R.I. Ocean Plan Receives NOAA Approval

By MEREDITH HASS/ecoRI News contributor

NARRAGANSETT — The Rhode Island Ocean Special Area Management Plan (SAMP) is a new management tool that will be used as a guide for policies regarding the state’s ocean resources and its various uses. It also will be used as a model for other states and countries, according to Gov. Lincoln Chafee and Jane Lubchenco, administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

"This is a landmark event for Rhode Island and the nation,” Lubchenco said, noting that the Ocean SAMP aids in balancing the various uses of ocean resources so that future generations may benefit. A plan, she says, envisioned by the National Ocean. "The (National Ocean Policy) set forth by President Obama is about good governance by sound science. A healthy ocean matters. The Rhode Island plan is what he envisioned in ocean policy.”

NOAA’s approval of the Ocean SAMP under the federal Coastal Zone Management Act makes Rhode Island the first state to incorporate a comprehensive management plan in its coastal management program. This means that policies developed through the Ocean SAMP for protecting natural resources and existing, as well as future, uses and the development of offshore renewable energy may be applied to actions in federal waters.

The Ocean SAMP area spans some 1,467 square miles, including portions of Block Island, Rhode Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. The plan is the culmination of a two-year effort led by the state's Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC), with the assistance of the University of Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Sea Grant program and Roger Williams University and significant input from other state, federal, tribal and local agencies. It incorporates extensive research and input from various stakeholders that address healthy habitats, commercial and recreational fishing, cultural heritage, recreation and tourism, and global climate change.

“It sets an example for how state and federal agencies can work together,” Lubchenco said.

Chafee said the Ocean SAMP will play an important role in the development of offshore renewable energy. “The more we alleviate finite resources that don’t burn clean the better," he said. "We need to make the transitions into clean energy.”

Offshore energy projects for the state could potentially generate 800 jobs, with wages estimated to bring in $60 million annually. But there is concern regarding offshore wind development and conflicts with existing activities, specifically commercial and recreational fishing.

“The challenges will be to take developing interests with existing issues,” said Grover Fugate, CRMC's executive director. "This is a new frontier. We learn as we go. It’s critical that we don’t penalize existing uses but also maximize future uses. We need to make sure we integrate and don’t take away.”

Paul Rich of Deepwater Wind, the development company with project proposals within the Ocean SAMP area as well as a five wind turbine project underway off Block Island, noted the importance of the plan and the engagement of various stakeholders.

“(The Ocean SAMP) has been paramount to the industry," he said. "It provides real leadership in renewable energy that has been absent. Stakeholder engagement is key but not always easy. This process has made it possible to move forward and is the best chance we have to bring the best solution for everyone.”

Rich said he hopes lessons learned from current projects off Block Island will lay the foundation for a larger utility project in Rhode Island Sound and Quonset Point, which he sees as being an offshore energy "hub."

SAMP Facilitates Offshore Wind Power

By SARAH SCHUMANN/ecoRI News contributor

NARRAGANSETT — Rhode Island’s Ocean Special Area Management Plan (SAMP) is many things. It’s a go-to source for ecological information, a montage of public preferences and a cutting-edge contemplation of the effects of climate change on ocean waters. But it is likely to be remembered as something more specific; the document that likely brings offshore wind energy to Rhode Island, and perhaps to the United States.

Creators of the Ocean SAMP are careful to stress that their two-year project was not just about locating prime spots for wind development. Fostering a healthy ecosystem and protecting existing uses while allowing for new ones were the primary goals of the SAMP, but by amassing ecological and social data on Rhode Island’s ocean, the plan provides a leg-up to wind developers wishing to locate here.
 
“All of this information can be used by an offshore wind developer in an (environmental impact statement),” said Jennifer McCann, one of the University of Rhode Island researchers who led the SAMP team. That head start not only saves a developer time in the permitting process, but also gives them greater certainty that his project will be approved.
 
Beyond providing access to data, the SAMP relied on spatial analysis tools to pre-screen areas throughout the waters off Rhode Island’s shore for wind power development. The screening process identified two areas most suitable for wind development: a crescent-shaped "Renewable Energy Zone" 2 kilometers south of Block Island and a triangular "Area of Mutual Interest" in offshore waters equidistant from Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
 
“Those areas,” said Grover Fugate, executive director of the Coastal Resources Management Center and leader of the SAMP team, “have all the characteristics to make it through the permitting process.”
 
The SAMP team selected those areas by looking at wind speeds, water depth and distance from land. These data were converted into a metric that the SAMP team labeled a Technology Development Index (TDI), a ratio weighing the difficulty of developing a wind farm against the payoff expected from that wind farm in a particular location. The TDI showed which spots in the SAMP area would be poor for wind energy, and which would be optimal.
 
