Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture

We are in the time of year here in the capital, and we're grateful that all of you could join us today for this first of its kind legislative hearing, where all sides of the offshore wind discussion are coming together.

Coming together to focus on expediting the deployment of offshore wind while protecting the interests of California's storied fishing fleet, ensuring coastal environmental safeguards remain in place, family sustaining jobs and workforce training programs are created, and tribal and local community voices aye raised and heard.

And as we all know, the Golden State is staring down some extraordinary deadlines to meet our climate goals. And power generation plays a massive role in achieving these goals. And if we are serious about meeting these deadlines, we're going to have to move heaven and earth to deploy new green power generation facilities in every corner of the Golden State.

And we also know in this era of great transition from fossil fuels, we're going to have to do it right. That's why today's discussion, where everyone is at the table on this issue, is so critical. We're going to hear from federal and state agency representatives. We'll be hearing from tribal leaders, offshore wind industry representatives, representatives from the fishing fleet.

We're going to hear from labor leaders and environmental organizations. We truly have an all star lineup of panelists today. And for our panelists, the Joint Committee is looking forward to your testimony today. Respectfully, due to our tight agenda, we're going to request that each panelist keep remarks to 5 minutes or less.

And we'll give you a 30 second prompt as we get close to that five minute mark. We're also going to be taking public comment, of course, today. That will be at the end of today's agenda for folks who are watching online. We, of course, welcome your testimony. The toll free number to participate today is 877-226-8216.

The toll free number to be able to participate for folks viewing online, 877-226-8216. And that access code is 6217161 We're also going to be taking testimony live here in room 2100 at the end of today's agenda. Now, before we begin, I'd like to turn the floor over to Assembly Member Addis.

Assembly Member Addis is the vice chair of the joint committee. And I just want to say how much I respect the Assembly Woman she is a tremendous partner on this issue. We're grateful for her work, her smarts, and her sincere approach to this important policy issue. Madam Vice Chair, it is so wonderful to see you. I'm going to turn the floor over to you for some opening remarks.

Well, thank you so much, Chair McGuire and I want to say thank you to your staff for putting this hearing together and to the participants who are going to testify today. As many of you know, I come from Morro Bay and live in a community that's just 20 to 30 miles from the offshore Wind call area on the central coast and have experience with this issue from the Morro Bay City Council.

So it's hugely important to me and I want to appreciate your remarks around Clean Energy and ones and I would say my region and both our regions in particular, there's a lot of hope around offshore wind and there's some concern. So I'm really glad we're having this hearing today. I'm honored to be here. I think we have a lot of momentum and ready to get the conversation going. So thank you so much.

Vice Chair, we couldn't do this without you. Truly, you aye very focused in this space and grateful for your partnership and look forward to our work together in the years to come. I also want to welcome Senator Nguyen. Senator Nguyen was just appointed. She is the first representative from Orange County to be able to serve on the Joint Committee. We're really grateful. Senator, I'll turn it over to you if you'd like to be able to say any opening remarks and congratulations and we look forward to working with you in the years to come.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just again want to thank both you and the Madam Vice Chair for hosting this. And this is a very important issue that's moving forward. I think not only do we need to protect the ocean and our coast, but also to making sure that we do it in a mindful way of protecting the animals as well. And so I'm glad to be on here, really thankful for you for appointing me.

I do represent the entire coast in Orange County, which includes Dana Point Harbor as well, which fishery and the harbor in itself and just be mindful of the ocean and the coast is very important to us off of the harbor. So I have Hunton Harbor, Newport Beach Harbor and also Dana Point Harbor. Thank you.

And I look forward to I mean, honestly, this is for me, I'm looking forward to learning.

That's great. And again, Senator, very grateful that you are with us here today and of course folks will be in and out. It is a busy time. I also want to say to Chris Nielsen, who's the Capital Director in our office for all of his work in helping organize today's hearing. So again, we are going to have all perspectives at the table, literally today, and we're going to get into our first panel, potential challenges, opportunities, perspectives from policy and governmental leaders.

