Meghan Lapp is leading the charge to save the commercial fishing industry and bringing up a national security risk.
How, you might ask, are offshore wind farms a huge problem?
The Empire Wind Project, a controversial offshore wind farm near New York, has raised national security and environmental concerns due to its location near JFK flight paths, potential radar interference, and disruption of vital fishing grounds. Meghan Lapp, a fisheries expert, warns that the project partly owned by Norway’s state was rushed through permitting without proper oversight, may obstruct air defense capabilities, and could endanger marine life and navigation. Despite a brief halt by the Trump administration, the project resumed amid speculation of a pipeline deal, drawing scrutiny over regulatory failures and political motivations.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Introduction
03:13 – Empire Wind Project Controversy
05:28 – Alleged Pipeline Deal & Foreign Ownership
08:15 – Radar Interference and JFK Airport Risks
11:19 – DOD and FAA Inter-agency Failures
14:24 – Deceptive Status Claims and Construction Reality
17:09 – Maritime Safety and Historic Collisions
20:01 – Tower Size and Ecological Blind Spots
23:26 – Vineyard Wind and Tax Loopholes
27:17 – Falsified Safety Data and National Security Concerns
30:44 – Trump Admin Review and Industry Hope
33:58 – Structural Governance Problems
36:41 – Disparity in Regulation Between Oil/Gas and Wind
39:20 – Microplastics and Blade Deterioration
42:05 – Reclamation Costs and Industry Burden
44:13 – Final Plea for Government Attention
46:36 – Conclusion and Call to Action
David Blackmon [00:00:21] Well, welcome everyone to energy impacts and joint interview, uh, along with Stu Turley, an energy news beat with one of our favorite, very favorite people who has been on our podcast several times in the past, Meghan Lapp, spokesperson for sea freeze limited, and, uh has done a sterling job as a spokesperson really for the Marine Fisher industry in the Northeast as Joe Biden's, uh, offshore wind boondoggles have become a thing out there over the past few years, Meghan, how are you doing today?
Meghan Lapp [00:00:59] I am doing well. Thanks for fun.
David Blackmon [00:01:02] Meghan was telling me before we started this thing that she is living in a house that's what 300 years old now in Connecticut. My goodness. And having all sorts of fun with the local wildlife out in the country. And, uh, yeah, I'm familiar with those kinds of challenges. It's, it's a lot of fun. I'm sure it's as much fun in Connecticut as it is in Texas. Stuart, how are you today up in Oklahoma on, in your beautiful Lake house?
Stuart Turley [00:01:30] Oh, absolutely wonderful. And just having a lot of fun up here, getting ready to do some fishing and, uh, Meghan, I want to know how's your sword, uh creation going when you're on the podcast, you had a beautiful sword fish sword behind you last time.
Meghan Lapp [00:01:48] Yeah, you know, I haven't made too many of them recently. I have a fish tote with some bills in it, but I have not actually gone and built anything recently. But yeah, I gotta get the guys on my boats to save me a few if they catch any.
David Blackmon [00:02:05] Do you market those? No. Oh, if you have a website for them, we can put that in the show notes.
Meghan Lapp [00:02:12] Oh, well thank you.
David Blackmon [00:02:14] But anyway, I'd love to have one. I would certainly pay money for a swordfish. That would be fun. So let's talk about wind. Obviously, the reason you got involved on this, the negative impacts these enormous offshore wind projects are having on the marine fisheries industry up there in the Northeast. You recently wrote a wonderful story that I actually reprinted at my substat. Your permission, thank you. Bout. Empire Wind and the challenges it presents in so many ways offshore the state of New York and within what eight miles proximity to JFK airport to its flight lanes and talk about what's going on there and why you decided to write that excellent story about it.