The SAMP team then used another metric, an Ecological Services Value Index (ESVI), to measure the ecological importance of locations throughout the SAMP area. Combined with stakeholder input, the ESVI helped the researchers designate areas off Rhode Island’s shore too ecologically vital or vulnerable for development.

These were listed as Areas of Particular Concern (APCs), which boast unique or fragile physical features, historical significance, recreational value, high fishing activity, or use in navigation, transportation and military activities, and Areas Designated for Preservation (ADPs), which contain habitat that is both valuable and vulnerable to degradation. The SAMP prohibits development in ADPs, and advises caution in APCs.
 
Ultimately, said Fugate, “We ended up with a plan that designates areas where we do not want to see ocean development, and that constitutes, between state and federal waters, almost 50 percent of the waters in that 30-mile zone. And the other areas, we’ve opened for consideration.”
 
The plan is far from finished, however. Although the Ocean SAMP document was approved last month by the CRMC, it will be modified and improved on an ongoing basis. “The SAMP isn’t done, and it will never be done,” McCann said, “It’s adaptive management.”
 
The next step for the Ocean SAMP is approval by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). After that, the SAMP team hopes to receive a boundary extension from the federal government that would allow the SAMP to govern waters beyond Rhode Island’s 3-mile state waters limit.
 
Such an extension would allow Rhode Island to make decisions about areas in federal waters, such as the R.I./Mass. area of mutual interest, which is currently evaluated, but not governed by, the SAMP.

Never before has the federal government granted an extension of state authority into federal waters. If this happens, it would be one more way in which the SAMP is charting new territory in marine management.

All Rhode Islanders are Stakeholders in the SAMP

By SARAH SCHUMANN/ecoRI News contributor

NARRAGANSETT — The creatures below the 1,500 square miles studied to create the Special Area Management Plan (SAMP) were not the only ones that concerned the plan’s researchers. Humans use the sea in ways that are both culturally and economically important. A fundamental tenet of Rhode Island’s newly approved Ocean SAMP is that future uses of Rhode Island's ocean be designed to minimize disruption of current uses. 
 
Involvement of user groups, such as fishermen, boaters and shipping companies, was a core element of the SAMP process. “We designed the process to be a very interactive process,” said Grover Fugate, executive director of the CRMC and leader of the SAMP team. “The stakeholders were actually reviewing and helping us write the chapters as we were going along.”
 
To understand the usage patterns, researchers met with the Marine Trades Association, Pilots Association, the marine transportation and infrastructure sectors, electrical and telecommunications concerns, fishermen and other groups that use the area. “That helped us narrow down our focus and identify areas where we needed to do much more extensive studies to look at whether certain areas were going to be feasible enough for wind energy,” Fugate said.
 
In addition to user groups, the public at large was invited to participate in a stakeholder process that spanned 20 months and 17 meetings. Ken Payne, formerly of the University of Rhode Island, and now director of the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources, led the process. Payne stressed that the stakeholder process added value to the scientific basis of the SAMP document by superimposing public preferences and transparency onto it.
 
“A stakeholder process involves the valuations that people put on things. Having stakeholders say ‘here’s how we think about things, and here’s how we value them,' really augments all other forms of understanding,” Payne said.
 
Fishermen were initially apprehensive about the SAMP process.
 
“Obviously, it was a pretty scary thing for anyone who makes their living out there, to find out that somebody else was going to come in and start cutting up the ocean for different uses of it other than we’re used to seeing out there,” said Lanny Dellinger, president of the Rhode Island Lobstermen’s Association.
 
Taking the initiative, fishermen requested a special meeting with Payne and presented to him a list of their own ideas and concerns. “One of the things that was most significant was the high level of participation by the fishing industry,” Payne said. “That was a form of constructive involvement that involved a lot of, in its own way, compromise.”
 
At the start, they had little faith in the SAMP stakeholder process, according to Rich Fuka of the Rhode Island Fishermen’s Alliance, but they were pleasantly surprised. “I think this was the best facilitation of something that crisscrossed fishermen’s lives that I’ve seen,” Fuka said. “They did a very good job.”
 
Still, fears of disruption persist in the fishing community. “There’s going to be people getting displaced,” said Dellinger, despite general satisfaction with the SAMP.  “There’s only so much ground out there. It’s going to come at a high financial cost to everybody involved in the fishing industry.”
 
Although the SAMP is approved, it is the basis for ongoing adaptive management. Part of the planned management involves a six-member Fishermen’s Advisory Board, representing different fisheries, which will meet twice a year and whenever a large-scale development is proposed in the SAMP area. Members will advise the CRMC on fishery-related impacts of siting and construction of developments in offshore waters.
 
