Uncivil Service: Administration’s Offshore Wind Program Called a “Theater of the Absurd.”

Uncivil Service: Administration’s Offshore Wind Program Called a “Theater of the Absurd.”

  • July 17, 2024
Department of the Interior disregarded Tribal Nations and others in rush to permit wind projects

It seems somebody needs to send the Biden administration’s Department of the Interior (DOI) a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People. According to records obtained by Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT), the uncivil servants at DOI have seemingly disregarded the law in permitting wind projects. In the process, they alienated multiple municipalities, other federal agencies, and Native American tribal groups.

As part of the permitting process, DOI is required to comply with the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), to assess the effects of federal projects on historic properties. Often the properties are ancestral homes or lands sacred to Native Americans.

But in permitting South Fork Wind off the coast of Rhode Island, among the first of the administration’s offshore wind projects, DOI appears to have fallen far short. In a 21-page letter, attorneys representing the interests of Tribes and communities affected by the project blasted DOI’s failure to address the concerns of Tribal Nations under the law:

[W]e have NEVER seen a more dysfunctional process than the one [DOI] has imposed on historic communities and Tribal Nations for the launch of the offshore wind industry …  Truly, this permitting review has become a theater of the absurd. [Emphasis in original.]

Exasperated by DOI’s unwillingness to respond to their pleas, the attorneys also turned to the federal advisory council tasked with oversight of NHPA compliance, quoted DOI staff’s admission that they “don’t have time to comply with [the NHPA],” and explained “[DOI] is asking [the council] to be a party to its circumvention of the law that [the council] exists to sustain.” The wind project proceeded nonetheless.

So much for the pledge from Secretary Deb Haaland to “involve tribes in federal decision-making in a new and unprecedented way.” DOI even managed to anger the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), a sister federal agency charged with assessing the significant impacts offshore construction can pose to sea life and its habitat. In a letter to DOI, NMFS complained that it had been given DOI’s construction and operation plan for a major wind project just four days before construction was scheduled to begin. Understandably, NMFS considered that to be “an unreasonable timeline for review and comment.” NMFS also observed that DOI had scheduled the construction even though DOI had provided NMFS with no indication that the conditions NMFS has already placed on construction had been met.

These revelations follow on the heels of PPT’s recent discoveries that DOI is allowing developers to defer fees for 15 years that are designed to ensure that funds are available to safely decommission wind projects that often only have a 25-year lease term. Ironically, some developers have since walked away from wind projects as they have proven to be uneconomical.

“From cradle to grave, DOI appears to be ‘green’ lighting offshore wind projects no matter what interests are impaired,” said Michael Chamberlain the Director of PPT. “This is particularly rich coming from an agency headed by Deb Haaland, a Native American, who spoke on her first day in office about how her department would include tribes in decisions that impact them. It is small wonder that the American people increasingly distrust the alleged green priorities of DOI and this administration.”

###