A group of general law of 17 states and the Columbia district filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on May 5, which challenged a note from President Donald Trump who has stopped approvals for wind energy projects on the high seas.
Trump issued the order on January 20, the first day of his second term in office. He directs the secretaries of treasury, interior, agriculture and energy, as well as the lawyer and the administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, to temporarily stop wind leases outside the sea in federal waters and projects approval.
In the lawsuit filed in the North -American Court of Boston, lawyers general wrote that the directive hurts the efforts of the states to ensure sources of affordable and reliable power to meet the increasing demand of electricity. It also harms the money that the states have invested in wind infrastructure and labor formation and the efforts to protect public health against air pollution, wrote.
“Massachusetts has invested hundreds of millions of winds out of the sea to ensure that our residents have access to well-paid green jobs and reliable and affordable energy to help achieve our clean energy and climate goals,” he said in a statement. “Attempts of the President to stop the development of homemade wind energy directly contradicts his claims that there is a growing need for reliable domestic energy.”
General lawyers, all of the states led by the Democrats, defend the complaint that the implementation of agencies in the Order of Trump violas various laws that establish approval procedures, including the law of endangered species and the law of foreign continental shelves and that administration officials. Including the president, he is overcoming his power.
Federal officials have not yet responded to the demand, but a spokesman for the White House told journalists that general lawyers are “using the law to stop the president’s popular energy agenda”.
A representative of the Interior Department said in a statement that its policy “is not to comment on the litigation”, but that the agency “reaffirms its unmatched commitment to preserve and manage the natural and cultural resources of the nation … while prioritizing fiscal responsibility for the North -American people.”
The states involved in the dress include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington State, as well as the Columbia district.
“ The wind directive has stopped most of the development of wind energy on its tracks, despite the fact that wind energy is a homemade and affordable home source that supports hundreds of thousands of jobs, creates billions of dollars in economic activities and tax payments and supplies more than 10% of the country’s electricity, ” said lawyers in the complaint.
The demand comes after the Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, announced last month that officials had ordered a stop of the Empire of $ 5 million Norwegian Equinor, on the New York coast for an “additional review.” The company’s leaders said they would comply with the order, but also indicated that they were considering legal actions to challenge the stop.
“This administration is devastating one of the clean, reliable and affordable sources of energy of our nation,” said New York Attorney General, Letitia James, in a statement on the demand of the states.