According to John Torgan of Save The Bay, “Conservation and environmental groups weighed in to raise concerns about conservation and habitat protection and to use this plan not just as a road map for development but as a tool for protection.”
 
As with the fishers, one of the environmental advocacy community’s key contributions was knowledge. “Our data shows that the area South of Block Island is an incredible aggregation area both for seafloor diversity and for migratory species,” said Kevin Essington of The Nature Conservancy. Based on this knowledge, Essington’s group argued that, “Any work that goes on out there should be done with as much data as possible, to avoid impacts, minimize impacts, and mitigate them.”
 
Environmental groups are generally pleased with the results, but some frustrations remain.

“The SAMP has never been a document that, in a true ecosystem-based way, looks at all of the impacts and all of the uses on the ecosystem,” said Tricia Jedele of the Conservation Law Foundation. She believes that the impacts associated with existing human uses, like fishing, were not adequately addressed in the document.
 
Jedele’s comments hint at a tension between two of the underlying goals of the SAMP: ecosystem-based management and preservation of current uses. To assure that ecological concerns remain a priority as specific uses of Rhode Island's ocean are proposed, the SAMP sets up a six-member Habitat Advisory Board which, like the Fishermen’s Advisory Board, will meet whenever a new use is proposed.
 
“It’s our hope that through participation on the Habitat Advisory Board, we can continue to answer some of the unanswered questions about the biodiversity of the area,” Essington said. “Even with this incredible plan, there’s still a lot left, especially when you start thinking about which places are more important than others, and what species we need to worry about. Those questions are still to come. But they’ve done a good job in the SAMP of setting up a process for trying to answer those questions.”

Plan Addresses Possible Climate Change Impacts

By SARAH SCHUMANN/ecoRI News contributor

NARRAGANSETT­ — Scientists believe that climate change is affecting, and will continue to affect, New England waters. But just how much, how fast and in what way climate change impacts our oceans is hard to estimate.  

These unknowns pose a challenge for long-term ecosystem planning efforts like Rhode Island's newly approved Ocean Special Area Management Plan (SAMP).
 
“The problem is that most of the climate change projections are done on really large scales, so trying to draw them down to a scale that’s useful is a challenge. In addition, the data out there is very sparse. As soon as you get in the offshore environment, the data sources drop off to almost non-existent,” said Grover Fugate, who who led the team that developed the SAMP
 
Despite unknowns, Fugate says that including potential climate change impacts in the SAMP was essential because “we recognize the climate change is going to be this huge modifier over the whole system.”
 
According to SAMP projections, sea surface temperatures (which are already increasing) are expected to increase another 4-8 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century.  Already rising sea levels are expected to continue rising, and the latest predictions are even more dire than those of just a few years ago. These changes are likely to result in a slowing of  the North Atlantic Ocean circulation and a 30 percent increase in hurricane damage by the end of the century.
 
An alteration in the ocean environment may result in climate changes could redesign the very ecosystem that the SAMP intends to protect. Warmer waters may lead to changes in timing of seasonal plankton blooms, disruption in animal migration schedules and disappearance of species at the southern end of their range, such as lobster.
 
Certain marine species are highly sensitive to climate change. Marine mammal populations suffer when sea ice disappears from their range. Sea birds, which raise few offspring each year, are dependent on climate for their breeding success. Endangered turtle species will have trouble finding appropriate nesting sites when beaches succumb to sea level rise.
 
By cataloging these potential impacts, the SAMP ensures an adaptive approach to marine planning.

Incorporating impacts of climate change into a plan of this scope, said Fugate, “has never been done before. And when you’ve got 50 percent of the United States still scratching their head over whether climate change is real or not, it’s still pretty new.”
 
Kevin Essington, director of government relations and communications at The Nature Conservancy and an advisor to the SAMP team said, “I think the SAMP asks the right kind of questions. More than anything, we need to be planning for a more dynamic system, with things changing in unexpected ways. We at The Nature Conservancy are glad that we live and work in a state where we have such forward-thinking agencies looking out for natural resources in light of climate change.”

URI Scientists Process a Sea of Data

By SARAH SCHUMANN/ecoRI News contributorClick the image for the complete Ocean Samp report.

NARRAGANSETT — The size and scope of the Special Area Management Plan (SAMP) makes it a rather ambitious scientific investigation. On the surface, the area studied by the state's Ocean SAMP team measures almost 1,500  square miles. Below that surface, nearly 200 feet deep in some areas, lies a complex ecosystem of oceanographic processes that is home to millions of species.