As I call your name, if you could please approach the table in front of us here today. We're going to welcome Jen Miller, of course, from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. We're grateful that Liz Huber is here today. We so appreciate Ms.. Huber's hard work. She has been all offshore wind all the fliping time over the past two weeks. In particular, she is with the California Energy Commission.

We have Ms. Eckerle with us today, the Executive Director of the Ocean Protection Council and Deputy Secretary for Oceans and Coastal Policy. Just a tad busy as well. My goodness. We are so grateful we have Holly Wyer here today. She's the Senior Environmental Scientist for the California Coastal Commission.

We're grateful for the partnership of the Coastal Commission, and we are so appreciative that we have the Vice Chairman of the Yurok Tribe who will be joining us here today via teleconference in zoom, Mr. Frankie Myers. And Mr. Myers has been active and engaged on this issue. We are so grateful that Mr. Myers will be with us here coming up in just a few moments.

And if you could please give our greatest to the Tribal Council as well as to the chair. Mr. Myers, we so appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule, so let's get right into it. We're going to be hearing really we'll call this our agency and governmental panel on the challenges, opportunities, and where we should be heading and how this is going to work on both the federal and state perspective. So without further ado, we're going to start the clock at 5 minutes.

We're going to welcome Ms. Miller from BOEM here today. And thank you so much. Yes, please.

Procedurally, do we ask questions after the panel or in between the panel?

In between the panel. Yeah, please. If it's all right with the Senator and the Vice Chair, we'll have the panel go and then we'll open it up for questions from the Members, if that's okay with you. That's wonderful. Thank you so much. All right, Ms.. Miller, we welcome you and thank you so much for your work. Thank you. Ms.. Miller, we're going to have you hit the button right there. There we go. Not yet.

All right. There we go.

There we go.

All right. Hello. Thank you everybody for having this informational hearing. It's a pleasure and an honor to be here and represent the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. My name is Jennifer Miller and I'm the Chief of the Renewable Energy section in BOEM is short for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and I work for the Pacific region.

I'd like to thank the Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture for holding this informational hearing on offshore wind and fisheries and providing this opportunity to give an update on federal offshore wind leasing activities in California and then briefly touch on some new stipulations included in the California offshore wind energy leases.

For those who aren't familiar with BOEM or the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, we're the federal agency that manages the safe and orderly development of energy and mineral resources on the Outer Continental Shelf or OCS. I'm grateful for our time today to focus on how BOEM has worked with the State of California, tribal nations and key stakeholders to identify lease areas and how future collaborations can help build a robust supply chain that supports the emerging floating offshore wind industry here in the United States and specifically here in California.

In the spring of 2021, the Biden Administration set ambitious goals for deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, and last year, the Department of the Interior announced a goal to deploy 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind by 2035 as part of the nation's floating offshore wind shop.

We've also announced an offshore wind leasing strategy to help the nation achieve 30 gigawatts by 2030 and inspire confidence among stakeholders and ocean users by improving the predictability and transparency of the federal offshore wind leasing process. To meet this ambitious goal, BOEM has held three offshore wind sales in 2022 and are planning for an upcoming sale in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of the Central Atlantic, Oregon and Gulf of Maine.

As we consider future offshore wind energy activities in California, our goal is to avoid or reduce potential impacts to fisheries from offshore wind energy development. And to meet this goal, we must continue to rely on best available fishing data and science to inform our offshore renewable energy process.

As part of Bohem's efforts to ensure that offshore renewable energy development occurs in a thoughtful manner that minimizes conflicts with other ocean users, we recently issued draft guidance on mitigating potential impacts from offshore wind development on commercial and recreational fishing. The draft guidance provides detailed processes and methodologies, the offshore wind industry and Lessees to mitigate impacts to fisheries in the ayes of project sighting, design, navigation, access, safety and financial compensation.

