By David Wojick
Dominion Energy has issued a brief response to the whale protection lawsuit filed by CFACT et al. When I first saw it, I thought there must be some mistake, but it has appeared in a lot of press reports.
This central claim by Dominion is simply absurd: “The overwhelming consensus of federal agencies and scientific organizations is that offshore wind does not adversely impact marine life.” No adverse impact? Seriously?
In reality, the responsible federal agency predicts an enormous adverse impact.
NOAA‘s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has authorized Dominion to acoustically harass almost 80,000 marine mammals and these noise harassments are certainly adverse impacts. They even include temporary deafness, which can easily be deadly.
First, some legal Definitions from the Marine Mammal Protection Act that NMFS is supposed to enforce:
“Level A harassment means any act of pursuit, torment, or annoyance that has the potential to injure a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild.”
“Level B harassment refers to acts that have the potential to disturb (but not injure) a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild by disrupting behavioral patterns, including, but not limited to, migration, breathing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering.”
Note that while level B harassment is not itself injurious, it may lead to injury or death. For example, if the animal flees the noise harassment into heavy ship traffic and is struck and killed.
Analog: a firecracker thrown at a dog causes it to run into a busy street, where it is struck and killed. The car killed the dog, but the firecracker caused the death.
A year and a half ago, I wrote an article about this risk: “How to kill whales with offshore wind.”
https://www.cfact.org/2022/09/27/how-to-kill-whales-with-offshore-wind/
It is specifically about the Dominion project.
Here are the huge Dominion construction noise harassment numbers.
Roughly 80,000 harassments are predicted (and authorized) by NMFS!
Whales
Level A 17
Level B 599
Total 616
Right Whales (included in Whales)
Level B 17
Dolphins
Level B 78,250
Porpoises
Level A 2
Level B 141
Total 143
Seals
Level A 4
Level B 436
Total 440
Total level A 23
Total level B 79,442
Total 79,465
Roughly 80,000 harassments
Source: “Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Commercial (CVOW-C) Project Letter of Authorization”
Table 1, Pages 36-38
Most of the Dominion noise harassment is from pile driving (plus some sonar). Here is a good example of the Feds describing how pile driving noise harassment can cause harm. I could not have said it better.
“It is possible that pile driving could displace animals into areas with lower habitat quality or higher risk of vessel collision or fisheries interaction. Multiple construction activities within the same calendar year could potentially affect migration, foraging, calving, and individual fitness. The magnitude of impacts would depend upon the locations, duration, and timing of concurrent construction. Such impacts could be long term, of high intensity, and of high exposure level. Generally, the more frequently an individual’s normal behaviors are disrupted or the longer the duration of the disruption, the greater the potential for biologically significant consequences to individual fitness. The potential for biologically significant effects is expected to increase with the number of pile-driving events to which an individual is exposed.”
Empire Wind Draft Environmental Impact Statement v.1, Page 3.15-14, PDF page 372
I cannot imagine why Dominion would put out such an absurd claim. Is it ignorance, deception, or something else? In any case, I would love to see them try to use this nutty argument in Court.
It seem to me that this strongly depends on the definition of “adverse” and perhaps also “impact”. It could be argued from the fact that 80,000 permits have been issued is good evidence that said federal agencies do not believe any “impacts” will be “adverse”. Its all about how words are used.
Given that Level A harassment implies injury it is impossible in standard language for that not to be an adverse impact. But Dominion’s claim is even worse as it is for ALL offshore wind where there is a lot more Level A.
they should have said no death which is the standard claim by the Feds. Or perhaps no “significant” adverse impact. A good weasel word that.
Only “scientists” in the pay of Big Wind!
It is more that wind turbines are Green Prayer Wheels, serving a holy cause. That excuses any downside harm.
On land, raptors and bats. Offshore, whales and other sea mammals. For wind systems with about 30% (land) to 40% (offshore) capacity factors that means fossil fuels have to back them up 60-70% of the time. A very poor environmental tradeoff in many ways. Not green, just mean.
In a “tradeoff”, usually both side get something.
What did the “environment” get by “The Green Environmentalist” killing critters for no good reason?
Oh but they have a reason that they chant endlessly. “Stopping climate change” which they claim will kill far more critters. Most press defending OSW includes this false reason.
They want no bad media publicity, so responded with a PR lie. SOP.
They want you to go away. Don’t.
They want their shareholders to think it is environmentally OK. It isn’t.
What they haven’t told their customers is that this project has an LCOE about 7.5x more than could have been provided with CCGT and cheap natgas from the nearby Marcellus shale in West Virginia.