Meghan Lapp [00:03:13] Yeah, thanks. Well, in I believe it was April, the Trump administration issued a stop work order for Empire Wind. And Secretary Burgum said the, you know, the permits had been rushed through the Biden administration, actually said that they were faulty, which is correct, it was rushed through by the Biden Administration and the permits are faulty. And so that was a big relief for everyone in the commercial fishing industry. That is a project I personally have been fighting since 2015. Um, and there are so many problems with it, David, that I could go into. We could be here for five hours. And then, you know, in about a month later, the Trump administration in an order without explanation, it didn't say any, there was no rationale. Just said, you guys can go ahead with construction. And then all of a sudden, news hit the headline saying that Trump and Kathy Hockel, the governor of New York, had done a deal for a pipeline for New York to New England. And I know, you know, they've been trying to get the Constitution pipeline through for a very long time to get natural gas to New England and New York State has blocked that pipeline because to get to New England, you got to go through New York. So, and that's been a very, for many years, but you know, then Hokel came out and said, no, no. No, there was no pipeline deal. And then Norwegian media, this is interesting. Norwegian media is saying, oh yes, there 100% was a pipeline deal, and that's why we're allowed to go forward because that project is owned by Equinor, which is 70% owned by the government of Norway. And the government of Norway makes all the decisions for that company. So it's essentially, we have leased, you know this extra wind. Lease at the entrance to New York Harbor to a foreign government. And so, yeah, it's a problem. And actually, I'm a board member of Protect Our Coast New Jersey, and he filed a complaint for a lawsuit a couple weeks ago there on this project. One of the things that we're alleging is, look, a foreign Government can't own a lease. This is a foreign government owning a lease.
David Blackmon [00:05:28] It definitely is, there's no question about that.
Meghan Lapp [00:05:31] So anyway, but the article that I wrote really touches on a lot of these things, the reasons why the permit is faulty. There are so many, for the fishing industry, which is where I started off researching this entire thing, the lease decided squarely on squid, which is calamari, and scallop fishing grounds. And it was so bad that prior to the lease sale, which was held during the Obama administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, which manages U.S. Federal fisheries, said this area should be recited and all of the parts of the lease that conflict the most with fisheries need to be eliminated. And of course, the Obama administration at the time was like, no, you know, the woman I was at a meeting with, Abby Hopper, who was the director of BOEM at the and she started the meeting knowing that fishing was pushing back. She started the meeting saying, I'm not a marine biologist, but I'm a history maker. And then proceeded to say how they were history with the New York wind farm prior to any analysis like being done, even though that they knew that they had problems with fishing. So that's how it started and that's how it continued. The Coast Guard said they needed setbacks from the traffic lanes. They're traffic lanes into New York Harbor. They wanted a two nautical mile setback from the actual traffic lanes, five nautic miles setback from the entry exit to the TSS. And Bohm said, nah. We're going to give them while because you know, the developer needs flexibility. So you have that then later on, then that later on there were, um, there were studies showing about the aerospace interference. Like wind turbines are very, very tall. They're bigger than the ones on land and they interfere with, um. Air defense radar, long range surveillance radar, right? So they did a study on, but it only extended to New York. It didn't go further down the coast. So Newark Airport wasn't included with having its fair share of troubles recently with their radar But it showed that The Empire wind project would interfere with nearly the entire line of sight of JFK airports radar Yeah, and that that wind farm is directly on the entryway. It's like a pattern to go into JFK I'm originally from Long Island. I know where these planes fly. I watch them They're like ducklings one behind the other and they go right there So I'm like, well, this is a problem. The report came out and said well it can, because of the the appearance that this project will create. Aircraft can hide in the airspace above the wind farm. And you won't be able to detect them. So like, if anybody remembers 9-11.
David Blackmon [00:08:15] Oh, yeah.
Meghan Lapp [00:08:16] Radars where we're tracking those planes and now you have a blind spot right where aircraft can hide you will not be able like the detectability for real targets drops and when you have multiple you know planes in the air all the time which you have area it's an extremely busy area um you know it's like is is anybody looking at this and the answer is no because the faa said well anything outside of 12 nautical miles from shore we just leave that up to BOEM. And it's like BOEM doesn't do planes. And like, you know, first and end, there was an executive order under I think it was like Reagan or something that gives the FAA authority out to all all American airspace. So I'm like, that's not a real excuse. And there's actual in the federal code of regulations, there's rules to say if the FAs equipment is going to be interfered with the Secretary of Transportation shall do an investigation into what this means. And then shall report out what the engines to air traffic are, you know, and so they have kicked it to the DOD to look at. The DOD has also said, well, you now, Bo makes the decisions on energy. I'm like, you're the DOD. Like, that's not real life either. And so they've.
David Blackmon [00:09:30] Well, it shouldn't, yeah.
