Save Long Beach Island
www.SaveLBI.org
LONG BEACH ISLAND, N.J. — On May 13, 2025, Save Long Beach Island, Inc., joined by Save the East Coast, Protect Our Coast Long Island-New York, and the Miss Belmar whale watching company, filed a federal lawsuit in the District of New Jersey challenging the prior approvals of the Empire Wind offshore wind project off of Long Branch, NJ and Long Beach, NY.
The lawsuit, filed against the U.S. Department of Commerce, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), and the Department of the Interior, alleges that the federal government violated multiple environmental laws—including the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)—by authorizing the construction and operation of the Empire Wind project without adequately safeguarding marine mammals and properly examining the project’s full environmental impact.
The fulcrum of the complaint is NMFS’s approval of an Incidental Take Authorization (ITA),which permits Empire Wind to disturb or harm thousands of marine mammals, including over 30% of the Northern Migratory Coastal Bottlenose Dolphin population annually, far surpassing the legal limits allowed under the MMPA.
“Authorizing the Take of nearly one-third of a protected dolphin population in a single year, and the majority of that population over the course of the project’s 5-year period, is not just illegal, it’s ecologically reckless,” said Dr. Robert Stern, President of Save LBI. “This lawsuit is about enforcing the scientific and legal limits of takes to ensure marine mammals don’t become collateral damage in the senseless rush to industrialize the ocean,” said Dr. Stern.
The plaintiffs also allege that BOEM’s Environmental Impact Statement for Empire Wind violated NEPA by failing to consider a meaningful range of project alternatives, underestimating the environmental harm of the project, and all the while failing to fully account for the cumulative impacts of other offshore wind projects. “This lawsuit ultimately seeks to unwind a project which egregiously violates the MMPA and could devastate a species of dolphin specifically designated as depleted under the MMPA,” said Thomas Stavola Jr., attorney for Plaintiffs.
“Simply because Empire Wind invested significant monies and acted in reliance on investments and incentives based upon imprudent energy policy, should not enable them to proceed in violation of U.S. laws,” said Dr. Stern.
The lawsuit requests that the Court vacate the project’s ITA, Record of Decision, and Construction and Operations Plan, and require the agencies to reanalyze the project in full compliance with the law.
Dr. Stern also points out that, “this lawsuit is relevant to the one that was recently filed by 17 States claiming no legal basis existed to halt the Empire Wind 1 Project because it provides substantive legal reasons to do so. The lawsuit is also pertinent to the Critical Habitat Petition that Save LBI filed on March 31, 2025 with the Secretaries of Commerce and Interior Departments to create a safe turbine-free corridor along the East Coast for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale to migrate. The Empire Wind 1 project sits right in the recommended corridor, so this lawsuit would keep that corridor viable while the Agency reviews the petition.”
So liberal governments in the US are OK with allowing “taking” of R and E Coastal Bottlenose Dolphins, but the Spotted Owl gets 100% protection? Stop one industry cold and allow the other to run wild? This whole “taking” issue is a reality check on where liberal interests really are.
where liberal interests really are
Turns out spotted owls are doing fine – even in heavily logged forests. The idea that they need virgin forests was nuts.
I loved the video someone got of Spotted Owls nesting in a KMart sign.
It wasn’t nuts, it was a lever to to prevent progress.
Then people wonder why lumber prices are so high. Forestry has lost battle after battle in much of America- partly from not being well organized and for being too busy producing wood products to understand how to battle the enviro nut jobs. It does well in Dixie where state governments strongly support the forest industries and the enviro groups are comparably weak.
It was a lever to increase control.
Simply because Empire Wind invested significant monies…
Something Mad Ed, the 6th former’s hero, can only dream of…
Why exactly does Ed Miliband make so many people so angry? At 55, 20 years into his parliamentary career, with rare ministerial experience under both New Labour and Keir Starmer, and a reputation around Westminster and Whitehall as one of politics’ nicer, more knowledgeable characters…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/18/ed-miliband-target-all-sides-labour-left-politician-gets-things-done
Knowledgeable? Ha ha ha ha
Well, he thinks he is knowledgeable …… .
He thinks? I beg to differ on that.
Apologies, you are right.
Again, you’re assuming what he is doing is out of stupidity or ignorance. No, he is toeing the globalist line. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
He’s a good teller of fairy stories. That’s why he is so popular with Labour MPs. He tells them that the UK is going to be a magnet for energy intensive industries that will come flocking to our shores once all his offshore and onshore wind and solar farms are up and running providing massive amounts of supposedly “cheap energy”.
They then go home with a warm feeling. He never mentions the fact that our energy prices are already higher than Germany’s !
Happily, Empire Wind may be going away:
https://www.offshorewind.biz/2025/05/13/equinor-situation-for-empire-wind-unsustainable-we-need-to-find-way-forward-for-project-quickly/
Kathy Hochul:
“As Governor, I will not allow this federal overreach to stand. I will fight this every step of the way to protect union jobs, affordable energy and New York’s economic future.”
Ah politics.
But why is the left only interested in saving union jobs? Are the non-union jobs unimportant? Maybe that is why the left lost the last election – unions aren’t as important as they used to be?