CEO Blue undoubtedly lives near Dominion HQ in Richmond, Va. Bright blue city, so undoubtedly this wind project is a cocktail circuit calling card for him. He won’t let go easily because of the green cred. He needed the PR lie to maintain his green social cred until your well founded ESA suit is litigated.
You should be able to get a preliminary injunction against the start of piledriving based on several other similar suits against pipelines and such, plus the clearly faulty ESA endangerment ruling concerning migratory right whales. Previously commented on. Hoping you prevail.
Don’t forget, Rud, that the Democrat controlled Virginia legislature with a Democrat governor MANDATED that Dominion build the offshore wind field. Dominion has stated that even if they stopped at the time of the statement, the rate payers would be stuck with 5 billion in costs.
Youngkin could not repeal the legislation since he never had control of both houses of the legislature and has since lost the one house he did have. The Republican losses were due primarily to MASSIVE campaign contributions to Democrat candidates by Green liberal organizations.
So the company, being a monopoly, gets a set % of the GROSS income, and with the wind fiasco, the gross will go through the roof. NOW I don’t really think Dominion WANTS the headache of the offshore scam project, so they MIGHT just let the courts close it down, knowing they will get ALL their expenses PLUS the guaranteed profit, even if not one bird chopper is built while harassing whales.
I did not know that. Thanks for the important state insights.
Let’s hope the ratepayers still get stuck with $5 billion and vote the green rascals out. Nuff is nuff.
Sounds like a ‘graceful’ forced court exit is Dominion’s best financial option now, as offshore wind has horrendous ongoing maintenance costs based on limited UK experience. Sort of an inverse Sue and Settle thing.
VA Ratepayers still get stiffed bigly, but as voters maybe sufficiently miffed to vote the remaining green legislature rascals out and stop this nonsense.
Yes this is the only OSW project that dies not use a power purchase agreement from a private developer. The risk is to the ratepayers. However they are also the voters who elected the people who created this mess so they bear some responsibility which may well bite them.
Few will make the connection. The Party is the voice of Allah, etc. on earth.
Unlikely. They will just blame it on someone else, as usual. Probably on Trump.
Good point, Drake. The Dems in Virginia mandated this, it is not a lefty wet dream of Dominion’s management. My only hope is Virginia will go a short way down this path until it becomes painfully obvious it does not work.
Dominion calculates that “Big Green” has sway over and protection against all the key government agencies.
And beyond that, the Democrat Party itself.
(I would have added president Biden, but poor old Joe would reply that Dominion’s voting machines are totally accurate and wouldn’t mis-count whales anywhere)
Yes I think that NMFS is being rolled by the Bidenites in charge and their whale protection people are silently on our side. Their head endangerment scientist sent a letter to BOEM warning of the risk to critters from OSW. He has not been heard from since. I am not involved in the lawsuit but I bet that letter plays a role when the time comes.
CFACT is also suing against the heavy ship traffic, I assume?
And probably against any kind of human activity.
Maybe it’s just the guilt pangs of one of their donors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill
Again the abject ignorance flows from the abject LUSER..
There is a huge difference between the ship traffic and the noise from off-shore wind turbines, their installation and the repetitive low-frequency thump while they are operating.
Also trying to equate an accident…. with the intentional noise pollution of the oceans with hundreds of massive pile-driver actions, and the deliberate disruption of whale communications by wind turbines.
Can you try to be even more pathetic with your next comment !!
CFACT’s claim is simply that the federal biological analysis fails to consider cumulative effects as required by the ESA. It is a procedural argument.
As to ship traffic we need that while we do not need OSW. Bit of a difference. But I am happy to see that your argument is as silly as usual.
The opening sentence about “a major environmental disaster” is a lie in itself as within a few years only a forensic analysis could find any evidence that something had happened.
Still trying to equate a dreadful accident with DELIBERATE destruction by wind turbines.
Just how sick-minded are you !!
I’m not equating it. I’m saying CFACT and its donors don’t care about the environment.
Document your claim. A single example does not prove your claim.
The counterpoint is:
The Valdez accident was not PLANNED.
While wiki can be informative, it not a definitive authority given it based substantially on user inputs.
Oil corporations do donate to various organizations. But the amount of funding to the green insanity if much greater and with much less media attention than oil.
Oil contributions do not always dictate policy to the recipient, despite media accusations. In many cases, the percentage of funding is small, unlike the money fed to green activist organizations.
I could go on, but I doubt it will have any effect on your personal point of view.
Impacts of offshore wind farms: new evidence base25 May 2023
Just released: a new evidence base on the environmental impacts of offshore wind farm developments and the outcomes for marine ecosystem services.
https://www.pml.ac.uk/News/Impacts-of-offshore-wind-farms-new-evidence-base
Doesn’t seem to include acoustics
It is a literature collection. There is a lot of research on OSW acoustics that should be in there.
