Territorial Sea Plan Meeting
Oregon Coast Community College, Friday
Oregon Coast commercial and sport fishermen were not a happy group all day Friday as they were pressured to give up more valuable fishing areas to accommodate future wave energy devices, many of which are not yet fully designed, manufactured or tested. In fact if these devises ever show up off the Oregon Coast they are likely to require extensive federal incentives and subsidies to make their expensive electricity affordable to average U.S. homes and businesses. Many attending Friday’s Territorial Sea Plan meeting at Oregon Coast Community College were told that wave energy devices may be up to ten years away from being placed off any stretch of the Oregon Coast.
Richard Whitman, Governor Kitzhaber’s Natural Resources Policy Director, told the gathering of fisherman, environmental protection advocates, natural resource agency staffers, port officials, wave energy advocates and others, that no matter which offshore areas are labeled as open for consideration for wave energy, a long permitting process through a labyrinth of state and federal agencies would be required to give actual approval for actually installing devices. “We’re many years away from that,” he said.
A facilitator guided Friday’s discussion which was aimed at producing a list of up to four or five areas along the coast that can be forwarded to the state Land Conservation and Development Commission (LCDC), as well as to the Ocean Policy Advisory Council for review. From there the package goes to the state legislature next year to adopt it into state law.
Throughout Friday’s meeting, fishermen and port officials complained that although there have been multi-year discussions about setting aside areas of Oregon’s ocean out three miles for wave energy generation, it has only been in the last six weeks that maps have surfaced that show specifically where those areas are. When they saw the maps, fishermen blew their tops from Astoria to Port Orford. Many charge they were being told by state agencies to “roll over and die,” to quote one fisherman. They claim that offshore wave energy devices will kick fishermen off prime fishing grounds and will “junk up” ocean views and scenic byways with unattractive wave energy devices just offshore. They also asked who is going to be responsible for removing them if they don’t work out and their owners go bankrupt. Who picks up the tab for the clean up?
In addition, coastal fishing advocacy groups like Fine, Fact and Source contend that the jobs created by putting wave energy devices off the coast would come no where near replacing the jobs lost in fishing and tourism sectors; a huge net loss for the coastal economy. One critic said the only people making money on wave energy would be already wealthy east coast investors who require huge federal subsidies to turn a profit. “It’s like the wind energy farms up the Columbia Gorge,” he said. “The power they generate is very expensive so they get checks from Uncle Sam to stay in business.”
As the hour drew late and the pressure mounted to name specific areas for placement of wave energy devices, several fisherman, including Lincoln County Commissioner Terry Thompson, reiterated that the process for naming sites has been rushed and that Salem bureaucrats do not have an appreciation of the fishing industry, how it works and how it relies on specific areas to remain economically viable. They asked for more time. However state agency staff said Governor Kitzhaber expects the Territorial Sea Plan, complete with wave energy siting areas, to be ready for review in time for the next legislature. Some staffers expressed concern, as they have numerous times in the past, that if the state does not come up with a plan, and soon, the federal government may do it for them with less than optimal results. That’s because the federal government is eyeing wave and wind energy projects themselves beyond the state’s three mile limit out another fifteen miles. And they want to be able to hook into the state’s lines that will, by then, already be connected to the regional electrical grid.
It was hammer time.
All members of the Territorial Sea were asked to vote their preferences among a list of possible sites from near Astoria down to Gold Beach; Camp Rialea, Netarts, Nestucca-Pacific City, north Newport, Waldport, Reedsport, Lakeside, Langlois, Gold Beach alternate and Gold Beach original. As you can see from the bottom picture the yellow, blue and red “anti” dots outnumbered the green for six out of the ten sites. A few were pretty close. The ones that were begrudgingly still in the running were north Newport, Lakeside (revised), Reedsport (near shore), and Gold Beach (alternate). Since there was a call for another north coast candidate, Netarts was added along with another south coast candidate, Langlois near Coos Bay. Langlois is a premier crab fishing area that produces a huge portion of the total take of Oregon Dungeness Crab.
As the clock clicked past what was already an hour longer than the meeting was supposed to run, a call was made to conduct another vote on the remaining sites. But the group just didn’t have it in them – eight hours of arm wrestling had been exhausting. So they scheduled another Territorial Sea Plan meeting for December 6th to determine if they can chose four or five locations from the remaining list that could be forwarded to LCDC and the upcoming legislature. The remaining sites on the “wave energy block” were Camp Rialea, Reedsport (near shore), Lakeside (revised), Lanlois, Gold Beach (alternate), offshore of Rogue Reef, and Netarts. Newport was dropped because of the high number of marine reserves placed off Lincoln County shores as well as other conservation areas that effectively exclude commercial and sport fishing.
Natural Resources Policy Director Richard Whitman re-emphasized that the plan can be modified in the future to reflect advances in technology along with the evolution of national green energy policies. He again pointed out that no fishermen are going to be thrown off their fishing grounds anytime soon. “It’ll be years before anything like that might happen, but even then, many sites will be scaled down to smaller operational areas,” he said. “The net loss may be far less than what many fishermen fear.”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.