State and Local Archives - Page 86 of 894

MARYLAND: What happened to offshore wind in Maryland?

December 28, 2022 — Energy company Orsted is pausing “all development spend” on an offshore wind project in Maryland and may cancel the project entirely. The hiatus was announced by the Danish company’s CEO last month — on the same day Orsted also said it was ceasing development on two offshore wind projects in New Jersey.

Officials in both states were taken by surprise, including New Jersey’s governor, who publicly lambasted Orsted.

Orsted’s offshore wind project in Maryland, called Skipjack, has been in development since 2017, according to its website. The farm was supposed to generate 966 megawatts of clean energy, enough to power about 300,000 homes. The company also developed a site at Tradepoint Atlantic — a large industrial complex in Baltimore County that also houses distribution warehouses for companies like Amazon and FedEx — to support the now discontinued New Jersey offshore wind projects.

Read the full article at the Baltimore Banner

NEW JERSEY: Complaint against offshore wind developer Atlantic Shores dismissed by NJ utilities board

December 26, 2023 — An anti-offshore wind organization suffered a loss Wednesday when a state agency dismissed its petition to open a hearing that would have affected the income of Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind, a 1.5-gigawatt project that will be built off Long Beach Island.

The organization Save Long Beach Island Inc., or Save LBI, petitioned the state Board of Public Utilities for a hearing, saying the board should decrease the value of Atlantic Shores’ Offshore Wind Renewable Energy Certificates, better known as ORECs.

Renewable energy certificates, including those for offshore wind projects, determine how much electricity customers pay for renewable energy and are issued for each megawatt-hour of electricity generated for the power grid. The prices are calculated through the costs of equipment, construction and operational costs, project revenue, tax incentives, grants and other subsidies and expenses for a project.

In August, Save LBI filed a petition for a hearing from the Board of Public Utilities and argued Atlantic Shores’ OREC prices were too high. The organization said in its filing that the OREC calculation did not include impacts on local tourism and commercial fisheries, miscalculated the social cost of carbon, and “misrepresent(ed) statewide impacts.”

“They’re simply not calculating these benefits and costs correctly,” said Bob Stern, president of Save LBI.

Read the full article at app.

FLORIDA: While fish are plentiful off Wakulla County coast, marine heat waves concern environmental groups elsewhere

December 26, 2023 — The following transcript was released by WTXL:

“The fishing is greater than ever.”

Captain Joel Weir runs a fishing charter that goes around the world and in these waters off Panacea. “The fish we have the grouper the snapper fishing everything is phenomenal.”

He says business is good, but the Marine Stewardship Council tells me they’re concerned about the future of fishing in our oceans.

“They’re experiencing water temperatures that are higher than normal.”

ALASKA: Fishermen and community leaders react to Trident announcement to sell a third of its Alaska plants

December 24, 2023 — Gerry Cobban Knagin is a commercial fisherman. She and her family have fished around Kodiak and sold their harvest to Trident Seafoods, one of the largest seafood processors in the country, on and off for decades.

But on Dec. 12, the company announced it’s selling off about a third of its Alaska processing plants, including their year-round facility in Kodiak. She said the announcement was a huge shock for almost everyone on the island.

“Speaking with [Trident] management, there wasn’t any heads up for anyone,” Knagin said. “And they decided, according to management, that they wanted full transparency so that the fleet would know.”

Trident Seafoods has a huge footprint in Kodiak – the processing plant is one of the biggest buildings in the city’s downtown and can process more than a million pounds of pollock a day.

The company has been a part of the community for half a century and employs between 100 and 300 people, depending on what fishery they’re processing. That doesn’t even include all of the fishermen who run independent businesses that sell fish to them, like Knagin.

But now, all of those people are left questioning their job security.

The archipelago’s Tanner crab season starts next month but Knagin said she’s dismayed that there seems to be little commitment from the company for upcoming fishing seasons.

“They [Trident] will be buying Tanners, and they will be buying for the A season of Pollock – they cannot expand on anything else past that,” she said. “So, we are salmon fishermen, and they cannot guarantee that they will be available for us to buy our salmon.”

Alexis Telfer, with Trident’s corporate communications, declined to verify if they will be buying Tanner crabs or salmon next summer, and refused to comment further. She said they’re focused on supporting their employees, fishermen, and partners at this time.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

VIRGINIA: As other wind projects stall, Virginia’s approach keeps Dominion’s on track

December 24, 2023 — Back in 2011, Dominion Energy sent Diane Leopold, then a senior vice president for generation, to Greater Gabbard wind farm, 14 miles off the English coast in the North Sea, to look at a new-to-the-U.S. way of making electricity: offshore wind farms.

She came back with news that they could work in Virginia — wind conditions were similar, turbines could be anchored in deep and choppy seas and, key for this engineering graduate of England’s Sussex University, there was a clear path from the 3-megwatt turbines she saw to the larger ones that would make wind an affordable way to generate electricity.

“The biggest issue at the time was what’s the cost going to be for the customers,” said Leopold, who is now Dominion’s chief operating officer. “The technology fully proved out … but the ability to go from 3-megawatt turbines to 6-megawatt turbines to 11 to now almost 15 helps the economies of scale really get that cost down for the customers,” she said as she recalled Dominion’s first steps toward what became a $9.8 billion plan for an offshore wind farm capable of powering up to 660,000 homes.

