From Legal Insurrection
Meanwhile, Rhode Island bureaucrats give a big thumbs-up to SouthCoast Wind transmission line plan.
Posted by Leslie Eastman
President Donald Trump clearly has the climate cultists and green grifters among his top targets during his very busy second term, which began with his signing an executive order in January to halt new or renewed offshore wind leases.
Now it looks like the plug is going to be pulled from a massive offshore East Coast wind farm project.
Back in September, I reported that federal regulators were moving to revoke approval of SouthCoast Wind’s construction and operations plan, the final major permit required before offshore turbine installation. The project, located about 23 miles south of Nantucket, was slated to build up to 141 turbines supposedly capable of powering roughly 840,000 homes in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
A federal judge has now ruled that the Trump administration may proceed with revoking federal permits for the project.
The Trump administration signaled its intent to reconsider the permit in September, claiming that the Environmental Impact Statement for the project may have “understated or obfuscated impacts” that would possibly result in noncompliance with the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.
District Court for the District of Columbia judge Tanya Chutkan, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, ruled in favor of the White House Tuesday, saying that the project developers would not suffer from “immediate and significant hardship” if the administration proceeded with the reconsideration.
The decision effectively allows the administration to strip the project of its federal approval, blocking it from being built under President Donald Trump’s second term.
The Trump administration argued that the environmental impacts may have been understated or misrepresented, invoking the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to justify the permit review.
The Trump administration said in September that it would weigh whether to revoke the Biden-era approval of the project. Months earlier, in March, the town of Nantucket sued the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in an effort to block the project. The town accused the agency of failing to comply with environmental and historical preservation laws when it issued the permit.
Soon after returning to the White House, Mr. Trump issued a sweeping order to halt all leasing of federal lands and waters for new wind farms. His administration has since gone after several wind farms that had been given federal permits by the Biden administration and were either under construction or about to start.
Despite this decision, eco-activist bureaucrats will continue to thrust the green-energy fantasies upon an unwilling population. Despite the judge’s ruling, which is likely to lead to the loss of a permit, regulators have approved construction of the transmission line for the wind farms.
…[T]he path is clear for the Massachusetts offshore wind project to run power lines up the Sakonnet River and across Portsmouth to Mount Hope Bay, with approval from the Rhode Island Energy Facility Siting Board on Tuesday.
Power purchase agreements between the project developer and Massachusetts and Rhode Island utility suppliers are not yet signed — despite a Nov. 1 deadline — amid continued uncertainty over the staying power of offshore wind under the Trump administration.
…Ronald Gerwatowski, chairman of the Rhode Island Energy Facility Siting Board, acknowledged the “new level of uncertainty” surrounding SouthCoast Wind. But, that did not deter the three-member panel from concluding its yearslong review for the transmission lines that will connect the project, once built, to the onshore electric grid.
“I am very satisfied with the application,” Gerwatowski said Tuesday. “By the time we reached the evidentiary stage, there was no evidence that would support the denial of this license.”
However, the federal court ruling is a big win for local residents and marine life…especially the whales.
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