Two birding groups — one based in northwest Ohio — filed suit in federal court on Wednesday in hopes of blocking plans for the proposed six-turbine Lake Erie offshore demonstration wind farm north of Cleveland known as the Icebreaker Wind Project.
The Black Swamp Bird Observatory, which is based in Oak Harbor, Ohio, is a co-plaintiff with the Washington-based American Bird Conservancy.
In 2017, after more than five years of litigation, the two convinced the Ohio Air National Guard to back away from its plans to erect a commercial-scale, $1.5 million wind turbine at Camp Perry, which is about 30 miles east of downtown Toledo and along the western Lake Erie shoreline just past the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge, Magee Marsh, and FirstEnergy Solutions’ Davis-Besse nuclear power plant.
The lawsuit aimed at blocking the offshore Lake Erie project names the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as defendants. It claims they failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and the federal Clean Water Act in their evaluation of environmental impacts and alternatives. Spokesmen for those two agencies could not be reached.
The two birding organizations claim in their filing that the proposed wind farm “would pose substantial collision risks to the enormous numbers of birds that use the area throughout the year, including large concentrations of migrating songbirds, as well as the Common Loons, globally significant populations of Red-breasted Mergansers, and other waterfowl.”
“Further, construction and increased vessel traffic associated with the project could pollute the waters used by these species,” they said.
If approved, Icebreaker would be the first offshore wind farm in the Great Lakes region and only the second in the United States.
The two groups said they are being represented by the public interest law firm Eubanks & Associates, LLC.
The project’s developer, the Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation, also known as LEEDCo, is a nonprofit partnership of public and private groups.
“The vision is a robust offshore wind industry by 2030 that will have significant impact on the economic and environmental state of the region,” the LEEDCo. website states.
Plans call for the six turbines to be 3.45-megawatt machines, each capable of generating nearly twice the electricity of many land-based turbines in Ohio now. Siting is about eight miles north of downtown Cleveland’s Lake Erie shoreline.
Northwest Ohio receives about $37 million in ecotourism from an estimated 75,000 visitors during the peak migration months of April and May. The region’s largest draw that time of year is The Biggest Week in American Birding, organized by the Black Swamp Bird Observatory.
First Published December 11, 2019, 11:40 p.m.