Meghan Lapp [00:09:31] Right. They approved the project saying, well, the DOD can figure out a mitigation solution later. And for them and the FAA. Meanwhile, the DoD and the FAA are part of a inter-agency wind turbine radar interference mitigation working group, which has been in existence since like 2014. And they have since 2016 had a random of understanding that they were going to. Fix, fully address the problems with radar interference from windmills by 2025. And then when it was coming up to 2025, they kind of looked around and went, well, we didn't find any solutions. We only found more problems. So what we do is re-up that MOU to 2035. Now the UK has no solution. Nobody else that already has windmils has a solution, right? So now this inter-agency working group, DOD, NFAA, and Coast Guard. Actually the Coast Guard I think is bystander in it, but they have now extended their timeline to 2035. So what happens if we got these windmills there and by 2035 we still have no like we don't we don't have a solution. The FAA has not even done a basic thing to look and go if the radar interferes and that's obviously a huge problem, do you have to reroute all the air traffic? Do you have take all those those approaches and reroute them around the wind farm? Yeah, me more or less. Right like like there's practical solutions that the DOD is not going to look at that because DOD's job to look commercial air traffic Like you have to look from a commercial air-traffic perspective. What should you be doing and then if it were to go forward, right? But then the DO D perspective it's like anybody remember like in December all the drones Remember like when everybody New York and New Jersey was like losing their mind because
David Blackmon [00:11:19] And with all those drones.
Meghan Lapp [00:11:20] Right. Then they just magically like fell off the radar and like nobody talked about it anymore. But meanwhile, in December 2024, which is when all those drones were happening, Estonia was killing NATO allies. Estonia was killing wind farms because they said they wouldn't be able to see drones in the vicinity of the wind farm. And then Sweden killed 13 offshore wind projects in the Baltic Sea because they're right across from Russia. And obviously they're afraid of Russia at the moment. So they said, our military defense capabilities are more important than a quote unquote green energy project. And they said that it would reduce their incoming missile detection time by half. They wouldn't be able to see aircraft over the wind farm, and they wouldn't able to hear submarines. So they say, well, we have to get rid of this because we can't have that happen. And I'm like, but we can do it at the entrance to New York Harbor? Someone please explain this to me like I'm five. Explain it to me like I'm five, oh, that's okay. And the excuse is now all of a sudden that there was a pipeline deal. Well, that doesn't fix the other issues, right? That were permitted in a rushed manner because the Biden administration wanted the projects done, didn't care about all of these other real, real problems. They're real problems and I don't know if you guys saw Martha McCallum grilled Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright the other day and she was asking him, she must've read this article and she, she kept. Pushing him and he was like, oh well, but we have a pipeline and she was like Yeah, that's not
David Blackmon [00:12:48] Yeah, he didn't want to. I thought it was a bad look and I'm a fan of secretary rights, but I thought that interview went very badly for him because he simply would not address the question directly like three or four times and that's never a good look for anybody, right?
Meghan Lapp [00:13:06] No, no, you know what? Honestly, I don't think he knew. I don't
David Blackmon [00:13:11] He may not have, but he should have been prepped for it.
Meghan Lapp [00:13:13] He should have been prepped. But I don't think the secretary necessarily, you know, he and his staff are fairly new as well. I don't know if everybody is really, you know Secretary Burgum however, did say this permit was faulty and pulled it back. Right? So what's, he's the guy in charge of the offshore. And what's his answer to that? What's his response? What about the secretary of transportation? Hey, you know, I watched Sean Duffy, who I really do like, and he was speaking after the DCA crash, right? And he was really upset because he said the FAA had information that said that there were a lot of near misses in this area. Why wasn't something done? Now people are dead. And he Was really upset. And I kind of look at this like the same thing, like information that says that this is a huge problem, Like who's taking proactive steps to address this? And I really believe when Secretary Bergham issued that, you know, stop work order, that that was a, you know that was the step and immediately be like, well we'll just exchange it for a pipeline. That's not, that's not a solution.
David Blackmon [00:14:24] And so I think what we have at play here is a political calculation. Obviously it's a political calculation that interior and energy and the president want those pipelines. It's two different pipelines that will bring that gas both to New York City and its Harbor and, and also to New England from the Marcellus. The other calculation I think they're having is this project's probably going to get canceled anyway. Once Congress rescinds the subsidies for wind that were contained in the IRA, because it will become at that point a non-economic project. Now, I don't know if they're right about that or not. You know, I think that's probably the calculation they've decided to make here is, is if Hocal wants this thing and she's going to let these pipelines go through, well, this project's probably going to die anyway, so why not let it go, but I just, it is a bad look I think to immediately less than, I think it was less than a month after they issued the stop work order that they rescinded it and that shows a lack of real diligence. In my view, and just, just not, not a good way to run, run a ship, uh, in my view, talk about too. I mean, so what stays empire wind at in its construction? I mean there are already towers constructed out there, right?
