Thread by @shellenberger

Industrial wind energy doesn't kill whales, insisted the media. But a new report by a top government scientist reveals that the Biden admin. broke the law in approving Empire Wind, while Revolution Wind is in a crucial "magical space for marine animals" at risk of extinction.

For years, the Biden Administration insisted that offshore wind energy projects complied with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the 1970 law that requires government agencies to use the best available science to evaluate the ecological impacts of major projects before the government can approve them.

But now, a scientific report, which reflects the official position of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), reveals that the approval of the Empire Wind project off New York and New Jersey violated this law.

The scientist who authored the report works for the U.S. government’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which is also known as NOAA Fisheries. It is part of the Department of Commerce, and which serves in an advisory capacity to the Department of the Interior on marine issues, including offshore wind development. The person spoke exclusively to Public.

“If you were to ask a marine mammal scientist where we shouldn’t put offshore wind energy, they would say this area,” said the scientist, referring to the Revolution Wind project. “It’s what we call a ‘magical space’ for marine animals. We have a dozen marine mammal species and whales, many individuals of varying populations, continuously using a very small area.”

The scientist, who has decades of experience researching the marine environments of the East Coast, said, “From my lab, I can see the turbines 20 miles from here at Revolution Wind. I’m familiar with the ocean in this area and have been out there a lot. It’s not uncommon for us to go out and see 50 or 60 right whales, out of a population of 372. The risk is high because we already have a declining population, and we know large aggregations of these animals occur in this space.”

Public showed the report to @LinowesLisa, a researcher who has studied the impact of wind industry boat traffic on whale deaths.

“It’s devastating,” she said. “The report reveals that NMFS scientists warned BOEM of Cholera Bank’s ecological importance and urged the agency to take the reasonable step of relocating six turbines from its most sensitive area. Yet BOEM chose to ignore the recommendation.”

The Empire project would effectively end the ability of the government to monitor the area.

Concluded the report, “the construction and operations of Empire Wind pose serious disruptions to NOAA’s established scientific surveys, which are vital for managing fisheries and protecting marine species.”

@LinowesLisa The Biden appointees worked to ram through the wind energy projects quickly. “The administration went hard and aggressive with goals so large that even the offshore wind energy industry didn’t feel like they could meet them," said the scientist.

The NMFS scientist described a difficult work environment, one where scientists were trying to save a whale species on the brink of extinction, but experienced heavy pressure from Biden administration officials to approve projects.

“We’re developing one for the largest offshore wind energy areas on earth in one of the last known winter foraging habitats for endangered North Atlantic right whales,” the NMFS scientist said. “There could be large-scale oceanic effects that could alter right whale feeding.”

@LinowesLisa “It was a stressful period of time,” said the NMFS scientist. “We needed to be careful of how we communicated because [we were told], ‘These projects were going forward and there’s not much more to say.’”

The leaked NMFS report warns that the Empire Wind project could disrupt the Mid-Atlantic’s “Cold Pool,” a band of nutrient-rich water that provides food to marine life. “Alterations to wind fields and the ocean–atmosphere interface,” said the report, “have the potential to modify both atmospheric and hydrodynamic patterns, potentially on large spatial scales up to dozens of miles from the offshore wind facility.”

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