The County of Cape May has filed suit in the Federal District Court for the District of New Jersey against multiple federal agencies and the leadership of those agencies, alleging that federal regulators have “abandoned their obligations to protect the environment and Atlantic-coastal marine life in favor of an inappropriate collusion with Big Wind interests.”
“We spent the better part of two years trying to negotiate with Orsted to redesign [the Ocean Wind 11 project] in a way that would cause less damage to the environment and less damage to our tourism and fisheries interests,” says Cape May County Board of Commissioners Director Len Desiderio. “Our reasonable proposals fell on deaf ears as state and federal regulators rubber-stamped permits to rush the Ocean Wind 1 project to approval.”
Desiderio notes that the federal permitting process was “fatally flawed,” with regulatory agencies ignoring the Administrative Procedures Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the National Historic Preservation Act and other federal laws and regulations.
Cape May County Special Counsel for Offshore Wind, Michael J. Donohue, says Orsted’s 1.1 GW development – planned to be situated 15 miles off the coast of southern New Jersey – is a “massive, reckless experiment.”
“A consensus is building that these projects are moving too fast, without proper regulatory analysis and with too many unknowns and tremendous potential for environmental and economic harm,” he remarks.
The county’s suit, brought as a challenge under the Federal Administrative Procedures Act, is anticipated to be decided before the end of 2024. The plaintiffs expect that “the federal courts will force federal regulatory agencies to put Orsted’s permits on hold and go back and fix the flawed processes that were utilized to ignore important environmental, marine species, economic and historic resource protections.”
The Cape May County Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Wildwood Hotel Motel Association, Clean Ocean Action, the Garden State Seafood Association, LaMonica Fine Foods, Lund’s Fisheries and Surfside Seafood Products joined the county as plaintiffs in the suit.
The suit is being handled by the Marzulla Law Firm in Washington, D.C., with assistance from Donohue; County Counsel Jeff Lindsay; and Greg Werkheiser of Cultural Heritage Partners in Richmond, Va.