Meghan Lapp [00:15:53] No, and that, that is the key. And that's what I was going to say. I don't think secretary Burgum or president, they were the folks making this decision, you know, they're, you know, secretary Burgam staff is new. He's new, like fairly new. And, and they should be knowing this before they make trades for pipelines. But, um, Kathy Hokel kept saying. In the media, and I'm sure when she was on the phone with them, the project is 30% complete. And that was a bold faced lie. There is not, there is not no steel in the water. That was the thing. And like, that's not true. So I think it was probably pitched to them as, well, the projects are already part, you know, a third done anyway, you might as well just let it go. Right. But that was alive. There was not one piece of steel in the water when those situations were going on or those discussions were going And so. For them to then make a decision, you know, first of all, if stuff's illegally issued, it's illegal to just make a trade for a pipeline anyway, because there's the Administrative Procedures Act doesn't let you do that. But, um, but.
David Blackmon [00:17:09] That's why they can't admit this was a quid pro quo, right?
Meghan Lapp [00:17:12] Right, right. But, you know, if during those discussions, if the status of the project was misrepresented to the Trump administration, and they didn't do their own due diligence and really figure out what was going on because Equinor not put any, you, know, no steel in the water, But as soon as the go-ahead work order was given, they brought this giant vessel called the Thealf from the Netherlands, it crossed the Atlantic, it docked in Newport Road, well in the harbor, couldn't dock things so big, it anchored, and then it stayed there for about a week before moving on to the Empire Wind Lease site, and it's only been within the past day or two that that boat has been on, and there have been feeder barges then coming up to it, so I don't know if they Just driven the first pile or if they're starting it right now, you know what I mean? It's kind of hard to tell unless you have somebody out there, but you can see now the vessels are on site None of that happened until that go ahead that that work order went ahead and so You know I'm like I hope I I really sincerely hope that information does get to the trump administration because they were lied to and so
David Blackmon [00:18:30] That was shocking.
Meghan Lapp [00:18:31] Yeah, right. So I'm like, it's not too late to stop this. Um, it is not too late to start this. It is not to say, yo, hold off because they haven't done anything yet. And you know what I find really funny? And I look at this like shake my head. So back in the day, we used to have these things called light ships, and they were basically a lighthouse on a boat. Okay. And so like it would go at the entrances to harbors and things like that. You know, the Coast Guard used them for navigational aids back in Well, it used to be this one called Ambrose Light Ship. And that was right kind of near where this project is sited. And then they turned it from a light ship, they turned into a tower. So it was a tower with like a light on it or whatever, it was supposed to be a navigational aid for the Coast Guard. They took it down, Coast Guard took it down because so many tankers hit it. Okay. So New York Harbor, lots of tankers, lots of boats, lots, you know, they had so many collisions with it because, and this is a navigational aid, right? That they took it down because it was like a problem. So now we're going to put, I think the whole empire wind project together is supposed to be like 154 turbines or something. So think about that, right? And these cause radar interference on boats. So I'm like, Does anybody remember that one time when we had Ambrose Tower, and then we didn't anymore because of collisions?
Stuart Turley [00:20:01] Wow. If wind turbines cause radar problems with boats, they're going to cause radar with airplanes. Right. I can't be, it's called radar. This is a problem.
Meghan Lapp [00:20:23] It's a problem
David Blackmon [00:20:25] So how tall are these towers associated with this project? I know that some of the plan projects are building planning to build towers 900, 1100 feet tall and the blades, people need to understand the blades are three or 400 feet long too. And so on an 1100 foot tower, the blade's going to spend 200 feet above that. I mean, these are not onshore 300 foot turbine towers. These are big offshore. Very tall towers.
Meghan Lapp [00:20:57] Very tall, yeah, the turbines, fire wind are supposed to be over 900 feet tall.
David Blackmon [00:21:03] No, we can't.
Meghan Lapp [00:21:04] Um, and that does include the blade, but still, you know what I mean? Yeah, they are three to 400 feet long, um, the blades. And when those are spinning and you got three of them spinning on each tower, um, you now it does cause interference. It causes, it causes a lot of things and, you know, why you would want to put them here is like beyond me. It's like the worst possible location that you could ever have.
David Blackmon [00:21:29] It's like the, the industry in police seeks out the most destructive locations they can find. I mean, some of the others are, are planned for no long known well migration corridors, right? In the Gulf of Mexico, they wanted big wind farms right in the middle of bird migration quarters in the Gulf Mexico. It's just a bizarre dynamic, as far as I'm concerned, for these corporations. Like Equinor, like L, like BP, like Orsted, who loved to boast about their concerns for the environment and for, for endangered species, investing in these projects they know, they know are going to kill endangered species of mammals and birds. And it's like, well, it's okay because it's wind. It's the most bizarre thought. That
Stuart Turley [00:22:32] David, and how can the fish and wildlife issue eagle permits so that they kill an allotted amount of eagles that the rest of the farmers get hauled to jail for? I don't get this.
