||| FROM THE NANTUCKET INQUIRER & MIRROR |||

Orcas and Nantucket Islands are each roughly the same size and the same distance off their respective coasts. We share the same concerns about the high cost of living, lack of affordable housing, tourist management, ferry problems and environmental degradation. We are living on opposite ends of the country but many of the issues and opportunities are the same. Recently theOrcasonian and the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror decided to share articles of mutual interest with our readers.

(Nov. 21, 2024) The Select Board heard loud and clear Tuesday night, the public wants it to do whatever it can to stop or delay the permitting process for current and future offshore wind farms.

That was the sentiment of the vast majority of people who attended and spoke at the board’s forum on SouthCoast Wind, an offshore energy project close to receiving federal approval to build 147 turbines 23 miles southwest of the island.

But it’s not that simple, according to the Select Board and the town’s legal counsel Cultural Heritage Partners. They claim, given the way the federal permitting system is set up, the island can only apply for mitigation measures from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the federal agency in charge of permitting offshore wind farms.

“Our purview is limited to the impact on Nantucket as a historic landmark,” Select Board chair Brooke Mohr said. “I know it’s frustrating, it doesn’t feel adequate. But this is the process, I wish it was different.”

The town provided a “decision tree” that laid out the choices the island has and what the results would be.

They included walking away from mitigation discussions now, which town officials say will leave Nantucket with the meager offer that BOEM has currently put on the table: $150,000 and a historic property survey nobody asked for.

“One hundred fifty thousand is a joke,” Ellen Ray said. “The night sky is already ruined with all the red blinking lights. BOEM just seems to want to shove this through.”

The other option the town has is to request greater compensation and mitigation. Some of the proposals Tuesday included setting up a response fund to be used for decommissioning and blade failures, pay for a baseline health screening of residents, move the turbines further away from the island and ask for greater monetary compensation.

But a number of people who spoke said no amount of mitigation could make up for the impact the turbines have and will have on the island.

If BOEM rejected a request for additional compensation, the town could challenge the denial in court.

But CHP has long claimed that fighting the federal permitting process in court will only result in a redo of the permitting process. The court cannot order design changes, specific mitigation or cancel the project. “The town has requested a better turbine failure plan, but BOEM has so far ignored that,” CHP attorney Will Cook said. “This permitting process does not provide any veto power. The laws are not set up to stop development.”

There is also already precedent, the town and CHP say, for allowing wind farms to proceed on schedule while permitting appeals play out in the court.

“It sounds like you’re saying we just have to suck it up and get some mitigation. I don’t see how any of our comments are going to be heard, it’s so late in the process, I feel like this is lip service,” said Val Oliver of the local opposition group ACK for Whales.

Oliver was referring to the fact that the permitting schedule laid out for BOEM has the mitigation portion wrapping up in December.

All of this comes against the backdrop of what is expected to be a major policy shift regarding offshore wind with the incoming Trump administration replacing the Biden administration, which had made offshore wind a core tenet of its energy policy.

Trump has said that he would end offshore wind “on day one” of his second term.

“There may be a window (to stop offshore wind development) because there was a major administration change federally,” Select Board member Dawn Holdgate said. “But we are part of Massachusetts. Our governor very highly supports wind energy.”

But Mohr said that because BOEM’s cultural heritage permitting process concludes in December before any administration change, that’s not something that the town could bank on.

The Select Board said it would take all the comments under advisement and issue a public response to BOEM “in the next few days.”

 

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