Fortunately, decades of research by Univeristy of Rhode Island scientists and others, gave the technical team a solid foundation of knowledge about this area and the species found there, but it still took the participation of more than 60 URI scientists, staff members and students to observe, record and catalog information about the Ocean State's offshore environment.

The advantage of enlisting the expertise of university scientists, said Grover Fugate, the executive director of the state's Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC), is that, “It’s impartial. It hasn’t been gathered by any developer that’s trying to build. Impartial data is extremely valuable for both state and federal agencies, to help us look at whether things are permittable or not within the ocean environment.”

Impartial or not, some facets of this ecosystem remain mysterious.

“For example,” Fugate said, “there was no bird data offshore, so we knew we were going to have to get bird data. And we wanted to gather as much fishery data as we could.”

Those studies, and the wealth of previous data, helped create a baseline image of Rhode Island's ocean ecosystem. The next step was to predict the impacts of potential development, such as wind farms, on this ecosystem. The SAMP team looked to Europe, where offshore wind power has been up and running for nearly 20 years, and scientists have hard data on its environmental impact.

 “We wanted get ahead of the learning curve,” Fugate said, “so we got access to people in Europe dealing with fisheries issues, with whale issues, and with avian issues. We brought those people over and had an open and honest discussion about what the impacts were and what pressure points you have to consider when you’re dealing with offshore energy.”

One such pressure point is the feeding habitat of the diving duck. The diving duck forages in waters 65 feet deep or less. European studies have indicated that this habitat cannot recover from disruption by wind energy infrastructure. Based on this information, the SAMP team took all areas 65 feet deep or less out of consideration as potential wind energy development sites.

Because understanding of the state's ocean ecosystem will continue to grow and evolve, the SAMP establishes a habitat advisory board. Nine members, selected from research institutions and non-governmental organizations, will meet twice yearly to advise the council on the ecological status of marine resources and on concerns regarding the siting, construction, and operation of offshore development in the Ocean SAMP area.

R.I. Innovates Marine Management with Special Plan

By SARAH SCHUMANN/ecoRI News contributor

NARRAGANSETT — Taking a first step into the unknown is never easy, but foresight, planning and teamwork can light the way. That’s the philosophy that guided Rhode Island’s Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) in a two-year process to develop a Special Area Management Plan (SAMP) for waters off the Rhode Island coast. That philosophy paid off last Tuesday when the plan was unanimously approved by the CRMC.
 
The SAMP, coordinated to respond to Gov. Donald Carcieri’s mandate that a minimum of 15 percent of the state’s electricity be derived from renewable energy sources by 2020, aspires to facilitate development of Rhode Island’s offshore energy resources by identifying the most feasible and environmentally responsible sites for wind farms.
 
Though the development process was lengthy, its creators say it was more efficient than the alternative of requiring potential wind farm developers to submit environmental impact statements, and then evaluating them on an individual basis.
 
“We had the full range of sites available to us,” said CRMC executive director and SAMP team leader Grover Fugate. Looking at the entire area and honing in on favorable sites, he said, “led to more productive discussions that just trying to pick a site and trying to see if it fit through the regulatory cracks.”
 
In addition to determining the best locations for turbines and detailing the regulatory process that wind energy developers must follow to be permitted for turbine construction in the offshore waters around Rhode Island, the SAMP addresses potential ecological impacts and tensions between user groups prior to any development. The plan calls for the creation of two permanent bodies — the Habitat Advisory Board and the Fishermen’s Advisory Board — to evaluate such issues as they emerge.
 
The SAMP also contains an report on the impacts of climate change on the area. A special chapter speculates on the feasibility and impact of developments that may occur in the future, such as liquefied natural gas terminals or aquaculture infrastructure.
 
The SAMP is much more than a wind energy siting study. It's also the first attempt to assemble a comprehensive knowledge of an offshore area’s physical and ecological characteristics, and the first attempt to bring occupational and recreational users of the area into discussions on how to manage it.
 
“We followed a very interactive process for looking at potential development sites and at the issues that may be taken into account during the siting process,” Fugate said. More than 60 members of the public took part in meetings, and the CRMC received 2,000 written comments on SAMP drafts.
 
The final document weighs in at nearly 3,000 pages, and is replete with maps, references and policy guidelines. It will be re-evaluated and updated on an ongoing basis to reflect changes in the ocean area’s ecology and usage patterns.
 
This evolving document will bring structure and prudence to future development of Rhode Island's offshore waters.
 
“Understanding how those areas function and how the resources and the users relate to that area can give a regulator a lot of comfort level, or leave him sort of hanging,” Fugate said. “And we tried to get to the point where we were giving regulators, including ourselves, a comfort level with the potential decisions we might have to make.”