The price of oil has wind energy back on the table. Not everyone is convinced offshore wind farms will not create problems for fish habitat and fishermen. Photo: © Anthony Upton 2003
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Once again the fishing community finds itself between a rock and a hard spot over real estate issues. This time it’s not aquaculture that’s encroaching on the rights of fishermen, but the need for energy.
With a gas crunch in full swing and the price of oil so high that many alternative energy sources are now becoming financially feasible, fishermen in Cape Cod, Padre Island, and Buzzards Bay are facing proposals that could turn traditional fishing grounds into futuristic wind farms.
In Nantucket Sound, the proposed Cape Wind project would place 130 wind turbines over a 24 square mile radius of federal waters. In Texas, the Texas General Land Office has recently approved its second offshore wind farm proposal for the rights to 39,900 acres of submerged lands in the Gulf of Mexico. And on May 24, the Boston Globe reported that plans are in the works for a proposed 120 wind turbines, 450 feet tall, two miles off of Fairhaven and Dartmouth, in Buzzards Bay.
The plan, to put huge propeller turbines on oil rig-like platforms offshore, has brought out all of the usual organizations anxious to weigh in on the issue. The only thing unusual about this case is the way that the organizations have lined up. There’s a real ‘the end justifies the means’ situation going on. In Nantucket, Green Peace is supporting the wind farm proposals as a clean and renewable form of energy. But the coastal property owners there, including Senator Edward Kennedy, are opposed to the project. The biggest opposition for all three projects is coming from coalitions of bird groups, who are raising a ruckus over the image of thousands of migratory birds flying into the propeller blades and getting their heads whacked off. Unfortunately, while the media attention has been turned toward our fine-feathered friends, fishermen, who have the most to lose if the wind farms are built, are left with a long list of marine related questions that have gone mostly unanswered.
Ron Borjeson, vice president of the Massachusetts Commercial Fishermen’s Association, has been feeling the squeeze of the rock and the hard place. On one hand, Borjeson sees the need for renewable energy systems, but the reality is that the proposed towers on the Shoal would, “destroy our livelihood,” Borjeson says. “This is prime fishing territory.” The Massachusetts Commercial Fishermen’s Association is petitioning against the wind farm in Nantucket and is rallying an extensive letter-writing campaign targeting legislators. Many fishermen fear that the wind farms may adversely affect the local fishery resources—especially the effects of noise, vibration and physical intrusion in known migratory routes and feeding areas. The internal cables between the wind turbines and the shore connection should also be assessed for electromagnetic noise distortion. Ultimately, once the facilities are built, these fishing areas will not only become NO DRAGGING zones, but with Homeland Security at stake, the entire area may be put OFF LIMITS with a mile or two guarded buffer.
As Porter Hoagland of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution points out, offshore wind farms could change the way people use the ocean.
“The laws and regulations related to the placement of wind turbines in the ocean are at best rudimentary and inchoate; at worst, they are non-existent,” Hoagland writes. At stake, is the very place that fishermen make their living. At risk, is every square mile of ocean surface where the wind blows, including the Gulf of Maine.
