WILMINGTON – North Carolina has joined nearly a dozen other East Coast states to create a financial compensation program that would cover economic losses within the fisheries industry caused by Atlantic offshore wind development.
The Fisheries Mitigation Project aims to establish a regional administrator to oversee the process of reviewing claims and making payouts collected through a fund paid for by wind developers to commercial and for-hire recreational fisheries industries to mitigate financial loss associated with offshore wind farms.
Kris Ohleth, director of the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind, or SIOW, explained in a telephone interview that the process would operate like that of an insurance claim.
“The regional fund administrator would hold the money, they would accept the claims and evaluate the claims for eligibility and appropriateness and then make a payment to the fisherman based on that claim,” she said.
Continue reading at coastalreview.org.
