Save Long Beach Island, an organization of New Jersey residents opposed to the Atlantic Shores South offshore wind project, filed its fourth lawsuit against the federal government, claiming that the project will cause serious harm to the population of the North Atlantic right whale, an endangered species.
The lawsuit names the Department of Commerce, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Department of Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind as defendants. Save Long Beach Island lawyer Thomas Stavola Jr. said the proposed offshore project, set to be built just 9 miles off the New Jersey coast, is in violation of at least six environmental statutes: the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, and the Clean Air Act.
“We believe we have organized a compelling case that will demonstrate that these federal agencies were derelict in their respective duties to take critical information into account, and moreover, made arbitrary assumptions that entirely failed to disclose and consider the injurious impacts of the Atlantic Shores South project,” Stavola said in a statement.
In July 2024, the Biden administration approved the Atlantic Shores South project, which promises to produce enough clean energy for more than 700,000 New Jersey homes and produce $1.9 billion in economic benefits. On Oct. 1, 2024, the BOEM gave its final approval of the project to begin construction. The first tier of the project will construct nearly 200 wind turbines just 9 miles off the New Jersey coastline.
Bob Stern, the primary plaintiff listed on the lawsuit and a former Department of Energy engineer, has been raising the alarm about the project and its effect on the ocean’s ecosystem and the residents along the Jersey Shore.
“The agencies assume, incorrectly, that no North Atlantic right whales will suffer injury or death as a result of the Atlantic Shores South project,” Stern said in a statement. “The evidence contradicts that assumption.”
Stern said the noise caused by pile driving to build the wind turbines and then the “perpetual operational noise will injure and kill a number of North Atlantic right whales, a critically endangered animal that cannot afford to suffer any deaths given their numbers are now less than 340 total.”
The noise will disrupt the ability of the whale population, which relies on sonarlike sounds, to navigate its migrational pathways. In addition, the leasing area for the offshore wind project will push fishing vessels into the pathway in which the North Atlantic right whales migrate, thus increasing chances of collisions.
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This is the fourth lawsuit filed by Save Long Beach Island. One of its previously filed lawsuits accuses the BOEM of failing to account for the project’s effect on the endangered whale population in its environmental impact statement. That lawsuit is currently awaiting summary judgment.
“We hope this lawsuit will serve as the vehicle to finally illuminate the damage being wrought here and to impose significant pressure on Atlantic Shores to withdraw, as their obfuscation of the true project’s effects are indefensible,” Stern said in a statement. “The agencies simply cannot objectively argue that their approvals were made in accordance with the best science.”