DOVER — As part of ongoing federal review of US Wind’s Maryland Offshore Wind Project, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management released its final environmental impact statement, detailing major impacts to North American Right Whales, commercial and recreational fishing and visual resources.
However, in each of these cases, the agency has decided the impacts are more or less line with current uses.
The report listed about 20 biological, physical, socioeconomic and cultural resources and weighed five different wind farm configurations against its potential impacts as negligible, minor, moderate or major.
Of the five, the first option was an evaluation of past or ongoing activities, the others included the preferred alternative, an alternate cable route, a reduced visual impact option and a reduced impact to habitat option.
The topic of birds often comes up in wind farm conversations, and BOEM’s evaluation of bird health does include minor and moderate negative impacts to bird populations, but also predicts minor to moderate beneficial impacts to offset the drawbacks. The exception is doing nothing at all, as this is expected to have minor negative impacts without the offset.
Heading out to the deeper water and another popular topic when discussing environmental impacts of offshore wind facilities are the marine mammal impacts, like the North American Right Whale.
Including maintaining the status quo, BOEM expects major impacts to the whales no matter what, since issues like boat strikes and entanglement are ongoing. Seals, dolphins, and other toothed and baleen whales are all expected to suffer moderate impacts with minor benefits both immediately and over time.
More detail was provided for whales due to marine mammal protection laws.
Among the most-affected resources within the report are commercial and recreational fishing, which is given the range of minor to major negative impact by the government agency, with opportunities for minor offsets for some for-hire fishing.
Finally, while admitting baseline activities provide only minor visual impacts to the area, all other options include major impacts to visual resources.
The full report, along with other information about the project, is available here .
The report considers construction, operation, maintenance and eventual decommission in its findings.
"Our environmental review carefully considered the best available science and information provided by Tribes, other government agencies, local communities, industry, ocean users, and environmental organizations," Elizabeth Klein, BOEM director, said in the release announcing the report. “This vital collaboration with all our government partners and stakeholders will continue through the subsequent phases of the project."
If approved, the project proposes to install up to 114 turbines, up to four offshore substation platforms, one meteorological tower, and up to four corridors for offshore export cables, which would make landfall in Delaware Seashore State Park. The lease area is approximately 8.7 nautical miles offshore Maryland and approximately nine nautical miles offshore Sussex County, at its closest points to shore.
The turbines could generate between 1,100 and 2,200 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 750,000 homes, according to the release.
“We are well on our way to putting Maryland’s offshore wind goals that much closer to reality,” Jeff Grybowski, US Wind CEO, said in a release. “We applaud BOEM for the comprehensive and thorough review of our federal permit application. We are now one step closer to securing all of our federal permits by the end of this year, and look forward to the day we can get steel in the water.”
BOEM announced it will hold an offshore wind lease sale for the Central Atlantic on Aug. 14, auctioning areas offshore Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia that could generate up to 6.3 gigawatts of clean energy and power up to 2.2 million homes.
Staff writer Brian Gilliland can be reached at 410-603-3737 or bg@iniusa.org.
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