This guidance will help ensure consistent use of data and methodologies across all projects and states, and assist Lessees and BOEM in the preparation and review of construction and operations plans. While the guidance is focused on Atlantic activities, BOEM will work with tribes, states, local communities, and the offshore wind industry and ocean users to build off of this framework and ensure its applicability to the Pacific region and specifically California.

Our close coordination with the State of California on offshore wind planning and engagement activities led us to an exciting milestone the sale of five offshore wind leases offshore the coast of California. Last December, the California Offshore Wind Auction brought in over $757,000,000 in winning bids and was the first offshore wind energy lease sale in the Pacific and the first offshore energy lease dahle off California since 1984.

It's worth noting that the 1984 sale was an oil and gas sale. The lease sale included an optional 20% bidding credit for workforce trading programs and the development of a US. Domestic supply chain for the floating offshore wind industry. This credit will result in over $117,000,000 in investments for these critical programs and initiatives.

The auction also included an option flora two 5% bidding credits for bidders who committed to entering into community benefits agreements. The bidding credits is a first. The first one is a Lease Area Use Community Benefits agreement and that is flora agreements with communities, stakeholder groups or tribal entities whose use of the lease area or use of resources harvested from the lease area is expected to be impacted by offshore wind development.

The second is a General community benefits agreement and this is for entering into a community benefit agreement with communities, tribes or stakeholder groups that are expected to be affected by the potential impacts to the marine, coastal or human environment from lease development. These credits are another example of how BOEM and the State of California can work together to meet California's renewable energy goals in a manner that ensures the coexistence of Allen Industries and partners.

BOEM is committed to continued process improvements in offshore Chen leasing and as a result, in offshore ocean leasing. And as a result, we have made several innovations in the California lease sale to address concerns from tribal nations, state and federal agencies, local governments, ocean users, and other stakeholders.

For example, new lease conditions were developed to help improve communication between the lessees and tribal nations, the lessees and federal and state agencies, and the lessees and fisheries with their fisheries and other stakeholders.

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Additionally, these leases make reasonable efforts to engage with tribes and stakeholders that may be potentially affected by the proposed project.

Let me just skip to the end so in conclusion, BOEM is entrusted with the safe and responsible development of offshore wind energy resources for the nation. We are privileged and honored to fulfill that trust every day and in every decision. We remain committed to active engagement with all stakeholders and partners to ensure the responsible development of these shared renewable energy resources on the outer continental shelf. And we will continue to keep the Subcommittee informed of our progress. I look forward to answering your questions today.

Ms. Miller, we're really grateful that you are here today. Thank you so much. You have had a lot on your plate over the past few years and we are so appreciative that you would join us today. Ms. Miller is going to be hanging with us and we'll be taking questions and comments from the committee in just a moment.

We're really grateful that Elizabeth Huber is with us today. She is Director for the Siting Transmission Environmental Protection Division at the California Energy Commission and the CEC really is kind of point on policy and planning for the State of California, obviously working hand in hand with the State Coastal Commission and the State Lands Commission who are working with the CEC on the advancement of offshore wind. Elizabeth, thank you so much. It's really good to see you, as always. You have 5 minutes and the floor is yours.

Well, you saved me 10 seconds of my speech. So thank you for inviting me and allowing me to participate in this timely hearing. As the Senator indicated, I'm with the Siting, Transmission and Environmental Protection Division, fondly known as STEP. We play a key role ensuring a safe and reliable electric system by reviewing proposed power plant designs, analyzing its potential for adverse environmental impacts through a process for public input, and ensuring that these permanent power plants comply with all laws and conditions of their CEC license.

We also for Situational Awareness is the division leading the AB 205 Clean and Renewable Energy Permitting, known as Opt-in that was signed in 2022. And the division's work also includes programs in developing a future electric system infrastructure through land use, transmission and of course, offshore wind planning.

I was asked to provide some pointed assessment of where we are in a good spot, policy wise, where we have some weaknesses and where are our biggest challenges ahead for offshore wind. So let's start with the positive. California climate and clean energy priorities. Set the stage for offshore wind.

