The federal government ignored legal protections for stakeholders threatened by the Vineyard Wind Project, which requires a 75,000-acre area used by the fishing industry, according to Texas Public Policy Foundation.
“In the Vineyard Wind Project, the federal government ignored multiple legal protections for affected stakeholders, and that triggered our lawsuit.” Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) General Counsel Robert Henneke said.
Last December, the TPPF's Center for the American Future (CAF) filed suit challenging approval of the project, according to a news release. The suit claimed the project would hurt the commercial fishing industry as well as the environment.
“In approving the Vineyard Wind Project, the federal government trampled the rights of Americans to pursue its misguided goal of developing offshore wind energy at any cost," CAF Senior Attorney Ted Hadzi-Antich said.
The Vineyard Wind Project was approved in May 2021 and is the first large-scale offshore wind project in the United States. This 800-megawatt project will be located offshore in the Massachusetts area, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).
“The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approved the project regardless of impact to U.S. lives, businesses and U.S. food production," Megan Lapp, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said in a TPPF release. "They ignored what they knew was true. BOEM approved the project and manipulated its process in favor of the developer knowing that it would eliminate fisheries, compromise navigation, jeopardize human safety on the sea and interfere with the radars that keep us safe. In so doing, they violated the law that was established to protect our rights as pre-existing ocean users."
Lapp, who is also the general manager of Seafreeze Shoreside Inc., called the project and its implications "unacceptable."
Nantucket is receiving $16 million in restitution for potential impacts of the Vineyard Wind's offshore wind farm, the Nantucket Current reported. The restitution covers potential historical, cultural and economic impacts that the wind farm will bring upon the town.
TPPF re-upped its criticism of the Vineyard Wind Project in response to a speech that President Joe Biden gave in Brayton Point, MA, touting the project. In late July, the president spoke at Brayton Point, where a manufacturing facility is being built to produce the heavy-duty cables required to connect the offshore windmills to the mainland.