In taking aim at the Vineyard Wind Project, Robert Henneke, general counsel of Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), pointed out that the federal government ignored legal protections for stakeholders affected by the project, which he said would take away a 75,000-acre area used by the fishing industry to complete the wind energy project.
According to Insight, a Prysmian Group magazine, President Joe Biden delivered a speech in July in Brayton Point, Massachusetts, shining a spotlight on the project at a cable plant needed to link offshore windmills with the mainland. In the wake of the speech, the TPPF turned up the heat on the issue.
“In the Vineyard Wind project, the federal government ignored multiple legal protections for affected stakeholders and that triggered our lawsuit,” Henneke said, according to the Texas Public Policy Foundation website.
According to a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) news release, the 800-megawatt Vineyard wind project received approval in May 2021 as the first major offshore wind project in the country.
Moreover, according to the TPPF website, Ted Hadzi-Antich, a senior attorney for the Center for the American Future (CAF), which filed a lawsuit late last year against the Biden administration in an effort to challenge the project, maintains that by moving forward with the project, the government ignored the rights of Americans as it moves to develop wind energy.
The TPPF website also noted that Megan Lapp, a plaintiff in the CAF case noted that the BOEM pushed the project through without consideration of the impact on domestic lives, buisnesses or food production.
“They ignored what they knew was true,” she said in the TPPF news release. “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.”
Lapp, who is also the general manager of Seafreze Shoreside Inc., also noted in the TPPF news release that by doing that, the BOEM broke a law designed to protect Americans’ rights to the ocean.
According to the Nantucket Current, Nantucket is poised to receive $16 million to pay for potential impacts from the wind farm, paying for any possible cultural, economic and historical impact that the site could bring to the community.
