Town officials on Nantucket, Mass., launched the latest legal attempt to undo federal approvals for an offshore wind project, contending that permits for SouthCoast Wind violated laws protecting the island’s historic district and “heritage tourism economy.”
The town’s appeal filed March 27 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia aims at the U.S. Department of Interior and its Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, claiming the agencies violated the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act in issuing approvals Jan. 17 for the project planned 20 miles south of Nantucket.
It was one of a flurry of last-minute moves by the outgoing Biden administration to cement its renewable energy plans, ahead of President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration and his promises to undo that agenda.
The project is backed by EDP Renewables, a division of Energias de Portugal, Portugal's largest utility company, and Engie SA, a French multinational utility company. If it’s ever built on its 127,388-acre lease in federal waters, SouthCoast Wind could generate up to 2,400 megawatts from 141 turbines and five transmission substations.
The National Park Service in 1966 named Nantucket to be a National Historic Landmark District as "finest surviving architectural and environmental example of a late 18th- and early 19th-century New England seaport town."
“While BOEM has admitted that the project will adversely affect Nantucket’s internationally renowned historic district, which powers the Town’s heritage tourism economy, Nantucket alleges that BOEM violated federal law in failing to address those harms before greenlighting the project,” town officials said in announcing the lawsuit.
“Nantucket is a premier international destination for our commitment to preservation,” said Town Select Board Chair Brooke Mohr, chair of the Nantucket Town Select Board. “Despite our repeated attempts to help BOEM and the developer find balance between the nation’s renewable energy goals and the protection of what makes us unique, they have refused to work with us and to follow the law.”
With Trump’s push to reverse offshore wind projects, local opponents are casting about for new legal avenues to take to the federal courts and newly sympathetic agencies like the Interior Department and Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA moved to rescind an aid-quality permit for the Atlantic Shores wind project off New Jersey, based on an appeal the local opposition group Save Long Beach filed days after the permit was awarded in September 2024.
Nantucket’s approach of protecting its historic heritage is represented to the court by its Washington, D.C. law firm Cultural Heritage Partners. Attorney William Cook said “BOEM’s conduct sets a dangerous precedent by weakening the federal government’s review of all energy-related projects, including fossil fuel projects that contribute most to global warming. We need to defend federal laws that protect our cultural and environmental resources now more than ever.”
The lawsuit focuses too on the July 13 fracture of a turbine blade on the Vineyard Wind project, which led to a weeks-long cleanup of fiberglass and foam fragments at sea and on island beaches.
“This is not about protecting rich people’s views. Our entire economy depends on heritage tourism. If people no longer want to come to Nantucket, that has a real impact on our small businesses and the people who operate them,” said Matt Fee, vice chair of the town select board.
