A coalition of commercial fishing interests, hotel and motel owners, and an ocean-focused environmental group have filed suit against the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to overturn approval for New Jersey’s first offshore wind project, Ocean Wind 1.

The suit, filed Oct. 17 in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, argues that BOEM “failed to comply with numerous statutes and their implementing regulations” when it approved Danish developer Ørsted’s 1,100 MW project on July 3. The suit asks the court to “invalidate” the approvals.

“Plaintiffs’ interests, all of which are dependent upon the natural state of the ocean, will be irreparably harmed if the challenged actions are not reversed as the law requires,” the suit states.

Also named as defendants are: BOEM director Liz Klein; the Department of Interior and its secretary, Deb Haaland; and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and its assistant administrator, Janet Coit.

The suit is the latest of several suits filed seeking to stop the project, including one filed by three opposition groups — Save Long Beach Island, Defend Brigantine Beach and Protect Our Coast NJ — whose appeal filed in June in Superior Court challenged state permit approvals for Ocean Wind. Cape May and Ocean City, a shore community, each have filed a legal appeal seeking to overturn the approval by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) of an easement needed for the project. (See Lawsuits Mount over NJ OSW Projects as Opposition Digs in.)

Aside from Cape May County, the plaintiffs in the suit include: the Garden State Seafood Association, which represents commercial fishermen, shore-based seafood processors, commercial dock facilities, seafood markets and restaurants; LaMonica Fine Foods, a fish processing company; Surfside Seafood Products Food, a clam fishing and processing company; and Lund’s Fisheries, a seafood company that manages 19 ships and handles 450 metric tons of food a day.

Other plaintiffs are Greater Wildwood Hotel and Motel Association, which represents 236 hotels and motels on the five-mile Wildwoods barrier island, and Clean Ocean Action, an environmental group that focuses on marine issues and has been vocal in its opposition to the state’s OSW projects.

Lack of Progress

Cape May posted a release on its website stating 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 Ørsted to redesign this project in a way that would cause less damage to the environment and less damage to our tourism and fisheries interests,” Cape May County Board of Commissioners Director Len Desiderio said in the release. “Our reasonable proposals fell on deaf ears as state and federal regulators rubber-stamped permits to rush the Ocean Wind One project to approval.”

In the latest suit, Cape May County, which has in the past been represented by Michael Donohue, a former Superior Court judge, also is represented by Roger J. Marzulla and Nancie G. Marzulla, Washington, D.C., attorneys who represented a coalition of fishing interests in a case seeking to overturn federal permits issued to Vineyard Wind 1.

BOEM did not respond to a request for comment late Wednesday.

A spokeswoman for Ørsted, which is not a named defendant, said it would not comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit follows a federal court ruling in Massachusetts on Oct. 12 that rejected two federal lawsuits challenging environmental permits and construction approvals for the Vineyard Wind project, the first commercial-scale OSW farm in the U.S. The plaintiffs included fishing groups and Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a coalition of fishing industry associations and fishing companies.

New Jersey has approved three OSW projects in two solicitations — the 1,100-MW Ocean Wind 1, the 1,148-MW Ocean Wind 2 and the 1,510-MW Atlantic Shores — and is midway through a third solicitation. The BPU is expected to announce which of the four bidders have secured approval early next year.

Endangered Species

The lawsuit comes amid a steady increase in opposition to the state’s OSW projects, which the commercial fishing sector has opposed for several years due to concerns about the impact on their industry.

The lawsuit states seven causes of action in which federal authorities erred in their support for the Ocean Wind 1 project, including the claim that BOEM and NMFS violated the National Environmental Policy Act by “failing to take a hard look at the environmental impacts of the Ocean Wind 1 Project” when BOEM issued its environmental impact statement. The suit says the agencies “unlawfully” limited alternatives to the project, such as smaller projects with fewer turbines.

The defendants also violated the endangered species act by failing to “adequately consider the dangers to these protected species,” including their “failure to require enough mitigation measures to prevent the injury and death of the North Atlantic right whale and other protected species.”

The agencies also violated the Coastal Zone Management Act by approving a project that is not consistent with New Jersey’s own coastal management rules, the suit argues. These include rules designed to protect the “reproductive, spawning and migratory patterns or species abundance or diversity of marine fish,” the suit says.