My column two weeks ago (“On energy, New York’s head is in the sand”) generated significant interest and input on New York’s proposed offshore wind power projects and their potential negative effects on Long Island’s commercial fishing industry. That led me to dig further into the subject. I believe that what I’ve learned is important to share with Herald readers and state policymakers.
The argument our fishermen and women make is that a large wind farm off the South Shore will adversely impact critical fishing grounds and interfere with commercial fishing boats’ ability to navigate and fish near the proposed wind turbines. When I started looking at this issue, I began by trying to find out how existing offshore wind farms have affected fishing grounds in their vicinity. But since there are so few of them along the East Coast, my search led me to wind farms off the European coast that have been in operation for some time.
Several of the largest of them were built by some of the same companies proposing similar ones off the U.S. coast, including off Long Island. Independent studies recorded measurable effects on fish populations during underwater construction of the wind turbines. And once construction was finished, the area around the towers was often off limits to vessels, shrinking available commercial fishing waters.
But Europe’s commercial fishermen have worked actively with energy companies, European governments and the European Union to find a balance among these competing interests. In fact, a major EU initiative has been undertaken to implement a “framework for maritime spatial planning” that will carefully map out the sharing of offshore waters with fishing and wind power uses (bit.ly/2qKYeK7).
Here in the U.S., offshore wind power is just getting under way. There are only a handful of ocean-based wind turbine farms. The planning and construction of new ones should be closely coordinated by our state and federal governments, especially as it relates to the impact on fishing. Recently, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management held up approval of a key federal permit for a wind power project supported by the state of Massachusetts, to be constructed off Nantucket, until a “cumulative impact analysis” of the project is complete.