By David Wojick
Empire Wind is a big New York offshore wind project that is ready to start construction. The Trump administration stopped it about a month ago but has now unstopped it, supposedly after the President made an informal deal with Governor Hochul to lift New York’s ban on new gas pipelines from Pennsylvania.
Empire is about to start driving the enormous steel monopiles that hold the turbine towers, but a new wrinkle has hit the fan, setting the stage for a massive confrontation. A group protesting the project has filed a federal lawsuit challenging its approval. Unlike prior lawsuits, this one makes a new argument in addition to some of the usual ones. It challenges the NOAA Fisheries’ authorized harassment of large numbers of a threatened dolphin.
The issue is the authorization limits in the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), which the lawsuit claims are being exceeded by a huge margin. On paper this looks like a strong case, so there is a real possibility the court will stop the project.
Adding a bit of drama, Empire Wind has hired one of the world’s biggest crane-wielding ship/boat/things to hold and drive the monster monopiles, which driving is the source of the objected to harassment. It is what is called a “semi-submersible,” meaning it sinks partway to get the stability for its huge crane to lift and hold stuff over the water without turning over.
The official name of this beast is the semi-submersible crane vessel (SSCV) Thialf, and you can read about it here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSCV_Thialf. Before going to work it settles 48 feet into the water. It then has an incredible lifting capacity of 14,000 tons.
Note that there are already two other offshore wind pile driving projects going on, which raises the issue of cumulative impact, especially on the highly migratory and desperately endangered North Atlantic Right Whale. One is Revolution Wind off Rhode Island, which is not all that far away. The other is Dominion’s huge project off Virginia, one of the world’s biggest wind facilities.
The lawsuit lead is Save Long Beach Island, Inc. (Save LBI), joined by Save the East Coast, Protect Our Coast Long Island-New York, and the Miss Belmar whale watching company. You can read about the suit here: https://www.savelbi.org/press-releases.
The basic issue is pretty simple. Under MMPA, NOAA authorizes the harassment by pile driving of a specified number of critters of each protected species, from whales to seals. This is called an Incidental Take Authorization, where incidental means it is not the purpose of the project. It is certainly not incidental to the harassed animals, which may number in the tens of thousands.
For an offshore wind construction project, the authorization is for a five-year period, with annual authorizations. The MMPA says these authorizations are limited to a “small” fraction of the species population. NOAA interprets small to mean up to 30%, which is questionable in itself.
According to Save LBI, the Empire Wind authorization for one species of dolphin is 30% a year and a total about like the entire population. This they say violates the MMPA “small take” standard and that is the central issue before the court. Sounds right to me.
I have to wonder about the giant Dominion project where harassment of over 20,000 each of several dolphin species is authorized. Surely this is not small.
This case is of great interest to me, as I have been writing and ranting about excessive whale harassment authorization for quite a while now; see here: https://www.cfact.org/2024/12/30/my-41-wind-threatens-whales-articles-track-federal-deception/.
Two years ago I flagged NOAA Fisheries for cumulatively authorizing harassments of the North Atlantic Right Whale that exceeded 200% of the population here: https://www.cfact.org/2023/04/24/noaa-proposes-hammering-208-of-vanishing-right-whales/. That cumulative number is now much higher.
So this is the dramatic Empire Wind showdown. A small dolphin in court versus the world’s second-largest crane vessel at sea, dueling over giant pile driving. Stay tuned to CFACT as this drama unfolds.
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dolphins…
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
Petunia’s: “Oh, no, not again.”
More evidence “environmentalists” do not actually care about endangered species.
The marine mammal protection act had nothing to do with endangered species.
ALL marine mammals are protected, whether endangered or not.
That is what congress authorized. Spend some time at Monterey CA Fisherman’s Wharf and see all the non endangered Sea Lions stinking up the place. They are all protected so nothing can be done as they overpopulate. The smell is so bad that we will not be returning as it is impossible to enjoy dinner.
Does any wildlife species prey on them? sharks? killer whales? If none prey on them, at some point they’ll run out of food and begin starving- then the wildlife pros will want a season on them. Or should.
Sharks and orcas. Neither common in San Fransisco Bay, which sea lions have probably figures out.
Yes, they live there on porpoise.