Read the full article at the Richmond Times-Dispatch

ALASKA: Southeast chinook stocks expected to be low again in ’24

December 24, 2023 — It’s likely to be another weak year for king salmon returns to the major river systems of Southeast Alaska in 2024.

The Alaska Department of Fish & Game issued its 2024 Southeast Alaska Chinook Salmon forecasts on Monday (12-18-23).

Of the 11 chinook stocks in the region, only the Chilkat River is expected to have an adequate number of chinook returning to spawn. Nevertheless, this number – known as escapement – is still in the middle of the range, and could be lower depending on how many fish are harvested before they get to the river.

The Alaska Department of Fish & Game has adopted action plans to try and limit the catch of king salmon bound for Southeast Rivers, but some are always intercepted.

However, ADF&G assessment biologist Philip Richards says overharvest is probably not the problem.

Read the full article at KCAW

CALIFORNIA: Northern California Dungeness opener set for Jan. 5

December 22, 2023 — California will open its northernmost fishing zones for Dungeness crabbers Jan. 5, with closures continuing off the central and southern coasts to avoid humpback whale entanglements, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife said Wednesday.

Zones 1 and 2 from the Sonoma/Mendocino county line to the Oregon border can start fishing in early January, with a reassessment expected Jan. 11 on whether zones 3 to 6 to the south can be opened.

Under the state’s Risk Assessment and Mitigation Program criteria, the 2023-24 Dungeness season opening has been delayed due to whale sightings and entanglements, including one humpback reported entangled in crab gear Nov. 11 in Monterey Bay.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Trident Seafoods announces plan to streamline, modernize operations

December 21, 2023 — Trident Seafoods, a corporate giant among North American seafood processors, is looking for potential buyers for four of its shoreside plants in Alaska as part of a restructuring plan announced on Tuesday from its headquarters in Seattle.

Such bold action is necessary to deliver fair value to fleet, communities and all stakeholders into the future, said Joe Bundrant, CEO of the company built by his father, Chuck Bundrant, starting more than 50 years ago with a single fishing vessel.

Bundrant said he remains confident overall of the Alaska seafood industry and Trident’s role in it. He acknowledged these significant changes and said the company is focused on treating its impacted employees and communities with the respect and compassion they deserve.

“Embracing these changes and operating a more streamlined company will allow us to reinvest in the communities, people, processes, and assets that enable us to continue our mission of responsibly sharing wild Alaska seafood with the world,” he said.

Read the full article at the Cordova Times

MAINE: Homely fish makes for hearty holiday feast

December 21, 2023 — Monkfish stew will be featured on the menu of Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program’s annual holiday supper Saturday, Dec. 23. This is the third year running that Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, a Brunswick-based nonprofit, will donate 50-60 servings worth to feed the community.

Monkfish, a groundfish whose appearance has earned it the nicknames “frogfish” and “sea-devil,” wouldn’t be most people’s first choice off the menu. Not unexpectedly, they’re hard for fishermen to sell. That has been changing over the past few years, thanks in large part to the fishermen’s association.

In 2020, the association started a program called Fishermen Feeding Mainers to buy local fishermen’s catch of groundfish such as hake, flounder, cod, haddock, pollock and monkfish, and donate it to food pantries, schools and community organizations. Groundfish, or fish that spend the majority of their lives on the ocean floor, can be caught using gillnets, a method that avoids damaging the seabed and reduces bycatch.

Over the past three years, Fishermen Feeding Mainers has put $1.2 million into the fishing industry, funded by a mixture of grants, donation and foundation support, and COVID relief funds — yielding 650,000 pounds of groundfish that MCFA has then brought to local tables.

“Some of the feedback we got when we first started donating fish was that it was tricky to know how to prepare monkfish,” said Susan Olcott, operations director at Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association. “It’s a little bit different in its texture than some of the flaky white fish people are more familiar with, like cod or haddock. So, we decided to make something easy to serve to introduce people to monkfish — and that led to the stew.”

MCFA now sells thousands of packages of monkfish stew every year, made with Maine monkfish by Hurricane Premium Soups and Chowders in Greene, with proceeds benefitting the Fishermen Feeding Mainers program.

Read the full article at the Press Herald

ALASKA: ‘It’s troubling for every one of us’: Kodiak reacts to Trident processing plant sales

December 20, 2023 — Gerry Cobban Knagin and her family fished for Trident Seafoods on and off for decades. She said the company’s announcement last week that it will sell four Alaska processing plants, including Kodiak’s, was a huge shock for almost everyone on the island.

“Speaking with (Trident} management, there wasn’t any heads up for anyone,” she said. “And they decided, according to management, that they wanted full transparency so that the fleet would know, they don’t have any buyers yet, but they wanted to put it out that everything is for sale.”

The other Trident plants for sale are in False Pass, Petersburg, and Ketchikan. The company will also either sell or retire the historic Diamond NN Cannery in Naknek, as well as its support facilities in Chignik.

The archipelago’s Tanner crab season starts next month but Knagin said she’s dismayed that there seems to be little commitment for upcoming fishing seasons.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media