Save Long Beach Island, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Commerce

A federal district court in the District of Columbia denied a motion for a preliminary injunction blocking further work on the Empire Wind I offshore wind project off the coast of New York and New Jersey. The plaintiffs allege that federal authorizations for the project violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), NEPA, and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. Their preliminary injunction motion focused only their MMPA claim. The court found that the plaintiffs failed to establish irreparable harm based on alleged disruptions to bottlenose dolphins that would negatively impact one plaintiff’s whale and dolphin watching business and deprive another plaintiff of aesthetic enjoyment from observing whales and dolphins. In addition, the court found that the equities did not favor the plaintiffs. The court noted that halting construction “would impose substantial costs and likely upend Empire Wind’s ability to finish the project,” which had been under construction for more than a year, and would therefore substantially harm the defendants as well as public interests in jobs and clean energy. The court was not persuaded by the plaintiffs’ arguments that the balance of equities nonetheless tipped in their favor, including their contention that “the potential harm of pausing construction is overstated because ‘the putative climate benefits of the project are highly uncertain.’”