NARRAGANSETT – Desautel Browning Law, the firm representing a coalition of Rhode Island fishermen that filed a petition to halt offshore wind development, held a press conference Tuesday morning to celebrate last week's federal stop-work order on the Revolution Wind project and to highlight the coalition's petition.
Attorney Marisa Desautel, managing partner for Desautel Browning who is representing the Commercial Fisheries Center of Rhode Island, filed the petition with the U.S. Department of the Interior on Aug. 20 – two days prior to the stop-work order on Revolution Wind. The petition calls for stop-work orders on three major offshore wind projects, including Revolution Wind, located off the coast of Rhode Island; SouthCoast Wind, off the southern coast of Massachusetts; and South Fork Wind, located between Block Island and Montauck Point, N.Y.
The petition alleges violations of federal laws, including the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Clean Water Act.
Tuesday's press conference follows a stop-work order issued for the Revolution Wind project on Aug. 22 by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management – a decision that Desautel and her clients applaud as a necessary measure to protect fishing grounds and ensure compliance with environmental regulations.
"This is a great step forward," Desautel said during the press conference Tuesday. "We expect the same legal framework to apply to all wind projects in the region."
Desautel added that the Department of the Interior has scheduled a meeting with the Commercial Fishers Center of Rhode Island and Browning Law this week to discuss the petition and address ongoing concerns.
The planned meeting marks an important shift toward including fishermen’s voices in decisions that affect their livelihoods, she said.
Meghan Lapp, a former member of the Rhode Island Fishermen’s Advisory Board and representative of Seafreeze Fleet LLC, a long-standing Rhode Island commercial fishing company, emphasized the yearslong struggle fishers have faced against offshore wind development.
"I have fought for over a decade to protect commercial fishing grounds from offshore wind development and to ensure that future generations can continue feeding America and the world," Lapp said in a statement on Tuesday. "We were ignored at every step – by the federal government and our own state officials. Our scientific concerns were dismissed as ‘anecdotal’ while developer claims went unscrutinized."
Lapp criticized the approval of Revolution Wind despite significant environmental impacts identified by NOAA Fisheries, an office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including damage to essential fish habitats and threats to species such as Atlantic cod.
"Revolution Wind bulldozed thousands of boulders from Cox's Ledge, an area that was supposed to be off limits to wind development," Lapp said. "Commercial fishing grounds deserve the same protections as prime farmland, which was recently protected from industrial wind projects by the USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture]."
The petition and upcoming meeting come amid rising tensions over offshore wind development’s impact on local fisheries and the environment. Fishing industry advocates argue that these projects threaten the sustainability of vital fisheries and call for greater scrutiny and transparency in federal and state permitting processes.
Meanwhile, Gov. Daniel J. McKee and labor leaders held a press conference at Quonset Pointon on Monday where they doubled down on their support for the Revolution Wind project, with McKee calling President Donald Trump's stop-work order "an attack on Rhode Island and Rhode Islanders."
Matthew McNulty is a PBN staff writer. He can be reached at McNulty@PBN.com or on X at @MattMcNultyNYC.
