Robert Henneke, General Counsel of Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), says the federal government ignored legal protections for stakeholders affected by the Vineyard Wind project. This project would take away a 75,000-acre area used by the fishing industry to complete the wind-energy project.
“In the Vineyard Wind project, the federal government ignored multiple legal protections for affected stakeholders and that triggered our lawsuit,” Henneke said.
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.
“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." Ted Hadzi-Antich, a senior attorney for the Policy Foundation's Center for the American Future (CAF), 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 of Massachusetts.
“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 this case, said in a statement. "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. It’s unacceptable." Lapp is also the general manager of Seafreeze Shoreside Inc.
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, the story said.