The Town of Ocean City’s lawsuit challenging the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval of the US Wind project will continue after a U.S. district court judge last week denied a motion to dismiss the case in its entirety.
On July 2, U.S. District Court Judge Stephanie Gallagher rejected US Wind’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit led by the city and backed by 34 co-plaintiffs.
However, the court did grant motions to dismiss three of the city’s eight claims against the federal government.
“We prevailed on five major claims—under the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act,” Mayor Rick Meehan said in a statement last week. “This ruling affirms our standing and allows our case against the U.S. Department of the Interior, challenging the legality of the agency’s approval of the Maryland Offshore Wind project, to proceed.”
Last fall, Ocean City government and several other co-plaintiffs filed a lawsuit challenging BOEM’s approval of the US Wind project, which will involve the construction of 114, 938-foot-tall wind turbines starting at about 11 miles off Ocean City’s coast and stretching out toward the horizon.
The lawsuit alleges the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the National Marine Fisheries Service failed to conduct a transparent approval process and meet statutory and regulatory requirements.