David Blackmon [00:22:51] Well, it's just the way it is. I mean, we, we have a religion going on here. So that's empire wind and empire wind. I still believe we'll never get built and it won't be open. They apparently they're going to try to build at least one tower here. For it all for falls apart. Then you have the Atlantic shores project, Pete Murphy, governor of New Jersey's pet project, funding for it got pulled, operation canceled last week. Uh, that one's gone. Was that one of the ones you were most concerned about as well?
Meghan Lapp [00:23:26] Um, I know that New Jersey was very concerned about that one. Yeah. Um, you know, boats don't fish in that particular site. Um, although I would say Atlantic shores was going to seriously interfere with Atlantic city airport. Yeah. And there was data on that. And the FAA was like, wow, there's only this many turbines. They only counted the ones inside of 12 miles and they ignored, you know, the 60 plus other ones that were going to be real problems for them outside of 12. And I was like, no, that's not real. So that's, you know, I did comment to the FAA on that particular project, as well as the empire project from the aeronautical radar, you know perspective from the studies that the government already had, but there's been such an incredible abdication of authority and responsibility by various agencies. It is easier for the agencies to say, well, Bones in charge and then they don't have to like do their jobs or or actually have the responsibility to you know say to an administration like no you can't do this or no we don't recommend that you do this because politically nobody wants to rock the boat and and that's been really disappointing like when you think that you know you look at it you go oh it's okay the FAA they're looking out for safety oh look it's okay the Coast Guard they're out for safety and then you actually find out that they're not. That's really disturbing. And then, as a citizen, you kind of wonder what other situations are out there that they're also not looking at. It's really disappointing when people abdicate their responsibility and their fiduciary duty to the American people to play politics. And that's
David Blackmon [00:25:17] No, it's not. And, and unfortunately, you know, setting up agencies like that to where, to where it's so easy to pass the buck between them. So nobody ever has to take responsibility for anything is intentional. Oh, just the federal government, every state government, local government too. It's it's pathetic, but it seems to be human nature. Um, the vineyard wind thing was another big fiasco for the wind industry. Last year, the big blade collapse polluted the beaches of Nantucket. Offshore killed a lot of fish, a lot of Marine mammals, um, that, that project had actually partially gone into production, right? I mean, it, it had, it was in operation, not the whole project, but part of it before that.
Meghan Lapp [00:26:02] Yeah, so here's the fun fact about the tax subsidies, because this is where what Empire Wind is doing also plays into this. They only have to start saying they are producing power. They get it. It doesn't mean that the project has to be fully built or the project doesn't have to be full operational. They can just have a turbine and it's spinning. And actually, I've been told by people working out kind of like for one of the projects, they weren't actually producing power. They had the generator on and the generator was producing power through the turbine, but they could say electrons are flowing so we qualify.
David Blackmon [00:26:43] And it doesn't have to even be tied into the grid yet, right? I mean, they can be producing power and not benefiting anyone.
Meghan Lapp [00:26:51] Yeah, it's kind of like, I don't know if it has to be tied into the grid or not. But like on one of the projects, I had heard that that that had been the case. So with Vineyard Wind, they have a handful of them, quote unquote, built, quote unquote producing power. So they'll qualify. Right. I mean, Empire Wind can put in one turbine and just like turn it on or put a generator on it and just have it produce power and say, look, it's it's producing power where we get the tax credits. Right? So.
David Blackmon [00:27:17] And that may be what they're trying to do now, yeah.
