Orsted offshore wind farm hit with lawsuit by New Jersey county

Summary

• Lawsuit seeks to invalidate federal approvals for the farm
• Offshore wind is facing severe price and supply chain issues

A southern New Jersey county on Tuesday challenged federal approvals for a major wind farm in U.S. waters off the state's coast, saying the project’s turbines and construction will harm endangered animals like whales, kill birds and impact local tourism.

The County of Cape May and several local tourism and fishing business groups sued the U.S. Department of the Interior in New Jersey federal court, seeking to stop construction on Danish developer Orsted’s multi-billion dollar Ocean Wind project.

The county said the government violated federal environmental review and endangered species protection laws when it finalized a host of environmental and construction permits for the project earlier this year.

Reviews for those permits failed to adequately account for potential environmental harms from the project and should be vacated, according to the lawsuit. The county said underwater noise and vessel strikes during construction will harm endangered North Atlantic right whales and sea turtles, and that rotating wind turbine blades would kill migrating birds.

The lawsuit also claimed the wind farm’s turbines could impact the region’s $7.4 billion tourism industry and restrict commercial fishing, which contributes roughly $270 million a year to the region’s economy.

The Interior Department and Orsted declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The Interior Department approved the construction and operation plans for Ocean Wind in July after a multi-year review involving numerous federal agencies. The approvals allow Orsted to build up to 98 wind turbines that will generate an expected 1,100 megawatts of clean energy. That would be enough to power roughly 380,000 homes.

The approvals included measures to reduce harms to marine mammals and birds, according to the Interior Department. The federal government has said right whales are likely to be impacted by underwater noise and other impacts during construction, but that the wind farm will not kill the animals.

The project was the third utility-scale offshore wind farm to receive federal approvals and comes amid a push by the Biden administration to develop 30 gigawatts of offshore wind in the U.S. by 2030.

Legal challenges to previously approved wind farm projects in the Atlantic have so far been unsuccessful.

The case is County of Cape May v. United States, U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, case No. 1:23-cv-21201.

For the county: Jeffrey Lindsay and Michael Donohue of the County of Cape May Department of Law; and Roger Marzulla and Nancie Marzulla of Marzulla Law

For the U.S.: not immediately available.