Meanwhile, Rhode Island bureaucrats give SouthCoast Wind’s transmission line plan a big thumbs-up.
Posted by Leslie Eastman
President Donald Trump clearly has climate cultists and green crooks among his top targets during his busy second term, which began with his signing an executive order in January to halt new or renewed offshore wind leases.
Now a huge offshore wind farm project on the east coast looks set to be pulled offline.
Back in Septemberreported that federal regulators were moving to revoke approval of SouthCoast Wind’s construction and operations plan, the last major permit required before installation of offshore turbines. The project, located about 23 miles south of Nantucket, was scheduled to build up to 141 turbines reportedly capable of powering approximately 840,000 homes in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration can proceed with revoking federal permits for the project.
The Trump administration signaled its intention to reconsider the permit in September, alleging that the project’s Environmental Impact Statement may have “understated or obfuscated impacts” that would possibly result in non-compliance with the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.
District Court of the District of Columbia Judge Tanya Chutkan, appointed by President Barack Obama, ruled in favor of the White House on Tuesday, saying that the project developers would not suffer “immediate and significant hardship” if the administration proceeded with the reconsideration.
The decision effectively allows the administration to strip the project of its federal approval, preventing its construction during President Donald Trump’s second term.
The Trump administration argued that environmental impacts may have been underestimated or misrepresented, invoking the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to justify the permit review.
The Trump administration said in September that it would consider revoking approval of the project during the Biden era. Months earlier, in March, the city of Nantucket sued the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in an effort to block the project. The city accused the agency of failing to comply with environmental and historic preservation laws when it issued the permit.
Shortly after returning to the White House, Trump issued a radical order stop all leasing of federal lands and waters for new wind farms. Since then, his administration has pursued several wind farms that had been granted federal permits by the Biden administration and were under construction or about to begin.
Despite this decision, eco-activist bureaucrats will continue to impose green energy fantasies on an unwilling population. Despite the judge’s ruling, which will likely result in the loss of the permit, regulators have approved construction of the transmission line for wind farms.
…[T]The way is clear for the Massachusetts offshore wind project to run power lines along the Sakonnet River and through Portsmouth to Mount Hope Bay, with approval from the Rhode Island Energy Facilities Siting Board on Tuesday.
Power purchase agreements between the project developer and utility providers in Massachusetts and Rhode Island have yet to be signed, despite a Nov. 1 deadline, amid continued uncertainty over the staying power of offshore wind under the Trump administration.
…Ronald Gerwatowski, chairman of the Rhode Island Energy Facilities Siting Board, acknowledged the “new level of uncertainty” surrounding SouthCoast Wind. But that didn’t stop the three-member panel from concluding its year-long review of the transmission lines that will connect the project, once built, to the onshore power grid.
“I’m very pleased with the request,” Gerwatowski said Tuesday. “When we got to the evidentiary stage, there was no evidence to support the denial of this license.”
However, the federal court ruling is a huge victory for local residents and marine life…especially whales.
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