Meghan Lapp [00:27:19] Yeah, with Vineyard Wind, so after the blade break and then radio, there was a radio outlet in Canada that unveiled that the gas vapes that had been producing the blades, they had, like the workers were told by upper management allegedly to just rush through everything. They needed the stuff. So falsify the safety records and QAQC data and just run it through, right? This happens, blade breaks, so then there was an investigation, Vessi did an investigation and then the result of that was that they told Vineyard Wind they had to take all the blades or the blades off of 22 turbines, okay, so that 66 blades come down because they're all faulty and then they said you have to put them on a boat and ship them to France, get them fixed and then bring them back. So that is occurring right now. Okay. So Vineyard Wind is incredibly, they will not answer any of the questions from the media. The media is like asking them questions. They won't say anything. They've like re-upped their lease for the Marine Terminal they have been using by like another two years. This allegedly, you know, according to some reports, it's the blade breaks already cost them like $700 million. And you know obviously being behind schedule is also going to cost you money. And so I don't know if that was factored into that or not. It's like a total complete disaster and they won't say anything. They won't admit anything. But the real thing is like, they know that blades break. Everybody like the wind industry knows that blades, break. I read one report of some that had broken on land out in like Oklahoma or something, and they, a blade liberation event that happened. So, you know, then there, that company was getting sued and everything. So they know what this happens, right? So you would think that part of knowing that this happens, that this is a fairly common occurrence, that you would have a plan in place to deal with it if and when it happens, right? Like they had to have an oil spill response plan in case all the oil and, you know, petrochemicals in the turbine, if something were to happen, it were to leak out, they had an oil spills response plan. So you'd think that they would have a blade break response plan also so that there would be some kind of protocol to follow if this actually happened. And of course it wasn't. Right? There wasn't. So none of the projects have a blade response.
David Blackmon [00:29:49] Well, you know why that is, right? Because if you have to have an emergency response plan to it, you're admitting that it's not green, it's toxic. It's a danger to the surrounding area. So that's why they don't have to have a plan for that because they want to be able, and the government under Biden and Obama wanted them to be able to continue to put up their green facade. I wonder, so the Trump administration has been in office now for going on five months, um, not a lot of time, but they only have four years in office. So, you know, I mean, time is flashing by have you in your industry. Notice any improvement in the response to your concerns from the NMFS, for example, or other agencies you deal with.
Meghan Lapp [00:30:44] Well, kind of the fullness of that remains to be seen right now, according to Trump's executive order on day one, there's a review that's being conducted of the Wynn projects, right? And so I'm sure all the inter-agencies are involved in that. And I will say that fast. They really did raise a lot of issues even under the previous administration. Like there are records that show, hey, this stuff's a problem. They put information out there that administration ignored that hopefully the Trump administration can look at and use to see, you know, here are real valid concerns that were basically steamrolled so that permits could be issued. And we know that that's the case. Because I've read their comment letters. You know, I was there when they were saying, hey, you should recite Empire Wind. It's really bad. There's a lot of conflicts. And, you know, at that time, you know, the Obama administration, it's totally fine. Fine. So I'm hoping that all of those things that have been there before now actually maybe are given a little bit of weight by the new admin.
David Blackmon [00:32:01] But your industry is also, I guess, in part, right, as is regulated by BOEM too, right? Don't they have some authority over you or is it all in MFS?
Meghan Lapp [00:32:11] It's all Nymphs and it's all in the Department of Commerce. We are in the department of commerce. So, but we've got a lot more regulations and offshore wind.
David Blackmon [00:32:23] Well, yeah, I mean, that's the case everywhere. I, you know, that one of the biggest concerns for me is that these projects are not properly bond, no real regulation requiring proper disposal and dismantling once, you know, once the salt water destroys them, which is going to happen very quickly. Uh, you know, I mean, they're going to be free to just leave all that crap out there. And, um, you know, that's not, it just, it's something that has to change the same thing on shore. There's no real regulatory requirements for these big wind farms to be properly dismantled and disposed. And so you're going to end up with these blots on the landscape all over the damn country, because the original developers are going to sell to smaller and smaller developers who aren't going to have the financial, uh, wherewithal to do anything with them when the out of business. So it just. It's an awful situation that no one's thinking about. I'm hoping this administration will be more diligent in that regard, ultimately, although it doesn't seem to be getting to an ideal start here, particularly where empire wins concern. So what, what are you, where, where do we go from here with, with the new administration, with, the industry in general, do you have any, are there any upcoming hearings? Do you have anything on the horizon that we ought to be on the outlook for?
Meghan Lapp [00:33:58] Well, I would say, you know, keep keep your eye on the protect our coasts New Jersey lawsuit, because you know one of the cruxes of that lawsuit is the Administrative Procedures Act, can't say a permit's faulty, it was rushed and there's it's defective, and then do a deal pipeline like there's that's not administrative procedure, right. And so I think that that I think that that really does have merit. And I am curious to see how a judge will handle that.
David Blackmon [00:34:31] I think that's going to be really interesting, actually.
Meghan Lapp [00:34:35] Yeah, I think it really will be.
David Blackmon [00:34:36] Especially with all the media around it, yeah.