California's focus on strategies to strengthen climate change, resilience, advance zero carbon and renewable energy technologies and policies and reduce greenhouse gas emissions economy wide. Include swiftly and responsibly expanding the state's renewable resource portfolio that needs to include offshore wind energy.

The wind resource of the California coast is excellent and if harnessed and with floating offshore wind, can diversify the state's resource portfolio.

To inform the AB 525 Strategic plan, the CEC established preliminary offshore wind planning goals of two to five gigawatts of floating offshore wind technology in federal waters offshore California by 2030 and 25 gigawatts by 2045. Another positive is the coordination with federal agencies. As my colleague to my right, the coordination with the federal government, especially with BOEM, has been the cornerstone of our approach to offshore wind energy, and the coordination has included several state agencies.

This collaboration was reflected in the BOEM's lease sale, which included important priorities to the State of California. California and the Federal government are at an opportune time to leverage our collective efforts to lay out a vision and new level of partnership on offshore wind coordination with our CNRA partner agencies.

The CC has been coordinating with our CNRA partner agencies that's the California Natural Resources Agency. My apologies. Since AB 525 was enacted in January of 2022, which I would like to indicate, it's only been 16 months ago.

In fact, between February and April of this year alone, we have held more than 50 work grove meetings, partnered in stakeholder meetings, presented at each other's business meetings, and collaborated on the development and adoption of the three required AB 525 interim reports that will inform the AB 525 Strategic plan.

Coordination with our energy partners is another positive. The CC has been coordinating and participating in workgroups with both the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Independent System operator around offshore wind energy development specific to transmission. The CPUC sent to Cal ISO, a preferred system Portantino that included 4.7 gigawatts of offshore wind energy transmission capacity in the base case for study in the next transmission planning process.

And also we send to Cal-ISO in the sensitivity analysis enhanced with 13.4 gigawatts of offshore wind resources by 2035. And then finally AB 525 is a foundation moving forward. The schedule for AB 525 calls on the CEC to accelerate our collective understanding of what it takes to achieve offshore wind energy at scale.

While the AB 525 strategic plan isn't quite on the aggressive schedule established, it will be a blueprint to offshore wind. It will advance our understanding and identify knowledge gaps min key areas ports, transmission, permitting, sea space, supply chain, workforce and impacts. So now some of the weaknesses resources for agencies, tribes and stakeholders.

As the five leases begin their work in California, they are required to meaningfully engage with the state and the communities impacted. This will require the state and those communities to have resources to also engage offshore wind. Likely needs some sort of industrial scale vision offshore wind, the ports that are required to build them and the transmission required to interconnect.

Aye Allen Long Lead Time Infrastructures building from AB 525 the state could strengthen its approach to offshore wind by thinking of the different long lead times required in an integrated programmatic way biggest challenges ahead. Impacts and Permitting as part of the AB 525 strategic plan, we will identify the impacts that we can as well as strategies to overcome those.

In addition, we just approved and transmitted to the Legislature a permitting roadmap for offshore wind that includes different approaches for permitting. We will continue to refine those approaches as we develop the final strategic plan. Procurement and Transmission Procurement doesn't fall squarely on the CEC, but we have heard from the offshore wind industry that a procurement framework is an important signal to unlock capital investment min California just as important is the ability to deliver energy through transmission while transmission is 30 seconds.

While transmission is essential in delivering offshore wind ports, ports for at least the staging and integration of floating offshore wind turbines will be necessary for offshore wind and then identifying future sea space CC is currently working toward identifying suitable sea space to accommodate the offshore wind planning goals as required by AB 525.

In closing, the CC will continue working with our state and federal partners with industry and stakeholders, including environmental organizations, fisheries, tribal governments, the communities that depend on them, native American tribes and indigenous peoples, and environmental justice communities to advance common interests and shared values of an economic prosperous and environmental stewardship and energy resiliency. Thank you again for the opportunity, and I look forward to your questions and discussion.

