Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham has vowed to push back against the Biden administration’s proposed 500,000-acre wind farm off the Galveston coast.
President Joe Biden announced plans in July 2022 for a 546,645-acre wind farm that will be built 24 miles off the coast of Galveston in federal waters. Another 188,023-acre wind farm was also proposed to be erected off the coast of Lake Charles, Louisiana, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
In July, the Department of the Interior (DOI) declared its intentions to auction the leasing rights for certain portions of the farm on August 29.
The press release from the DOI claimed that the areas being auctioned “have the potential to generate approximately 3.7 GW and power almost 1.3 million homes with clean, renewable energy.”
The announcements prompted Sen. Drew Springer (R-Muenster) and Sen. Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston) to voice their disapproval of the plan, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Now, Commissioner Buckingham is promising to push back against the proposed wind farm plans.
Buckingham wrote an opinion piece for The Daily Caller in which she claimed Biden was “blatantly ignoring federal law.” She wrote that it was her duty to “stand up for the real people and their families whom I represent.”
She noted that two violations of federal law have occurred in attempts to fast-track the wind farm.
First, Buckingham referenced the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires creating an environmental impact statement for the project. She claimed such a statement has yet to be issued.
The second law Buckingham claimed was being ignored is the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which “prohibits any wind project from interfering with other ‘reasonable’ uses of the oceanic area.”
“Texas commercial fishermen stand to lose a huge swath of navigable waters containing rich fisheries. This project could absolutely devastate this vital industry, robbing families of high-paying jobs, ending family businesses that span generations, and ultimately making the entire United States more dependent on seafood imports from places like China,” she wrote.
Similarly, Buckingham expressed concern that the wind farm would “severely hamper navigation and disrupt shipping lanes to send and receive goods” in the Port of Houston.
Buckingham wrote that Texas is “not going to sacrifice our coast, our economy, and the lives and livelihoods of our people at the altar of ‘feel good’ headlines.”
“I am committed to doing everything in my power as land commissioner to thwart this proposed boondoggle. That starts with raising the alarms that the Biden administration is ignoring numerous, ‘inconvenient’ federal laws and holding them to account for their malfeasance,” she added in The Daily Caller.
DOI Secretary Deb Haaland has previously claimed that the wind farm project would “create a clean energy future.”
“By catalyzing the offshore wind energy potential of the Gulf of Mexico, we can tackle the climate crisis, lower energy costs for families and create good-paying jobs,” said Haaland, per a press release.