Meghan Lapp [00:34:39] Right, right. So, and I think, you know, as far as stuff that needs to be done, you know, there has to be a different way. First of all, I think every single lease should be rescinded because they were improperly leased in the first place, right? Everything is faulty. The foundation is faulty. The building is going to be faulty, um, and so there's that. But then I think you know somebody's really got to think. Okay. You can't have the DOD and the FAA and the US Coast Guard and everybody else just bowing down at the feet of Boehm all the time. Boeham is not and should not be the authority for those things. Somebody really needs to change the surprise. The DOD should have veto power all day long. The FAA should have the veto power all day along. The Coast Guard should have a veto power all day, long. This should not the the Boehym show. And because I don't even know how, was even concocted in the first place, you know, this this whole defer to the other agency thing, but I think that has to be first order. Like before anything is in there, it has to, it should have to go through very, very good review at each one of those agencies, and if they say no, or if they say, well, it shouldn't be amended, or whatever they should say, that should be the end of it, like. That to me is insane. The United States Navy in 2017 did an analysis and it was a wind compatibility analysis for the East Coast. And it was based on 800 foot high turbines, and all of them are higher than 800 feet now. So you like would have to redo this, right? And almost the whole East Coast was red. It was a Wind Exclusion Zone. And there are active, there's like projects in the red, including One Off Virginia, which is on the way to like, I'm Norfolk. So I'm like, this, it says red, that means no. And that means you can't build here. Like that should have been a definitive absolute no. All these leases have to go.
David Blackmon [00:36:41] The point I've tried to make is if, if this industry had been subject to the same regulatory scrutiny that the department of interior, mainly has always subjected the oil and gas offshore industry to there wouldn't be a single wind turbine built in the Atlantic ocean today, such a clear example of bureaucratic bias, I guess it is, of politics interfering with the way these laws are supposed to be enforced. That's the only thing that's enabled industry to grow in the first place.
Meghan Lapp [00:37:19] Absolutely. I actually had done some digging into oil and gas permits in the Gulf of America because I wanted to know, I was like, we've been doing oil and gas a long time. And not that gas doesn't have the radar interference problems, right? So all of those problems don't exist with it. And so when they do shallow hazard seismic with sparkers and other equipment, which the wind industry uses the same make and model sparkers, as the oil industry, when they're doing shallow hazard seismic to see where like pipelines would go, it's the same equipment as when the wind industry wants to see where cables can go. It's the same. But the oil industry, they had rules. And they had to submit survey plans to BOEM that contained all kinds of information, including how close they were to other surveys in the area. And they were told you have to do these things because of the impact marine channels, the potential impact from your equipment and your activities. On the NOAA side, NOAA said, well, if you're ExxonMobil and you're doing these surveys and a mammal live strands within 50 kilometers of your activity, you immediately have to stop and we can do investigations and we do investigations if we think mammal strandings are correlating with your activity. Then when you looked at the same permits for wind, wind has no rules. They don't have to submit any plans to BOEM. For their surveys. They can just do whatever they want. They can have overlapping surveys in space and time. And NIMS doesn't require any kind of shutdowns. But there were plenty of dead marine mammals, including large whales, within 50 kilometers of their operations. And like you said, if it had been the same rules, there would not be anything going on because they would have been shut down many years ago. So it's like, again, like, yeah, the Marine Mammal Protection Act didn't change. And if that's the act that all of these rules and regulations are pursuant to, well, then that's.
David Blackmon [00:39:20] Not changed. The only thing that changed was the politics around it. I haven't let you get a word in edgewise there.
Stuart Turley [00:39:27] Well, I got one is that I feel that all this research that I've been looking at is showing that solar panels and wind turbines are going to have more ecological damage than nuclear has since its inception. And the microplastics are absolutely horrific on the marine animals and the food that the fisheries are having to catch. This is a real problem. The microplastics off those blades are a huge problem.
Meghan Lapp [00:40:02] Well, I can tell you, Stu, every summer, if you go to the Block Island wind farm off of Block Island in Rhode Island, you will see these dudes out on like, they've got like cables and stuff attached to them. They're on the blades and they're like refiberglassing the leading edge of the blades, okay? Every year, you're like, what's that guy? What's that guys doing? And he's out there and they have to, you'll get these notices like, we're working on the wind farm. And because Apparently, there was YouTube video on this that a friend of mine showed me. And it was basically saying how the leading edge of the blade, it goes really fast. And on land and at sea, well, they just forgot that sometimes there can be dust or salt in the air. So the engineers didn't think about that. They, of course, built this in a bubble. So now when these blades are going, the salt in this sea spray, or on land, the dust in the air from dirt, it erodes the leading edge of the blade. And then it causes all kinds of problems then the blades can kind of start to wobble because they're not exactly perfectly aerodynamic now. And then they can crack things. And a few years ago, the Block Island Wind Farm had to shut down for the whole summer because there were stress fractures in the rotors. And I bet you it was because of that because they had been doing the fiberglassing on the leading end of the blades. You don't really know, you know, I can't say that definitively, but like you put two and two together and go.