“We like offshore wind, and believe that we need more renewables to save the planet, just not in our backyard (or front yard) Oh yeah, and save the dolphins!”
Probably not going to result in a universal injunction against wind turbines, but a nice start at beating them with their own weapons.
Lawfare in the morning, Mmmmmmm, love it!
Story tip – I Kid You Not — Climate Crazies Want to Bring Back Zeppelins for Air Travel – PJ Media
I think it would be kinda cool. But how much cargo could an airship carry, as compared to your average container ship?
Well modern container ships can carry 20,000 to 25,000 20foot containers. I doubt a Zeppelin could carry one 🙂
Yeah, I looked it up. Cargo ships can carry up to 200,000 tons, the largest airship currently in use… 10 tons.
That explains why the SSTs were all the rage.
At 8o mph it would only take 25 hours to transit 2000 miles.
Hopefully the Zeppelins have beds and showers.
That ain’t gonna end well.
If they are battery powered that is going to reduce the amount of cargo they can carry
Wow. Better late than never.
Try including in your lawsuit actual damage to coastline for underwater transmission lines and substations needed to connect to the labored grid in NJ.
What a sad and tragic story …it started 30-40 years ago. Wind and solar are not free. Depend on frivolous, wasted government largess from taxpayers and the productive economy. Reduces transmission reliability and threatens real life-threatening blackouts.
So, why didn’t you know that?
The wind and sunshine are free. So are fish, it’s catching them and transporting them to the people who want to eat them that gets expensive.
That’s a great analogy with fish. I’m filing that away for future use!
Nicely done. Free stuff. Just have to come and get it.
Albeit a choice to eat fish and preserve wildlife.
Electricity and natural gas are not a choice, if you expect to heat and cool you homes, use the internet and oxygen generator (you know –to help you breath), have gainful employment (rather than live off someone else’s work), and all those other things we have to have like food and drugs.
Of course someone has to get all those natural resources, refine them, make stuff and distribute them. That is not free either.
But it could be a lot cheaper!
They keep having to make them bigger to make them pay-
Size matters: Why the offshore wind industry is supersizing everything
which means they’re pushing the limits of engineering and they’ll break down or break up prematurely.
Expensive Wind and Solar Systems
The over-taxed, over-regulated taxpayers and ratepayers are paying at very high c/kWh for electricity and Heat Pump heating/cooling and for EV driving.
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They pay for:
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1) all sorts of highly subsidized, expensive wind/solar systems that disturb the grid with weather-dependent, variable, intermittent electricity, which has caused expensive brownouts/blackouts, as in Spain/Portugal, and many other places, over the years.
2) all sorts of grid expansion to connect all these far-flung wind/solar systems to the grid,
3) grid reinforcements to ensure the grids do not crash during periods with higher levels of wind/solar power
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In cases of too much wind/solar power, it needs to be curtailed; Owners still get paid for what they could have produced.
In cases of too little wind/solar power, other generators need to increase outputs to meet demand, 24/7/365.
Synchronous Inertia Serves to Stabilize the Grid
Closing down traditional plants (nuclear, gas, coal, hydro), with rotating generators that provide SYNCHRONOUS inertia, de-stabilizes the grid; a death sentence for the grid.
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Wind/solar systems provide ZERO SYNCHRONOUS inertia, because their variable outputs are digitized, then reconstituted into an artificial sine wave with the same phase and frequency as the grid.
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Connections Between Grids
Almost all grids have connections to other grids for import and export purposes.
Those connections usually are high-voltage, direct-current lines, HVDC
Such connections transfer power, but transfer ZERO SYNCHRONOUS inertia to other grids.
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Reactive Power
No AC grid can operate without reactive power
Wind/solar systems take reactive power FROM the grid
All traditional power plants provide reactive power TO the grid
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The weather-dependent, variable/intermittent, wind/solar feed-ins to the grid often create transmission faults.
Those faults can be minimized with synchronous condenser systems to provide reactive power TO the grid.
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Any energy systems analyst would know Spain/Portugal-like blackout problems would eventually happen, before a single wind/solar system were connected to the grid, but naive, woke, non-technical enviros do not want to listen to the pros.
Full speed ahead over the cliff, you go, unless all this wind, solar, battery nonsense is stopped dead by taking away the overly generous subsidies.
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Net Zero to reduce CO2 by 2050 is a very expensive suicide pact.
We need higher CO2 ppm in the atmosphere for increased greening of the world, to support abundant fauna, and to increase crop yields to feed 8 billion people.
The opening paragraph has an error at the end, “challenging the prior approvals of the Empire Wind offshore wind project off of Long Branch, NJ and Long Beach, NY.”
It is not “Long Beach, NY”, but as the tag line states, “LONG BEACH ISLAND, N.J.”, known by all who frequent the Jersey shore as “LBI”.
The beginning of reverse sue and settle. The feds under the Trump administration can now fail to defend, then settle with the plaintiffs, thus unwinding past leftist environmental decisions.
Windmills (Sorry, turbines, because they turn ’round) cannot generate enough economical power to make windmills. These are fabricated using power from coal or oil, same as happens with electric cars. BTW, solar cells also need arc furnace temperatures for fabrication. I don’t think I have heard of arc furnaces hooked up to a windmill,