US fishermen insisted Monday to a congressional subcommittee looking at offshore wind energy that they be consulted when crucial decisions are being made on the development of such projects, including where they are located and the level of access to the waters near them.
Fishermen should have been brought into the planning process from the start, Peter Hughes, of Atlantic Cape Fisheries, told U.S. House members from New Jersey and California who were holding a hearing at the Jersey Shore.
“Look at these slides,” he said, referring to diagrams of where proposed wind projects would be built. “They’re right smack dab where we are fishing. This is going to put people out of business.”
The purpose of the hearing was to gather input from the fishing industry and its advocates to be considered in future regulation of the nascent wind energy market. So far, a single five-turbine wind farm off Block Island, Rhode Island, is the only operating offshore wind farm in the United States, but states up and down the East Coast are readying plans for similar projects.
Capt. Ed Yates, a fisherman from Barnegat Light, New Jersey, said flounder, cod, and other species have moved away from underground cables at a wind project off Denmark.
The Christian Science Monitor