Saving Seafood

Law

Environmentalists sue New York, New Jersey and Delaware over endangered sturgeon

October 25, 2024 — New York, New Jersey and Delaware were accused in federal lawsuits Thursday of improperly allowing Atlantic sturgeon to be killed by commercial fishing operations even as the prehistoric fish is on the brink of disappearing.

The three parallel lawsuits filed by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network and Hudson Riverkeeper accuse the states of violating the Endangered Species Act by not obtaining necessary permits that allow commercial fisheries to catch and kill Atlantic sturgeon while they fish for other species such as striped bass and summer flounder. The environmentalists say the once thriving fish’s recovery is threatened because they are unintentionally caught in commercial nets as “bycatch.”

Atlantic Sturgeon in the Delaware River and Hudson River were listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act in 2012.

“The Atlantic sturgeon of our two rivers are at risk from being wiped from the face of this earth within our lifetime,” Delaware Riverkeeper Maya van Rossum said during an online news conference.

Read the full article at The Associated Press

Judge gives NOAA more time to study offshore drilling risks

October 22, 2024 — A federal judge has agreed to give NOAA Fisheries until next spring to complete its revised analysis of how offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico could harm the critically endangered Rice’s whale.

The decision is a key reprieve for the fossil fuel industry and the Biden administration. NOAA Fisheries was originally slated to lose its existing analysis Dec. 20, which threatened to temporarily shut down new and existing offshore development in the region. A finalized analysis must be in place for companies to proceed with offshore oil and gas drilling.

NOAA Fisheries (NMFS) will now have until May 21, 2025, before the existing analysis — called a biological opinion or BiOp — will be tossed out by the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.

Read the full article at E&E News

Save LBI files notice of intent to sue Atlantic Shores to halt offshore wind project

October 9, 2024 — Citizens group Save Long Beach Island has notified federal agencies of its intent to sue offshore wind developer Atlantic Shores under the Endangered Species Act and the Outer Continental Shelf Act.

The notices give the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 60 days to resolve issues raised in the filings before the group pursues litigation, according to a news release from Save LBI.

An Atlantic Shores spokesperson said the company cannot comment on active litigation.

Read the full article at the The Press of Atlantic City

US appeals court removes regional fishery management councils’ pocket veto powers

October 4, 2024 — A U.S. appeals court has ruled that regional fishery management councils can no longer exercise pocket vetoes, meaning that they cannot selectively enforce decisions made by NOAA Fisheries or the office of U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.

The ruling is a partial victory for commercial fishers Raymond Lofstad and Gus Lovgren, who sued the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council for how it divvied up catch allocations of summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass between commercial and recreational fishermen in 2022.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Conservative Delaware think tank sues to stop Maryland offshore wind farm

October 2, 2024 — A lawsuit filed in Delaware’s Superior Court on Monday aims to stop electric cables from being buried under Delaware-controlled waters and coastline for a controversial offshore wind project.

US Wind’s Maryland Offshore Wind Project off the Delmarva coast has proposed running power transmission cables from its wind farm three miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean to 3Rs Beach at Delaware Seashore State Park. The cables would run beneath Delaware-regulated wetlands, state waters and the Indian River Bay and connect to a substation near a former power plant.

Gov. John Carney announced the start of formal negotiations with US Wind late last year, with the company proposing to lease the cable landing at 3Rs Beach for $350,000 a year with annual increases. Delaware would also get $76 million in renewable energy credits and $40 million for the community benefits projects over 20 years.

Former judge and GOP party chair Jane Brady filed the case on behalf of the Caesar Rodney Institute, a Delaware think tank that has connections to the fossil fuel industry and has promoted misinformation about the connection between offshore wind and whale deaths. The suit also names two commercial fishermen as plaintiffs — Wes Townsend and George Merrick.

Read the full article at WHYY

Pacific Seafood enmeshed in lawsuits concerning business practices of Galveston Shrimp Company subsidiary

October 1, 2024 — Clackamas, Oregon, U.S.A.-based Pacific Seafood is involved in at least three lawsuits related to the operation of its Galveston Shrimp Company subsidiary.