Thank you so much. Really grateful. We getting into conversation in just a bit grateful for your remarks. We are now honored that we have the Executive Director of the Ocean Protection Council and of course, Deputy Secretary with us today. Madam Deputy Secretary, why don't you take it away? You have 5 minutes and I'll give you a 30 second prompt. It's always wonderful to see you and thank you for all your hard work.

Thank you, Chair. Great to see you too. Members of the committee. Jen Eckerle, thanks for that introduction really quickly. For those who are not familiar with the Ocean Protection Council, we are a cabinet level state policy body. We're nested within the California Natural Resources Agency and we have a really ambitious mission to protect California's coast and ocean.

We are not a regulatory agency. We do our work by advancing innovative science based policies, strategic investments, and really working to catalyze action through partnerships. So our primary role on offshore wind is ensuring that the best available science is informing our decisions and helping us identify suitable ayes for offshore wind that maximize the wind energy potential that we have off the coast and minimize impacts to marine life and habitats, to fisheries, to cultural resources, and to our coastal communities.

Over the last several years, we've made accelerated investments to help the state target the areas that can maximize our wind resources while minimizing impacts. This includes funding to north and central coast tribes to support cultural resource inventories. Some additional investments include a spatial monitoring modeling effort that synthesizes available data on wind energy potential, deployment, feasibility, ocean uses, fisheries and marine life occurrence.

This is called the California Offshore Wind Energy Modeling Platform, and it's providing a mapping interface that can be used by stakeholders and decision makers to help identify appropriate areas for offshore wind development. We also funded a complementary modeling project that's still under development that's going to take this work a step further and allow us to do lee conflict analyses based on specific priorities.

So if we are interested in minimizing impacts to fishing communities, we can do that analysis. If we want to minimize environmental impacts, we can do that. We also funded a project to map ocean fishing grounds by species and species complex, gear type, depth, seafloor substrate and season along both the Central and the North Central coast the North coasts to define areas of economic importance to coastal fishing communities.

These projects were led by Central and North Coast fishermen with scientific support from UC Santa Cruz and Dr. Kerry Pomeroy. The maps show current and historical fishing grounds while protecting confidential fishing information. These results are now available from both the Fishing Mapping Project and the Environmental Monolith projects, and they are serving as key inputs to the sea space analysis underway for the AB 525 strategic plan.

We've also provided funding to the California Fishermen's Resiliency Association, or CFRA, along the North Coast to act as a point of contact between California commercial fishermen port associations and this funding is supporting the CFRA in negotiating industry to industry fishing community benefit agreements with offshore wind lessees. We also recently augmented this project to provide funding to commercial and recreational fishermen to participate in the Coastal Commission's Seven Seas Fishing Working Group.

And you'll hear more about that from Holly in a minute. So while OPC has provided really critical near term funding for data, much work remains to fill data gaps to inform the future sea space analysis, as well as implement and establish a comprehensive environmental monitoring program for offshore wind. Just this morning, we released a solicitation for proposals to develop environmental monitoring guidance.

And this guidance is going to provide specific long term monitoring recommendations across various spatial scales, both at the local scale project scale, and regional and statewide. And this will help us provide a framework for monitoring to understand not only the local impacts from individual farms, but also the cumulative impacts of multiple farms wind farms.

All of these projects were highly coordinated and scoped with our agency partners, and they were made possible by funding in both the 21-22 and 22-23 budgets. I'd like to take just a few minutes of my time to highlight the role of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, as they aren't here with us today. They are California's Trustee Agency for Fish and Wildlife and they holden those resources and trust for all Californians.

The Department is committed to ensuring that fishing communities are engaged in this process and that impacts from offshore wind on the fishing industry are reduced to the maximum extent possible. The Department's contributions to offshore wind have focused on providing best available science data for commercial and recreational fishing analyses.

Since 2017, the Department has facilitated communication and engagement between fishing communities and the appropriate local, state and federal agencies involved in this work. To date, as you heard from Ms. Huber, our offshore wind efforts have been highly collaborative across our state agencies. OPC is committed to continued collaboration and to funding additional research and monitoring efforts to ensure that we have best available science informing our decisions.

