FENWICK ISLAND – Fenwick Island is being asked to consult on potential offshore projects in the Central Atlantic Wind Energy Area.
In a Fenwick Island Town Council meeting last Friday, Mayor Natalie Magdeburger announced the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) had asked the Town of Fenwick Island to be a consulting party for the Central Atlantic Wind Energy Area. She said the invitation will allow the town to receive materials and provide input as the review process for offshore wind projects advances.
“It gives us a seat at the table,” she said.
Fenwick Island is just one of many jurisdictions being asked to consult on offshore wind projects being proposed off the mid-Atlantic coast. On Aug. 15, for example, the Worcester County Commissioners voted unanimously to have the county become a consulting party as well.
Chief Administrative Officer Weston Young told the commissioners at the time that BOEM had contacted the county with the request.
“They are reaching out to us and inviting us to become a consulting party which will give us certain rights and obligations through the National Historic Preservation Act,” he said. “This would also allow us to become actively informed of the review process and our input would be ‘actively sought.’”
In last week’s Fenwick Island Town Council meeting, Magdeburger said the town had taken an active role in offshore wind issues in recent years. In December, for example, Magdeburger had issued letters to BOEM on behalf of the Association of Coastal Towns and the Town of Fenwick Island seeking a moratorium on the issuance of new leaseholds in the Central Atlantic Wind Energy Area.
“Now they are asking us to be a consulting party, which means they will have to send to us all of their materials in terms of what’s entailed with the review directly. And we will get an opportunity to speak directly,” she explained. “So they will be seeking our input as opposed to us trying to find out, writing a letter and hoping somebody reads it.”
Magdeburger said the federal agency is required by law to seek a certain amount of input from consulting parties. As a consulting party, she said the town must assign a primary contact and an alternate as a liaison.
“Whatever response comes, comes from the town,” she said. “So I think it will require interaction with the planning commission, interaction with the environmental committee and interaction with the town council.”
Magdeburger said she saw the request as an opportunity to voice the town’s concerns.
“It gives us an opportunity to speak about something that is very important to us and have somebody’s ear, where they have to listen,” she said.