The most recent, filed 23 September, involves a suit brought by the company’s former finance director, Justin Ottman, who claims his employment was wrongfully terminated after he raised concerns about potential fraud involving Galveston Shrimp Company (GSC), a shrimp processor based in Galveston, Texas, U.S.A. that Pacific acquired in 2011.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Federal permit for massive Alaska gold mine fails in court challenge

October 1, 2024 — A federal judge on Monday ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Land Management should have considered a far more catastrophic spill of chemical tailings before approving the Donlin Gold Project in Alaska.

Chief U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason agreed with a group of Native American communities, who challenged a final environmental impact statement that the two federal agencies prepared and that only looked at the possibility of a failure involving 0.5% of the total capacity of the 2,351-acre tailings storage facility to be constructed as part of the mining operation.

“The court finds that federal defendants violated [the National Environmental Policy Act] by failing to consider a larger tailings spill and by characterizing a catastrophic spill as a ‘worst case’ and declining to assess such a scenario on that basis,” Gleason wrote. “A spill of more than 0.5% of the tailings volume is reasonably foreseeable because a person of ordinary prudence would take one into account in reaching a decision.”

The judge didn’t agree that the final environmental impact statement fell short in evaluating the project’s potential impact on human health or the impact of river barges on rainbow smelt subsistence fisheries, as the plaintiffs argued, but agreed with them that it violated the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act by not considering the possible impact of a larger tailings spill on subsistence resources.

Read the full article at the Courthouse News Service

Nantucket group appeals to Supreme Court to end offshore wind projects and protect endangered whales

September 30, 2024 — A group of Nantucket, Massachusetts, residents are appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court in their challenge to the industrialization of parts of the Atlantic Ocean, where they say offshore wind farms – developed with the blessing of the federal government – are putting an endangered whale species at risk.

The group, Nantucket Residents Against Turbines, argues in its petition to the high court that “the federal government has lost sight of its statutory obligations to conserve endangered species that will be directly affected by the construction of thousands of wind turbines in the Atlantic Ocean.”

They argue that the federal agencies that authorized the leasing of the water area to wind turbine companies excluded certain data in their analysis to the benefit of offshore wind development.

“Despite the agencies’ explicit statutory duty to consider all ‘best information available,’ regarding the impacts its actions might have on an endangered or threatened species and those habitats, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), did not consider the cumulative impacts of other planned projects when they authorized and issued permits to construct the Vineyard Wind 1 Project.”

Read the full article at Fox News

Judge in Alaska sets aside critical habitat designation for threatened bearded, ringed seals

September 30, 2024 — A judge in Alaska has set aside a federal agency’s action designating an area the size of Texas as critical habitat for two species of threatened Arctic Alaska seals.

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason last week found the National Marine Fisheries Service did not explain why the entire 174-million-acre (70-million-hectare) area was “indispensable” to the recovery of the ringed and bearded seal populations. Gleason said the agency “abused its discretion” by not considering any protected areas to exclude or how other nations are conserving both seal populations, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

She vacated the critical habitat designation, which included waters extending from St. Matthew Island in the Bering Sea to the edge of Canadian waters in the Arctic, and sent the matter back to the agency for further work.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Alaska prevails in challenge to critical habitat designation for threatened seals

September 28, 2024 — It’s back to the drawing board for the federal agency tasked with designating critical habitat for ringed and bearded seals in Alaska after a federal judge sided on Thursday with the state, which said the agency overreached in the protections.

In 2022, the National Marine Fisheries Service designated over 160 million acres of water spanning from the Alaska shoreline to the international dateline in much of the Bering Sea, as well as the shelf of the Beaufort Sea and all of the Chukchi Sea, as critical habitat for the seals.

Alaska sued the agency and the Center for Biological Diversity which intervened in the case, in early 2023, describing the designation as unprecedented and accusing the agency of violating environmental laws.

U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Gleason agreed with the state that the National Marine Fisheries Service didn’t act in accordance with the Endangered Species Act when making the designations.

“Simply because NMFS is unable to identify a less extensive, specific geographic location for breeding or molting does not explain why the 160-million-plus-acre areas it identified as critical habitat are ‘necessary’ or ‘indispensable,’” the Barack Obama appointee wrote of ensuring the seals’ survival and recovery.

The service listed both subspecies of seals — the Arctic ringed seals and the Beringia distinct population segment of bearded seals — as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2012. The listing granted the seals more protections, including the designation of critical habitat.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service