Two lawsuits seeking to halt the under-construction 806MW Vineyard Wind 1 project have been dismissed by a three-judge federal appeals court panel.
The plaintiffs argued that too many endangered North Atlantic right whales would be harmed by the noise of the pile-driving and other construction activity.
Thomas Melone, a lawyer and solar developer who lives part-time on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, had sued Janet Coit, assistant administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service. Other local residents had also sued in a separate proceeding.
The plaintiffs said that government agencies failed to follow the law or follow what they see as good science.
The US States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit denied Melone’s appeal of the lower court allowing Vineyard Wind to intervene. They denied his assertion that too many whales would be harmed. As of 2019, there were only an estimated 368 of the whales.
The judges also denied Melone’s contention that law required the assessment of the impact of cumulative similar activities to Vineyard’s construction, or the assessment of a wider geographic area than Vineyard’s commercial wind energy lease of 675km2.
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