NJ Commercial Fisheries Sue Trump Admin. For Allowing Wind Farm To Proceed

MIDDLETOWN, NJ ? Last Tuesday, multiple New Jersey fishermen and other groups ? including Belford Seafood Co-op in Middletown ? sued U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum for his sudden reversal to allow construction on Empire Wind farm to proceed.

You can read the lawsuit here.

Empire Wind will be a very large (80,000 acres of ocean) wind farm 19 miles off Long Branch, a distance too far out for turbines to be visible from shore. Empire Wind is owned by Norwegian renewable energy company Equinor, which has a contract with New York state to provide electricity to homes on Long Island.

On April 16, Burgum issued a halt-work order to Empire Wind, citing President Trump's ban on all new offshore wind development, which Trump announced on his very first day in office.

But then just one month later, on May 20, the Trump administration reversed course and lifted the order. Reuters reported last week Equinor was allowed to proceed because of a deal Burgum and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul reached where she agreed to allow canceled plans for a natural gas pipeline in New York state to be revived. In return, Empire Wind could resume work it already started, which includes laying rock on the sea floor.

The June 3 lawsuit seeks to have the stop-work order reinstated. In addition to Belford Seafood Co-op, many familiar Jersey Shore names and commercial fishing companies signed on, including:

Clean Ocean Action (the same group that hosts beach clean-ups every spring); Fisherman's Dock Cooperative in Point Pleasant Beach; the "Miss Belmar" fishing and sightseeing boat, which docks in Neptune under Captain Alan Shinn; Lund?s Fisheries in Cape May and Seaside Park Mayor John Peterson, a Republican.

Commercial fishermen in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Long Island also joined the lawsuit.

The lawsuit sues the United States of America, Interior Secretary Burgum, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, under acting director Walter Cruickshank, Equinor and the kingdom of Norway.

Equinor is owned and controlled by the Kingdom of Norway, which owns 67 percent of shares in the renewable energy company.

Jersey Shore fishermen say Empire Wind will be located in prime fishing grounds, and the sonar and other equipment used to build the turbines may harm dolphins and whales.

"Miss Belmar operates fishing trips in the NY Bight as a part of its business activities and will suffer the impacts on commercial fish stocks and limits on navigation caused by the WTGs (wind turbine generators), and, in fact, the area will be closed to commercial fishing due to navigational impediments," read the lawsuit. "Captain Shinn is injured because construction and operation of wind turbine generators will result in the cessation of commercial fishing activities in the Empire Wind lease area and will adversely impact the whale watching industry in the Lease Area and in the vicinity of the NY Bight."

Also, the U.S. Coast Guard says the wind turbines will be located in an area it uses as a training ground, and is an important security risk near the entrance of New York Harbor.

Monmouth County Congressman Chris Smith, a Republican, said he's concerned the turbines may interfere with high-frequency radar installations in New York Bight.

Equinor has presented "no plan to mitigate radar interference of this massive turbine farm planned near the flight paths for Newark Liberty, Kennedy and LaGuardia airports," said Smith this week. "Also, the legality of leasing United States waters to a foreign power is an important question raised in this lawsuit that has to be examined."

Bruce Afran is the Princeton-based lawyer who filed the June 3 lawsuit against Borgum and Equinor. Afran has represented politically conservative causes before: In 2021, during the COVID pandemic, he filed this lawsuit against Gov. Phil Murphy's mask mandate in schools. His lawsuit was rejected.

Meanwhile, plans continue to collapse for other wind farms off the Jersey Shore:

In major news this week, Atlantic Shores announced Monday it is canceling its proposal to build 197 turbines 8.7 miles off Barnegat Light on Long Beach Island. Atlantic Shores said the project is "no longer viable," citing, in part, Trump's ban on offshore wind development.

Shell oil company, which had been a partner in Atlantic Shores, already put a major blow to the project when it withdrew nearly $1 billion in January. Shell's chief financial officer said the wind farm would no longer bring the returns it would like, according to Bloomberg.

Empire Wind itself has already been downsized: It was actually supposed to be two wind farms, Empire Wind 1 and 2. But in early 2024, Equinor and partner company British Petroleum (BP) announced they were terminating plans to build Empire Wind 2, citing "inflation, interest rates and supply chain disruptions." The company also said there are "changed economic circumstances on an industry-wide scale."

And in 2023 Danish company Orsted made the surprise 3 a.m. announcement they were pulling out of their plans to build a proposed wind farm off Atlantic City. Orsted said the project was too expensive, despite the fact that the NJ Legislature gave them nearly $500 million in tax breaks.

Taken directly from Equinor's own website, here is the work Equinor already started on Empire Wind:

• Building the actual wind turbines, which Equinor started doing in spring 2024 at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal.
• "Marine activities," which includes rock laying in the ocean, which started this spring. What is rock laying? "Before foundations can be installed, rocks are placed on the seabed to create a stable base and to protect against erosion," Equinor said here.

Equinor said Borgum's initial stop-work order in April put the $5-billion project at a risk of total collapse.

Atlantic Shores Wind Farm Files To Cancel Project (Monday)

Trump Admin. Lifts Stop-Work Order, Allows Empire Wind Farm Off NJ To Proceed (May 2025)

Trump Administration Halts Empire Wind 1, Which Started Construction Off Jersey Shore (April 2025)

Shell Withdraws From Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind Project (January 2025)

Trump Puts Pause On Wind Farms, Wants Oil/Gas Drilling Off NJ Instead (January 2025)