November 6, 2024
Portland, Maine – Commercial fishermen hope the incoming Trump administration will protect America’s fisheries and maritime workers from foreign energy developers.
“The sea sustains whole communities around our country, but ocean industrialization is destroying them. The incoming administration has a historic opportunity to save American workers from foreign developers, reinvigorate iconic coastal towns, and improve America’s food security,” said NEFSA CEO Jerry Leeman.
To that end, NEFSA hopes the new administration will consider two essential policy changes. First, the new administration should delist unleased wind energy areas in the Gulf of Maine, New York Bight, and the Mid-Atlantic, among other places. Regulators attempted to “future-proof” their development plans by designating thousands of square miles of ocean as wind energy areas, without any attending regulations to rescind those approvals. These anti-democratic measures should not survive the first 100 days.
Second, the new administration should revoke the disastrous 30x30 pledge, which commits the U.S. to deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. This ill-conceived commitment has led the federal government to rush approval of any proposed project with minimal effort to ensure environmental safety or deconflict key maritime activities, such as commercial fishing.
“A primary commitment to American workers is the at the heart of President Trump’s political appeal. We hope his administration will seize this opportunity to put citizens plying America’s oldest trade over foreign mega corporations industrializing this country’s oldest natural resource – its fisheries,” Leeman said.
NEFSA is a bipartisan, non-profit organization committed to uniting Americans to protect the last wild frontier – the ocean.
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