We’re about to find out.
By Nancy Lavin, Rhode Island Current
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Riggs, a 75-year-old recreational fisherman and retired electrician who lives in Westerly, applied anyway.
“I feel that in order to have your voice heard when it comes to fisheries management, you’re either on the table or on the plate,” Riggs said in an interview. “I prefer to be at the table.”
His seat at the table is now secured; he is one of nine new members the CRMC named to its Fishermen’s Advisory Board (FAB) after a single, unanimous vote on April 8. The advisory panel has been inactive since all of its former members resigned together in August 2023 to protest what they viewed as the CRMC’s kowtowing to offshore wind project developers at the expense of local fishermen.
Will the same frustrations bubble up? The first test comes this week, as the new panel begins negotiations with SouthCoast Wind, which has applied for a permit to run transmission lines from its wind turbines up the Sakonnet River and out Mount Hope Bay.
Rich Hittinger, a former FAB member who led the mass resignation effort two years ago, isn’t optimistic.
“We were asked to review a lot of applications and give input that took a lot of time and effort, but then the council really did not care what our input was,” said Hittinger, who is first vice chair of the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association.
He had discouraged Riggs from joining the panel.
“I think nothing has changed structurally at the CRMC, so I told him that most likely, you will spend a lot of time on these projects and your input will not be considered,” Hittinger said.
Marisa Desautel, the attorney hired to represent the fishing advisory panel in prior negotiations with offshore wind developers, felt the same way.
“The process is the same as it was then — there’s no policy in place other than the language written in the [CRMC rulebook],” Desautel said.
But Desautel said she would be interested in serving as the attorney for the FAB again if she were asked.
The CRMC through its Ocean Special Area Management Plan (SAMP), created in 2011, requires input from fishing representatives on any large-scale offshore development. The advisory panel is meant to minimize negative impacts to fishing habitats by offering input on project locations, construction schedules, and other details. And, it can request an attempt to negotiate compensation from developers to offset projected losses to commercial and recreational fishermen from their projects.
But federal regulations limit what the state coastal agency, and its advisory bodies, can do about offshore wind. The CRMC can affirm whether or not a federal offshore wind project complies with state regulations, but the real control lies with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which dictates where projects are built, environmental and economic impacts, and construction and operating plans.
Jeffrey Willis, executive director for the CRMC, acknowledged in an interview that state coastal regulators often had little authority over matters the FAB brought to the council in the past.
Prior interactions between citizen volunteers and deep-pocketed international companies behind wind projects felt off-balance to Jim Boyd, who served 22 years at CRMC before retiring as its deputy director in 2022.
“It felt like there was a stacked deck, if you will,” Boyd said.
David v. Goliath
Rhode Island coastal regulators can’t change federal lease and mitigation policies. But they can reduce friction by having FAB members attend fewer meetings for negotiations on offshore wind projects, Willis said.
“With the old FAB, those guys were super-involved,” Willis said. “They would come every Thursday night for a couple of hours and put their hearts and souls into it, and in the end, they felt they weren’t getting their point across,” Willis said. “We didn’t want to repeat that burnout.”
Willis acknowledged that this won’t fix the difficult-to-calculate financial piece of wind negotiations, which rely on federal fishery landings data that typically does not capture the lived experience of local recreational and commercial fishermen.
“Compensation is one of the hardest discussions to have,” he said.
The new board members are preparing to wade into that difficult discussion on the SouthCoast Wind project, a 147-turbine wind farm planned off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. The CRMC in December 2023 approved the broad strokes of a plan to run the wind farm’s power lines through Rhode Island waters to reach land at Brayton Point in Somerset, Massachusetts.
Cables would extend up the Sakonnet River and out Mount Hope Bay — much closer to local fishing grounds than the turbines off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.
The former fishing advisory board members had already resigned by the time of its decision, so there was no attempt to determine compensation to offset fishing losses.
The CRMC is now reviewing a separate permit application related to the SouthCoast underwater cable lines. An initial meeting between the project developers, the CRMC and the new FAB members is planned for this week, though no date had been confirmed yet, Willis said.
“When the Ocean SAMP was adopted 15 years ago, the whole emphasis was on the offshore impacts,” Boyd said. “There was no consideration of inshore fisheries because there was so much unknown. But now, we know that the SouthCoast export cables are going to be coming into our waters. We need to have representation for that.”
In a statement, SouthCoast Wind welcomed the restoration of the FAB.
“SouthCoast looks forward to meeting with the new FAB members in the coming weeks and continuing to move forward with the Rhode Island CRMC permitting process,” Rebecca Ullman, a company spokesperson, said in an email Friday.
Volunteers step up to the plate
Willis originally reached out to two different area fishing groups to see if they were interested in joining FAB. Both declined. A series of emails to industry listservs earlier this year yielded more success — 12 applicants, including one proposed alternate.
“I was pleasantly surprised,” Willis said. “I was worried about the possibility that, given the history of what happened with the old FAB, we would have a hard time.”
Unlike fellow recreational fisherman, Riggs sees the benefits to offshore wind development. He claims the underwater foundations and cables for other projects near Block Island have increased his catch.
“It creates a structure for fish to congregate to and feed at,” Riggs said.
A self-proclaimed conservationist, Riggs hoped his experience on the water, as well as his avid consumption of news about the wind industry, would help protect Rhode Island’s prized ocean ecosystem. Other volunteers who applied to join the advisory panel also expressed their interest in protecting the state coastal environment, according to letters and emails submitted to the CRMC.
The agency’s regulations allow for up to 20 members on the fishing advisory panel, including up to two representatives each for six categories of fishing; up to two representatives of seafood processing facilities; and up to six Massachusetts fishermen who fish in waters subject to Rhode Island coastal regulations.
All 12 applicants, including the one alternate, were approved as new members, except for one initial candidate who withdrew his name prior to the confirmation, Laura Dwyer, a CRMC spokesperson said. One of the 11 people confirmed Tuesday, Isaiah Alvarez, subsequently decided not to continue as a board member, he said in a text message Thursday night. Alvarez did not respond to questions about his decision.
Half of the applicants identified as recreational or commercial fishermen, including several with former military experience in the U.S. Navy or U.S. Coast Guard. Another, Patrick Dowling, managing partner at D’Amico Burchfield LLP in Providence, has a bachelor’s degree in environmental science from the University of Rhode Island and concentrated in environmental law at the Vermont Law School, he said in an email to the council.
Jennifer Scappatura-Harrington, owner of Quonnie Siren Oyster Company in Charlestown, hopes to offer a voice for the state’s aquaculture industry and women in fishing, she wrote in an email to the council.
Dowling and Scappatura-Harrington did not return calls for comment.
Who’s on the FAB?
One of the 10 board members who was confirmed on April 8 dropped out, leaving nine.
Wayne Banks, a recreational fisherman, retired electronics engineer for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, and former member of the Jamestown Harbor Commission
Richard Corrente, a recreational fisherman and owner of Portside Tavern in Bristol
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Rhode Island Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com.