September 27, 2023 — A group of Nantucketers is challenging key environmental approvals for Vineyard Wind, the offshore wind energy farm under construction south of Martha’s Vineyard.
Nantucket Residents Against Turbines filed an appeal with the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Saturday, calling on the court to overrule a district court’s decision to dismiss the group’s prior lawsuit. The residents previously alleged the federal agencies involved in permitting Vineyard Wind failed to consider the impacts of the project’s 62 turbines on the critically endangered right whale, which is known to swim through the Cape and Islands’ waters.
The lawsuit is one of several courtroom battles that have been waged in an attempt to stop Vineyard Wind. The project is expected to be the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in the country and could start producing energy this fall. Construction started earlier this year, and the farm has come out victorious in other legal cases.
The Nantucket residents initially sued the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2021. In May, a federal court judge in Boston dismissed the case.
But the group contends the case needs reconsideration.
“Absent an order from this Court reversing the District Court summary judgment denial, the project, which is now in the inchoate stages of construction, will be permitted to continue, sending the already highly endangered [North Atlantic right whale] careening further down the road toward extinction,” the group wrote in its appeal.