August 7, 2017 — On Friday, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) issued its final supplemental environmental impact statement (EIS) on the 468-megawatt Cape Wind project. In July of last year, an appeals court held that the agency should have used better data to determine the conditions of the seafloor for the project before issuing a lease. The final EIS states that the additional data it gathered does not change its prior finding that drilling foundations for the project in the seabed would only temporarily disturb sedimentation, and the overall impacts to water quality would be minor. The Cape Wind project is on hold after it missed a financing deadline, which led National Grid and NStar (now Eversource) to cancel contracts to buy power from it:
BOEM is announcing the availability of the Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the Cape Wind Energy Project. This supplement to the 2009 Final EIS has been prepared in response to a 2016 remand order of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility v. Hopper, 827 F.3d 1077 (D.C. Cir. 2016).
The Final SEIS is available for review on the BOEM website at: https://www.boem.gov/Massachusetts-Cape-Wind/.
In the Final SEIS for the Cape Wind Energy Project, BOEM examines the available geological survey data, including the geotechnical data and reports submitted to BOEM since the 2009 Final EIS, and any other relevant material that relate to the adequacy of the seafloor to support wind turbines in the lease area.
The Final SEIS also includes a summary of all the comments received on the Draft SEIS and BOEM’s responses to those comments.