Description

With the passage of the Energy Policy Act (EPAct) of 2005, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) was given jurisdiction over renewable energy projects, such as wave, wind and solar energy, and other projects that make alternative use of existing oil and natural gas platforms in Federal waters. Under this new authority, MMS became the lead Federal agency for regulatory oversight of the Long Island Offshore Wind Park (LIOWP) project.

Long Island Power Authority and Florida Power and Light Energy (LIPS/FPL E) proposes to build and operate a wind park consisting of 40, 3.6 megawatt (MW) wind turbine generators covering 8 square miles in Federal waters, approximately 3.6 miles south of Jones Beach Island, Long Island, New York.

In the past several months, the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) has been reevaluating the need for its offshore wind park. The MMS is currently awaiting the official decision from LIPA on the disposition of the Long Island Offshore Wind Park project.

	June 19 Press Release
	June 19, 2006 Federal Register Notice announcing EIS scoping (50 KB PDF)
	Acceptance Letter (704 KB PDF)
	LIOWP Site Location Map
	LIOWP Wind Park Area and Cable Route
	July 11 Massapequa Public Comments (379 KB PDF)
	July 10 West Babylon Public Comments (430 KB PDF)
	Cooperating Agencies for LIOWP Evaluation (75 KB PowerPoint)
	Scoping Report, Volume I (1,250 KB PDF)
	Summary Presentation of LIOWP Scoping Report (992 KB PDF; June 19 - August 21, 2006)

Also available is the Application for the LIOWP (148.53 KB PDF). The application for this project consists of planning documentation originating from 2001 and extending through January 2006. This docket of information (Application) contains planning, assumptions, and contingencies that were applicable to the state of the project at the time the documentation was prepared and published by LIOWP or its contractors. The MMS has accepted this documentation as sufficient descriptive basis for the project’s conceptual design with conditions that define additional information to be developed during a more rigorous, analytical process under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The NEPA review will serve to define the project’s final parameters during the public process of preparing an Environmental Impact Statement.

As 2007 begins, the MMS team preparing the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the LIOWP proposal is gathering information to write an updated description of the project that includes the circumstances that would produce impacts. At the same time we are writing the EIS descriptions of the physical, biological, socioeconomic, and human resources that could potentially be affected by the proposed wind park. Influence diagrams for each phase of the project; construction, operation and maintenance, and decommissioning help us map affected resources to the kinds of impacts that could be anticipated based on how the project would be built, operated, and concluded. The relationships between environmental resources and the kinds of impacts anticipated in turn provides the basis for writing the EIS sections that examine the degree of significance for the kinds of impacts identified.