With offshore wind power outfits wrecking their fishing grounds, America’s fishermen are fighting like their lives depend upon it.
With assistance from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Rhode Island’s fishing community has issued proceedings in the Federal Court seeking to knockout the permits given to Vineyard Wind which, if left in place, will inevitably wreck commercial fisheries worth hundreds of millions of dollars to their communities.
In a further effort to help fishing all along the Atlantic coast, the TPPF have produced “A Heavy Wind: The Threat to an American Heritage,” a documentary which brings to life the characters fighting to protect and preserve their communities. Powerful and compelling, we commend it.
TPPF Releases Documentary on Protecting America’s Fishing Heritage from Devastation by Wind Farm Projects
Texas Public Policy Foundation
Press Release
12 January 2022
The Texas Public Policy Foundation released a short documentary exposing the damage a massive wind power project will cause to America’s fishing industry and the marine environment off the coasts of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York.
The film, “A Heavy Wind: The Threat to an American Heritage,” tells the story of families that have sustainably fished the north Atlantic for generations, but now face the elimination of their livelihoods from foreign owned windfarm operations. TPPF filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration for approving the projects in violation of several legal protections for affected stakeholders.
“There is a tremendous human cost to the wind farm project that the Biden administration and people across the country shouldn’t ignore,” said TPPF’s Executive Director and General Counsel Robert Henneke. “Fishing is an integral part of the region’s fabric and culture. It’s an American heritage and birthright to many communities, and a way of life for these families going back several generations. The federal government can’t allow foreign investment to drop in and devastate an entire industry while doing untold damage to the environment all on a whim.”
The film was written and directed by TPPF’s production director Stephen Robinson and the cinematography was done by TPPF’s videographer Alex Quintana. The documentary was filmed on location in Rhode Island at the end of 2021.
Texas Public Policy Foundation
Transcript
Aaron’s father: Your grandpa started doing this in the 1920s. Obviously the nets were a lot smaller back then, a lot easier to handle, but he didn’t have net drums, not until ’97 did we have a net drum.
Aaron: Lap of luxury.
Aaron’s father: Huh?
Aaron: I say it’s a lap of luxury now.
Aaron’s father: Yeah. Right. Well, the industry itself, problems are endemic, there’s always going to be something going on. And we’ve been fortunate enough to work through them, regulations and obviously weather, but this wind thing has me really scared, really scared.
Aaron: The scariest thing about this 25 year plan, which we know isn’t going to work, is the fact that they’re going to take a piece of bottom, and the only thing if they don’t work, that has to be removed is the above ground structure. So where they all attached to the bottom of the ocean, whether it’s a monopile, concrete, that’s going to remain. So even if the windmills are taken off the surface of the ocean, there’s still going to be a footprint on the bottom that we’re not going to be able to work around. Once the windmills are in, we’re done.
Bonnie Brady: I used to be a snob. I went to school to become a reporter, got my degree. My dream job was to be sitting in Paris, smoking Gauloise as the New York Times stringer for Paris. That was it. And then I moved to a town of 3000 people. What I learned over time is that I was a snob because I thought because I’ve been to college that I knew more. And then I met my husband and I knew nothing about fishing. You don’t even have to catch fish, just go 70 miles offshore blowing 30 with 20 foot seas and just bring the boat back. It’s a completely different profession. December 1996.
Fisherman: December 1996. Whiting, mixed fish, squid, butterfish in the outside hole. At night, transiting through them you can’t see them. I’m really pushed into one of those wind scams rapidly. The company, Orsted, one of the companies, had their own service vessel, and the guy admitted that he shut the radars off, put them on standby, didn’t have radars, seven people were severely injured because he hit one of his wind scams because the light was out on it.
Bonnie Brady: I mean, it’s not a benign venture to pile drive the ocean floor and then liquefy six to eight feet to lake thousands of miles of cables underneath, and then juice it with electromagnetic frequency, and then see what happens. It’s not about clean and green. The only green that is involved in this project is that which lines investors pockets. And the media is being sold a facade and a lie.
Meghan Lapp: Our entire business relies on these vessels going and harvesting the fish and the squid that they harvest, and then they sell it to us, and then we sell it on from there. If they’re not catching fish and it’s not coming through this building, we don’t have a business. Some fishermen that I know, they just won’t let their kids anywhere near the boat, because they don’t want their kids to love it like they did and then make it their life too, because they’re looking at the future with a lot fear.
If the government is willing to sacrifice our businesses for the sake of foreign governments, then that’s unacceptable, and our only recourse is the courts. The way that offshore wind came in, it was essentially, it was like the Scandinavian mafia.
Bonnie Brady: Right.
Meghan Lapp: Came in and was like, “We’re taking your fishing grounds.” And it was like, “No, you’re not.”
Bonnie Brady: They’re all coming in and buying these grounds up, which means these guys that have worked their lives can no longer do their jobs. And at that point, our federal government isn’t fighting for the Americans that represent the fleet that’s already there, but are opening the door and saying, “Come on in, we’ll take more money and push them off to the side.” That’s completely unacceptable.
Aaron’s father: I started fishing with Aaron’s grandfather. I started on deck, when he got sick I ran the boat for a while, saved up some money, bought my first boat, which was 40 foot wooden boat, worked out for a while, bought a bigger boat when the boys came along, I knew I needed boats for them. And that was what was instilled in me by my father. To be an American… my family’s been for hundreds of years, that’s the deal. You put your head down, you go to work and you try to progress. (Singing).
Meghan Lapp: These are your fellow American citizens, hardworking family, people that have worked their whole lives to provide you with food, and now their entire way of life, their entire business and their family’s futures are at the brink. As Americans, we fight for each other, and that’s what we’re doing now.
Texas Public Policy Foundation
STOP THESE THINGS 
Having grown up near a fishing town at the entrance to Port Phillip Heads (The Rip, VIC, AU, pop 3,000 & the 2nd most dangerous water in the world) when most of the open 1 man operated barracuda fishing boats were powered by sail, family commercial fishing is not an easy job: family businesses are the largest employers.
Apart from the weather & being flat out during a fish run, having nets, crayfish/lobster/crab pots snagged or raided, now there are containers falling off ships, an abundance of sharks taking fish before they can be hauled in, with RE now adding to the problems that greenies and others who live in the relative security of big cities, know nothing about. And most would lock their hands in steel pipes rather than getting them dirty gutting fish for public consumption.
Apart from electromagnetic influence changing habits and breeding above and below, much like eating lamb, wearing the finest wool & having carpets, but being revulsed by crutching, it’s an enforced insanity.
Experience is the best teacher and most decision makers have learned nothing from their cocoon.
Good luck as the total destructive fantasy of RE continues.