Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Offshore Wind topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
OPAC backs offshore‑wind roadmap recommendations and recommends TSP rulemaking
Summary
The Ocean Policy Advisory Council voted by consensus to support the offshore wind roadmap work group's recommendations — including participation in a West Coast science collaborative and targeted studies — and to recommend initiating rulemaking to update Territorial Sea Plan parts 1 and 2.
Members of the Ocean Policy Advisory Council on April 29 endorsed recommendations from the council's offshore wind work group and agreed to recommend formal rulemaking on parts 1 and 2 of the Territorial Sea Plan (TSP).
Jeff Burwright of the Department of Land Conservation and Development, who led the offshore wind roadmap effort, told the council the draft roadmap is a public review document that explores alternatives and options rather than making siting decisions. "This is not a decision document. We are not here to decide whether or not Oregon pursues offshore wind," Burwright said, and outlined five alternative futures ranging from no development to over 3 gigawatts of full‑scale offshore wind plus shore‑side infrastructure and transmission upgrades. He described how the public review drew more than 200 written comments, a survey and several in‑person meetings.
The work group's recommendations that OPAC supported include: recommending that Oregon participate in the West Coast Science Collaborative, commissioning targeted studies (marine spatial planning, cable routing, visual resources management) to inform TSP part 4 and part 5 updates, and initiating an 18‑month OPEC/OPEC‑led effort to amend TSP parts 1 and 2 that would set the management framework and resource‑use decision rules. Council members discussed sequencing — doing parts 1 and 2 first to create a policy framework and running science and capacity studies in parallel to inform later amendments to parts 4 and 5.
OPAC acted on the recommendations by consensus; staff said the department will prepare the administrative steps to initiate the TSP rulemaking and return to OPAC with a proposed schedule and working group structure. The action does not itself adopt policy; it forwards OPAC's formal recommendation to agency and commission processes and starts the administrative procedures for rulemaking.
