The Town of Ocean City will join Fenwick Island and several local organizations in suing a federal agency over its approval process for the US Wind project off Maryland’s coast.
On Friday, the Town of Ocean City announced it has retained Marzulla Law, LLC to file a lawsuit against the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). The lawsuit, which lists several co-plaintiffs, challenges the agency’s process for approving the US Wind project, which will involve the construction of 114, 938-foot-tall wind turbines roughly 10 miles off the coast of Ocean City.
“We have a responsibility to protect our ecosystem, our economy, view shed and our future,” Mayor Rick Meehan said in a news release. “For the past seven and half years we have been trying to work with the State of Maryland and the federal government to address our concerns with this project. All of our concerns were either ignored or considered insignificant. It is unfortunate that it has come to this, but the Town was left with no choice but to file suit against BOEM and challenge their favorable record of decision on the US Wind project.”
Just a couple of facts.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) promotes energy independence, environmental protection, and economic development by managing offshore energy resources.
With fewer than 600 employees, BOEM is a fairly small agency tasked with managing almost 3.2 billion acres of the seabed — greater than the size of the nation’s land acreage
Mission—The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) manages development of the Nation’s offshore energy and mineral resources in an environmentally and economically responsible way.
BOEM manages approximately 1.7 billion acres containing about 8000 active leases of this federally owned offshore area while protecting the human, marine, and coastal environments through advanced science and technology research.
While the federal government does not own the land on the coast itself, it does own the submerged lands beyond a certain distance from the shoreline, known as the Outer Continental Shelf, giving them primary control over the natural resources in those waters; coastal states generally have ownership rights closer to the shore within a 3-mile limit.
So the way I read this, the coastal states have a say so on the ocean up to about 3 miles out. The Federal Government owns the rest. Is this why they want to put up these wind turbines anywhere between 10 to 20 miles out where the states may not have a voice in the decisions being made ? But yet the power lines and distribution systems will be on state property or property purchased by the state.