor.
Any assessment must include the Nauset Archaeological District, within Cape Cod National Seashore which was one focus of substantial ancient settlement since at least 4,000 BC. Furthermore all of the following are on the National Register of Historic Places and experience of the location is dependent on an unobstructed view and vista of the Atlantic Ocean from CCNS: Highland Lighthouse, Nauset Lighthouse, Racepoint Lighthouse, The Old Harbor US Lifesaving Station, Marconi Wireless Station Site, The French Cable Hut, The Highland House, The Captain Edward Penniman House and Barn, The Fort Hill Rural Historic District, The Truro Highlands Historic District and The Dune Shacks of Peaked Hill Bars Historic District
We now know that the two offshore installations with 13 MW turbines both have had blade failures. The Vineyard Wind blade that is floating onto our beaches and the Dogger Bank blade failure with the wind installation that became operational in October of 2023. The environmental impacts are not fully assessed at this time. As blade debris currently washes up on our beaches, one questions the many impacts to whales, marine mammals, birds including the endangered piping plover and terns, fish, shellfish and other marine life. One questions the adverse impacts to our iconic Cape Cod National Seashore. So far no one has experienced a fiberglass shard getting into their eye while swimming or swallowing sea water with fiberglass shards, or slicing their foot open while walking barefoot on sandy beaches. No boat has encountered or been incapacitated by floating debris yet. However debris is still floating in our ocean and onto our beaches from the one 365 foot long turbine blade that plunged into the sea. Adverse impacts to tourism and the economies of Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and now Cape Cod are unknown at this time. The 1,000 wind turbines proposed for off of Cape Cod National Seashore and an additional 200 further north are planned to be 16-18 MW each and one assumes the blade length would be longer. This recent blade failure was during fairly calm weather in the summer season. There are numerous nor’easters and hurricanes off of Cape Cod National Seashore. The draft Environmental Assessment does NOT assess this factor.
Two 1.65 MW wind turbines in Falmouth, MA were recently decommissioned and demolished. It was ruled by Judge Muse these wind turbines caused “irreparable physical and psychological harm” to Falmouth citizens. One questions the adverse impacts of wind turbines that are 16 or 18MW each to people in waters nearby. One questions how far away harmful impacts to people and wildlife will be experienced by 10 GW and 3 GW of wind power especially since wind turbines emit infrasound and low frequency noise that is known to be harmful to people and animals. Whales can hear low frequency noise 200 miles away. The draft Environmental Assessment does NOT assess this factor.
All of the proposed lease areas are within the North Atlantic Right Whale Critical Habitat. No wind turbine should be allowed in the area shown on the map.
NOAA’s own Chief of Protected Species, Dr. Sean Hayes, sounded the alarm in May 2022, noting that not only the construction but also the operation of wind turbines could result in extinction. Letter to BOEM in 2022:
“Additional noise, vessel traffic, and habitat modifications due to offshore wind development will likely cause added stress that could result in additional population consequences to a species that is already experiencing rapid decline (30% in the last 10 years).
Right whales need dense aggregations of prey to make foraging energetically worthwhile, and disruptions to prey aggregations in the only known winter foraging area for right whales could have significant energetic and population consequences (Baumgartner and Mate 2003, 2005, van der Hoop et al 2019, Kenny et al 2020). Without dense aggregations of prey, right whales will search elsewhere for food, potentially at an energetic loss, given the likely increased metabolic travel costs and that alternative energetically beneficial foraging grounds may not exist during the winter. In addition, searching for new areas may place them in harm’s way as occurred during their shift to Canadian waters sometime after 2010, resulting in 17 observed mortalities in 2017 and another 10 in 2019, and estimates of more than 200 total mortalities since (Davies & Brilliant 2019, Pace et al. 2021).
The presence of structures such as wind turbines are likely to result in both local and broader oceanographic effects, and may disrupt the dense aggregations and distribution of zooplankton prey through altering the strength of tidal currents and associated fronts, changes in stratification, primary production, the degree of mixing, and stratification in the water column (Chen et al. 2021, Johnson et al 2021, Christiansen et al 2022, Dorrell et al 2022). Modeling studies in this region have found changes in distribution patterns of planktonic larvae under offshore wind build-out scenarios (Johnson et al. 2021, Chen et al. 2021), suggesting similar impacts could occur with right whale’s zooplankton prey. The scale of impacts is difficult to predict and may vary from hundreds of meters for local individual turbine impacts (Schultze et al. 2020) to large-scale dipoles of surface elevation changes stretching hundreds of kilometers (Christiansen et al. 2022). Additionally, offshore substations pose an unknown risk related to water. withdrawals and impingement/entrainment of zooplankton and other prey species.”
WE DON’T NEED TO DESTROY OUR ENVIRONMENT IN ORDER TO SAVE IT. LET’S WORK TOGETHER AND IMPLEMENT ACTUAL RESPONSIBLE SOLUTIONS TO STOP AND REVERSE CLIMATE CHANGE.