Do they come to the shore? I doubt bears would refuse a nice fat lunch, given an opportunity.
Both sharks and Orcas have sea lions on their menu. The Orcas will sometimes engage in sea lion tossing.
And orcas/killer whales are really mean dolphins.
Sure, have some fun before eating them. 🙂
Well, the Orcas have to stop that in accordance with all the rules against Dwarf tossing and bowling.
They should try pointing a low level laser on them. I found that sweeping a beam from a small laser pointer (ca. 0.5 milliwatt) on flock of raucous crows roosting in tree caused the flock to fall silent and fly away at great speed.
They might try zapping them ultra sound noise.
They might try constructing a large remote-controlled robo shark which swims around, harass the seals and chases them away.
As I noted somewhere else, the recent Supreme Court ruling on the limited power to thwart projects and void permits with NEPA lawfare may create some new headwinds for these efforts. I think the projects under construction are going to proceed, and the focus now should be to ensure the projects earlier in the pipeline do not get the same approvals and do not get the same massive tax subsidies.
SH, I don’t think so. The NEPA reasoning just released does not apply at all to this case. Se my comment just posted below.
Yes the NEPA constraints are on secondary impacts like coal mining leading to coal burning. Plus this is a MMPA action not NEPA. Scaling Empire way down is a possible compromise. Same with Dominion.
Large offshore wind turbines are bad for marine and air navigation radars, and long-range threat detection:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/06/alert-terror-wind-turbines-set-encroach-east-coast/
Wow.
Bad for tax $ too.
Did some research before commenting.
The mammal species in question is the bottle nosed dolphin.
An incidental take authorization per USFWS is ‘small numbers having negligible impact. NOAA’s 30%/year is neither negligible nor a small number.
”Take” per MMPA (16USC1362) and associated specifications in 50CFR216.3 includes ‘harass’, defined as any intentional act which results in disturbing or molesting a marine mammal.
Seems like LBI has a quite strong legal case on its face. Let’s hope the court agrees.
I had a violation in 1980 for picking up a dried up bottlenose skull on a beach and giving it to a museum. I told them to go away after reading the bill and how they should prove disturbing, harassment or worse. Museum had to report such deposits which got them out of trouble and they finally dropped it with unnecessary paperwork. May have been due to a change in administration, so might have been interesting otherwise. Numerous bones were collected that way, even entire carcasses all which then proved not so popular, or reported, along with other similarities covering other organisms and even archeological materials. Lots of laws thought to be helpful proved otherwise with dumb bureaucratic interpretations. Maybe too much sitting in offices conjuring up ghosts while the real world was ignored.
Five years later I helped study some seven dozen rare offshore clymene dolphins beached from Hurricane Juan which were apparently alive based on fluke motions. Bottlenose were once a fishery and even killed by shrimpers with even a few cases for biologist’s studies. Freezes, hurricanes, red tides, and other natural calamities are a fact of life causing large mortalities.
Plus that is 30% a year over a five year period where the total is around 100%, a very big number.
It is actually 150%, a 50% bigger number than your ‘very big number.’
Right but it is not 30% every year just some.
If (an assumption) it is 30% of the existing population and the population (another assumption) does not increase or replenish, then the population declines to ~ 16.8% of the pre-first year population. Essentially the end population = 0.7^5 times the initial population.
Hope is right. My favorite legal maxim is that litigation is a crap shoot.
David, does that mean lawyers shoot crap at each other until one runs out of crap, or the crappiest one loses?
What about subsidies? If Trump can stop the subsidies- will that stop the project?
A lack of potential profits tends to make almost anything unprofitable and not viable
JZ, Trump has no say in this particular case. New York ISO is mandated to purchase wind power under New York state law. They bindingly contracted Empire Wind power to be purchased at $155/MWh, when open market rates are about $50/MWh. So is a NY subsidy affair, supported by Gov. Hochul.
Also the proposed federal subsidy cuts are just for future projects. And if the states want to make up the loss they can.
And as the Eco-Nazi governor of NY craters the NY economy with eco-nutter policies where is that money going to come from?
A NY subsidy to a project that must get Federal approval. And President Trump is a famous deal-maker, Rud.
