January 31, 2017 — A 12-to-15-turbine wind farm still will have to navigate a long and arduous regulatory approval process before it can be constructed in the waters between Montauk and Nantucket.
One of the hurdles it will have to clear will be convincing regulators that it will not have a negative impact on marine life in the area the wind farm will inhabit, or on the fishermen who draw their livelihoods from the seas surrounding it.
In the still-fledgling world of offshore wind-generated energy in the United States, commercial fishermen have emerged as the leading doubters of the overall benefits of this particular method of creating renewable energy.
Last fall, a consortium of commercial fishing interests sued, unsuccessfully, to halt a federal lease of hundreds of square miles of ocean floor in the New York Bight. The legal action claimed that the construction of hundreds of wind turbines in the area could restrict access to commercial fishermen and interfere with important fish migration patterns.