It looks hard to use. Here is a Google Scholar search.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=offshore+wind+&as_epq=&as_oq=acoustic+acoustics+noise&as_eq=&as_occt=any&as_sauthors=&as_publication=&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C49
With almost 400,000 hits.
I challenge all those who think this is no big deal to be put inside an MRI machine for 20 minutes without noise reduction headphones.
I don’t think the headphones would work in an MRI. Because, y’know, they have magnets in them.
I have had six MRIs, each time with headphones and music of my choice, Led Zep.
Did they give you four sticks with a needle first?
Probably piezoelectric headphones – no magnets involved
then imagine putting a wild animal in there. That is the OSW plan.
The art of being a lawyer is to make bricks without straw. When given pure crap for a case, your success depends on how well you and dress up pure drivel and hope that the court buys it. This is about gaming the system.
“Overwhelming consensus” of self-professed experts thinks this is ok with no shred of actual evidence to rely on. Hmm, this sounds familiar — is that a 97% consensus, you think?
Here is your mistake: they are talking about wind turbines and you’re talking about pile drivers.
here’s your mistake, in order to put the wind turbines up, they have to use pile drivers to provide a stable foundation for the turbines.
Except they are talking about the case. If they are talking about something else in their public statement about the case that is pure deception.
Also operational noise may be worse than pile driving when it comes to cumulative impact. Different projects will be built at different times but they will eventually all be running at the same time. They will also all be generating suspended sediments silt plumes which can dramatically reduce food supplies.
When talking about wind turbines, one must include shipping, construction, maintenance and repairs, operations, and system and component failures.
Pile drivers are part of construction. Granted operational noise is a longer duration, but pile drivers are more intense.
Story tip – Floating Offshore Wind Projects Will Squander Hundreds of Billions of Dollars › American Greatness (amgreatness.com)
Will? Already has in England and elsewhere.
Not really. There is no commercial scale floating wind so it is still just an idea in a stampede. The biggest operational facility to date is just 88 MW or basically nothing. But hundreds of thousands of MW are “planned” by governments who have no idea what they are doing. There are over a hundred designs proposed. Could be fun to watch.
Newspeak
There is a report, I did not bookmark, that says that wind farms affect current flow (hard to argue) resulting in higher levels of silt (a form of pollution to marine mammals) and affect air flow (hard to argue) and generate excessive levels of ozone (a fact, electric generators create ozone).
This is in addition to airborne casualties.
A point not raised in anything I have read is the UHI type effect of 200 foot tall, 40 foot diameter, steel/aluminum pillars on massive concrete bases. The surface area alone creates an UHI type effect and that affects the climate and the ecosystem. How much warming of the local waters will occur? No answer. How much warming of the local waters can be tolerated by the marine life? No answer. The point is, there will be this additional impact to the local environment.
It is difficult to wrap my mind around a concept claiming off shore wind farms are benign.
Not only is it the case that IANAL I’m not even left-Pondian, but …
They are likely to go for the “Chevron deference” legal argument.
This says that if “experts” from a “federal agency” declare something to be true, then legally it is indeed true. Case closed (Dominion wins, CFACT et al lose).
If Dominion can get the case assigned to a (Washington) DC, New York or California “docket” then they are very likely to be “randomly assigned” a judge sympathetic to their “legal” presentation.
NB : Even if the Supreme Court overthrows Chevron in the meantime, a DC / NY / CA judge is more likely than not to ignore that and rule in favour of Dominion anyway.
Is anyone truly surprised by the dominion reply? Shouldn’t be. Dollars rule over common sense and the environment. Dominion will lose billions if they lose lawsuit and a lot of their pockets will not be so full of taxpayer cash. Just sayin’.
Not surprised at all.
The first step in litigation is to deny guilt.
The second step is to deflect away for the real issues.
It is the science of consensus again, the modern way of proving something. No facts, no data but we all agree so it must be true.
Please can we go back to real science.
So, if we all have an opinion, and through the circle-jerk process of confirmation reach a consensus, then are opinions become facts.
I type too fast and make undetected typos.
are opinions should be our opinions….
I also forgot to annotate the post as /sarc.
Unfortunately it isn’t really sarc – Naomi Oreskes and others of her ilk have already put this into practice. The incredibly flawed and heavily biased process of peer review is the new ‘scientific process’ not because it is better (it’s far worse) but because these mediocre climate enthusiasts can, at last, get their crappy papers published without being ripped to shreds by people with some credibility and understanding. This is how the world ends.