On August 1, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) published a Notice of Intent (NOI) to prepare an environmental assessment of potential impacts from offshore wind leasing in the Central Atlantic Wind Energy Areas (WEAs) offshore Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. This NOI initiates a 30-day public comment period that ends August 31, 2023. Visit the BOEM Central Atlantic page for information about how to submit comments. Another public comment period would occur if BOEM decides to move forward with a lease sale in any of the WEAs.
A map showing the three final Central Atlantic WEAs can now be viewed in the Data Explorer under Energy and Infrastructure > Planning Areas and in the Energy and Infrastructure theme map.
On Nov. 16, 2022, BOEM announced and requested public comment on eight draft WEAs on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf offshore North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, covering approximately 1.7 million acres. The draft WEAs represented a subset of the original 3.9 million acres that the Department of the Interior identified for public comment in April 2022.
Portal users can use the Data Explorer to compare the final WEAs to the Draft WEAs from November 2022 and the Call for Information and Nominations areas from May 2022. All of these map layers can be accessed in the Data Explorer under Energy and Infrastructure > Planning Areas.
For more information on the final WEAs, BOEM’s notice to prepare an environmental assessment, and instructions for how to submit comments, go to BOEM’s website.