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Perfect. Many gaps remain with respect to our understanding of the potential impacts of offshore wind to fisheries and fishing communities. But we will continue to build on the foundation of projects and outreach conducted to date with the goal of protecting fishing communities and livelihoods, as well as ecosystem health and cultural resources while we advance offshore wind development to meet our bold clean energy goals. Thank you

Deputy Secretary, thank you so much for joining us. She'll be hanging with us for conversation in just a moment, but let's keep it going, and we're really grateful that Holly Wyer is here today. Thank you so much for your time. She's a senior environmental scientist with the California Coastal Commission. You have 5 minutes.

And of course, we're joined also by Sarah Christie, who is always advocating on behalf of the coast with the coastal Commission as well. It's really wonderful to see you, Holly. Thank you so much. And the floor is yours.

Thank you. As you said, I'm Holly Wyer. I'm a senior environmental scientist at the Coastal Commission. I hope this is picking me up. All right, good. I'm also the lead staff on our offshore wind work. The Coastal Commission has a unique role in offshore wind permitting. We're the only agency with continuous jurisdiction over offshore wind in federal waters, state waters, and onshore in the coastal zone.

In federal waters, we review and authorize the design and installation of turbines and related facilities in state waters, we review the transmission cables to shore and any support infrastructure. And in the coastal zone onshore, we review related onshore development like piers, marine terminals, manufacturing facilities, substations, and interconnections with the grid.

We have this continuous jurisdiction due to both the Coastal Act and the Federal Coastal Zone Management Act, or CZMA. The Coastal Zone Management Act is a federal law that sets up a partnership between the state and federal governments. It gives states a formal mechanism to weigh in on or condition federal projects or permits that might impact states coastal resources.

And it means that states can review projects that fall well outside of their coastal zones if those projects have coastal impacts. The Coastal Commission is the designated agency that implements the Coastal Zone Management Act in California, and the Coastal Zone Management Act and Coastal Act have set the state up for success because they're broad comprehensive environmental laws, but they have the flexibility to be responsive to changing projects and coastal resource concerns.

In essence, they allow us to focus on the issues that are important so ocean and coastal resources can be protected. Holistically from a timing perspective, we have two formal reviews under the Coastal Zone Management Act a consistency determination prior to a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management lease sale in our case that occurred last year, and a consistency certification prior to approval of a lessee's construction and operations plan.

These two reviews keep us involved throughout the entire process of project development. We coordinated extensively with our partner state agencies during our review of the consistency determination last year and used our analysis in the conditional concurrence to be the voice of the state in that proceeding.

The Commission worked with BOEM during that process to develop seven conditions as part of our concurrence, and generally these conditions were designed to set up processes for the Commission and stakeholder to stay involved with project planning and development and to ensure that the permitting phase is as efficient as possible.

The goal is to ensure that future wind project construction and operations plans will avoid and minimize impacts to the greatest extent feasible and provide the data we need to analyze and mitigate the impacts that remain. One of the conditions that the Commission placed on the lease sales was a requirement that state and federal agencies would work with lessees.

To convene a working group of commercial and recreational fishing stakeholders and develop a statewide strategy to avoid, minimize, and mitigate impacts to fisheries and to develop a framework for compensatory mitigation for impacts like gear loss and loss of fishing grounds. We have some additional requirements for the lessees, such as having them retain a fisheries liaison and report on their process of outreach and outcomes of their engagement with fishing communities, and those were included in their lease stipulations.

I'd like to take a moment to discuss the implementation of the Fisheries Working Group. The fishing community in California is eagerly awaiting the start of that group, and we need BOEM leases to be signed before we can get started. Through close coordination with our partner agencies, we have secured professional facilitation services, and we are preparing to ask the fishing industry to nominate representatives for the Working Group.

I'd like to thank CEC for providing the resources to get those professional facilitation services, and as Jen mentioned, thank you for the funding from OPC to allow for compensation for fishermen's participation. It's important to us that this group is inclusive, and we are looking forward to working with BOEM to get the Working Group started in the next couple of months as we move forward.