David Blackmon [00:41:32] Yeah, it isn't hard, is it?
Meghan Lapp [00:41:34] It's kind of like, looks like that.
David Blackmon [00:41:38] It doesn't seem real complicated to me, but who am I?
Stuart Turley [00:41:42] Yeah, there's 79,000 ballpark wind turbines in the United States. Of those 79,00 it's going to take between 350,000 to 980,000 per wind farm to do land reclamation, just to haul the crap off. This is a gigantic budgetary problem to get rid of these things.
David Blackmon [00:42:05] Not per wind farm per wind turbine
Stuart Turley [00:42:09] turbine thank you yes yeah and 79 thousand of them and i went to oklahoma state and i can barely count that high holy smoke
David Blackmon [00:42:19] And that's 200, by the way, 240,000 blades. Got to multiply by three. Anyway, um, well, Meghan, I always end up being depressed, but I feel like, and I want to encourage you to, uh, not be dismayed about what's happening with empire wind, because I think ultimately, uh I, I believe the thought process and I have reason to believe this within the administration. Is that that thing is gonna ultimately fail anyway because it can't, it's just not economically viable without the subsidies, without the IRA subsidies. And so, I mean, I think that was a big factor in what's happened with that project. But I know it's incredibly frustrating, right? I mean it's frustrating to me too. I hate any time when politics intercedes to create a situation where the laws aren't being followed and the regulations aren't been properly applied. And that seems to be the case here. But with the rest of it, you know, Atlantic Shores is gone. I just, I mean, I just think that we're gonna see a whole cascade.
Stuart Turley [00:43:45] I apologize that we got a problem going on here.
David Blackmon [00:43:50] You're not hearing me?
Stuart Turley [00:43:52] Oh, you're back now.
David Blackmon [00:43:54] Oh, sorry. Well, I was just filibustering. It's no big deal. But I think we need to close. We're gonna we're gonna close here. We were way over time, but that's okay, too. It it's always a pleasure. And let's let's plan to re re regroup here in the fall.
Meghan Lapp [00:44:13] Sounds good. Thank you so much for having me, you guys.
David Blackmon [00:44:16] Thank you. Well, wait, wait. Before we go, where can people find you?
Meghan Lapp [00:44:20] Um, so I'm on Facebook and I just post, you know, news articles continually. Um, you can also go to protect our coast, New Jersey. They've got a lot of good information. Um, You know, both on social media as well as their webpage. Um, and yeah.
David Blackmon [00:44:35] You don't do X?
Meghan Lapp [00:44:37] I only do X for my own personal news sourcing. I don't actually use it for like real posting. But yeah.
David Blackmon [00:44:47] Well, we, we all have to pick and choose among the 872 social media apps that we can use, I'm too old to use more than two. Stu, what any, anything for the good of the order.
Stuart Turley [00:45:02] I think is a fantastic discussion. Meghan, thank you for your leadership. We're just not getting the story out there fast enough and it's criminal that the wind farms have done this. And I just put out this morning from Secretary Chris Wright, they are parasites on the grid. And I really think that Secretary Wright is spot on. So again.
David Blackmon [00:45:30] By the way, Stu and I both know that there are people at interior, at department of energy and elsewhere in the administration who watch these things. So if you have a direct message you'd like to send to anyone in the government, this is a chance to do it before we close in addition to what you've already shared.
Meghan Lapp [00:45:54] Well, um, hey guys, I'd like a meeting. I've been, I have been trying to get to president Trump since like 2016, actually like primaries, man, like, like let's go. And I would love the opportunity to speak to secretary, right. Or secretary Duffy or secretary Burgum or any of the secretaries, you know, involved in this because I know it's, it's a big like learning curve as far as you know what's actually happened during the entire Biden administration. You know, and like you said, people have been there for five months, but I have a decade's worth of an arsenal that I would definitely appreciate the chance to share.
David Blackmon [00:46:36] Hey folks, all you people in Washington pay attention. You know where to find her. You can message her on Facebook there we go
Stuart Turley [00:46:43] and find us and we'll get in touch with her. And then we will all be on a boat having a podcast out live. I will bring my star link gear and we will do a live podcast from the ocean.
David Blackmon [00:47:02] All right. Okay. That's, that's it for today, folks. We'll be back soon. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Meghan.
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