Using this monster SSCV to drive piles is over the top. For example it can house over 700 workers. It is designed to build offshore oil rigs while housing the entire construction crew. Empire was bleeding cash during the Trump delay because it was paying this enormous contraption to do nothing.
I think Empire only hired it because all the regular crane ships were already hired. Revolution is using Bokalift 2 and Dominion the Orion both with crane capacities of just 4,000 tons which is plenty for a monopile.
I hope they bleed cash until bankrupt. It’s the fate every “renewable energy” company richly deserves (pun intended).
Thousands and thousands of piles have been driven in the Gulf of America and worldwide with no discernable impacts on the local dolphin or whale populations.
Just checked the extensive list of major nor’easters at Wikipedia, which started in 1888 and gives detailed accounts of their power and destruction on the east coasts of Canada and the US. Some of these struck the coast of NY.
What are these engineers thinking? Have they crossed their fingers behind there backs and are hoping the “Big One” will never strike their wind turbines?
They are supposedly engineered via blade feathering and blade lockdown to withstand such.
But as Yogi Berra observed,
”In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.”
What happens to the blades if they are pummeled with large hail stones? I read that the wind turbine have an operational life time of ca. 20 to 25 years. Why spend all this money if they have to be replaced in 20 years?
Government subsidies.
Better to summarize – “Why spend all that money?”
In some cases the lifespan of an offshore wind turbine can be around 5 years. The larger more modern turbines being installed (8MW+) seem to be worse for deterioration.
Research by Insead Knowledge found
“As energy companies continue to install bigger turbines offshore our results counter the conventional wisdom that associates larger wind turbines with higher efficiency and profitability”
“Results show the relationship between profit and blade size and distance to shore is an inverse U shape. This means there are limits to the benefits of larger turbines and increased distance to shore. Beyond an optimal point the benefits will start to decrease”
They found maintenance costs, end of life costs and wake losses meant it can “be optional for turbines to be smaller and closer to shore”
https://knowledge.insead.edu/operations/life-giants-life-cycle-view-wind-turbines/
Some structural engineers computed the mean time between failures at about 4.3 years with about half of the maintenance needing to replace major components.
Yeah, Rud. And I’m not aware of any wind tunnels big enough to test the theory.
No problem. Just get a “climate scientist” to create a “model”. Run “experiments” using the model. Predict (project) the future – no wind turbine will ever fail due to wind.
How hard can it be?
Especially when you start with the “conclusion” and work your way backwards…
It seems the Chinese designed, built, and tested a WTG that was supposed to withstand Cat 5 equivalent hurricane winds. They tested (unknown) and it failed.
There are pictures of wind destroyed Taiwan WTGs. Not a pretty site.
Depends on the angle of attack of the wind. Face on is one thing. Coming in from the side is different. Wind can do some interesting things like inducing standing waves (lost a few bridges from that).
Then there is the sea. The sea is more powerful that the wind.
Did a bit of research.
The angle of attack (front facing the weather) is motor controlled by sensors that measure the wind direction. How fast can those massive nacelle units atop a pole rotate? Unknown.
Feathering is merely rotating the blades so less wind energy is pushing them. And they also have brakes employed during maintenance.
What was fascinating was the deflection analysis of the blades. In turbulent winds, I would not want to be near and the tips of the blades can move 6 meters or more and erratically. There was no fatigue analysis on deflections.
Considering that wind is often turbulent (gusts and such) and WTG in the wake of another, these things are not looking good for long term reliability.
That would be poetic justice – a big noreaster turns the lot of the “project” into rubble days after completion, and the rubble all washes up on the beaches of Long Island and in New York harbor.
Poetic justice for the owners, disaster for the locals.
Grab a beer and a tub of popcorn, mate. The show is about to begin.
Let’s see how they weather higher steel prices.
Or the weather.
Sorry, the Devil made me do it.
I don’t think there is any justification for any wind or solar project on shore or not. Fire up all fossil fuel and nuclear reactors. Build new fossil fuel and nuclear reactors. Remove all wind and solar from the grid.
There isn’t. Only the government’s Godzilla-sized foot on the scale creates the appearance of a justification. Or for that matter, the appearance of “economic viability.”
Set the tariffs on wind turbines and windmill steel products at 300 percent. Call it the Save Marine Life Act.