Monitoring and adaptive management to address observed impacts in the ocean is critical to the success of offshore wind on the West Coast. One of our biggest challenges is ensuring that this process is started and implemented effectively to ensure that we have the information we need in the relevant time frame for decision making.

The floating technologies that are being proposed here have not been done on a commercial scale before, and there's only a handful of small floating projects in the world. Unfortunately, a lot of the projects in Europe don't necessarily have the kind of environmental monitoring that we'd like to see here, and their environmental conditions are very different.

So therefore, pre and post construction monitoring is critical. And the work that OPC is starting to think larger about cumulative impacts of multiple wind farms is also critical. We'll be using that to build adaptive management measures into projects that we approve here on the East Coast states Offshore Wind Lessees and environmental nonprofits have joined together in supporting a regional wildlife collaborative to understand the large scale impacts of offshore wind.

And a similar effort, either statewide or on the West Coast would be valuable here as well. And we're committed to working with our partner agencies to determine the best path forwards for systematic monitoring and adaptive management. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today, and I'm happy to take questions.

Ms.. Wyer, thank you so much. It's good to see you. Really grateful you'll be hanging with us here for a bit for conversation, and we are now honored to be able to bring in the Vice Chair of the Yurok Tribe, Mr. Frankie Myers. We've heard from state and federal government leaders who are point on offshore wind. Now we'd like to be able to hear from the Vice Chairman who really has been point for native communities throughout the state. Mr. Myers, the floor is yours.

Mr. Vice Chair, we're really grateful that you're here today. Thank you for your work and we look forward to receiving your perspective on behalf of the Yurok tribe. Welcome, sir. You have 5 minutes.

Thank you Chair and Vice Chair, much appreciated for allowing me to come speak today. Thank you, for my colleagues who have already given testimony, I think for me as a tribal person, as a tribal leader, part of our responsibility is to make sure that our voices are heard, that our membership's way of life is protected and that it's referenced and included into both the federal and state agencies processes.

And I can tell you, working with BOEM, that absolutely happened. Working in California with the CEC and OPC, that absolutely is a part of what we have heard and what we have been engaged with. And so my hats off to our federal and state partners for simply including tribes and making sure that we were hart and included in the conversation and a part of the discussions.

I think that's absolutely the right first step that we have to take to looking at what the potential for offshore wind here in California looks like and what it looks like in the future. From my perspective, from Yurok perspective, we view the world around us as a part of who we are and that we are a part of the world around us. We look to our history, we look towards our past to help guide us into our future.

I think it's critically important that we continue that same methodology as we look at offshore wind, that we look at the past and where we've come. We look at other industries who have come into California to help guide the direction that we're now heading with offshore wind. The ideas of ensuring the protection of our ocean are simply the protection of ourselves as well, since we are connected to everything around us.

I think those principles that we are hearing today and that we have heard throughout this process are going to be absolutely key to making sure that offshore wind is a net positive for our citizens, for our Members, and for our people. We know as tribal people that we are going to be affected, that there will be negative impacts to our cultural view sheds. Some of those impacts can be mitigated. Some of those impacts simply cannot be mitigated.

You can't mitigate the interruption of our prayers and our spiritual practices from our cultural practitioners who are in our high country that look out and see a changing landscape on the ocean. We also understand that as tribal people, just like the rest of the world, we're responsible for climate change. We're responsible for making sure that we move forward to creating a better world for the next generation and the next seven generations leaving this place better than when it started.

Looking at ourselves as not simply a part of this community, but as a part of a chain that goes back to the beginning of time, since time immemorial, to make sure that we live within balance of the world around us. We think this could play a grove in doing that to creating balance in the world around us, to creating balance within our lives. But we want to make sure that it's done so thoughtfully.

And I think to this point we have gone through the process to making sure it is continued to be a thoughtful process that every step of the way that we continue to check to make sure that what we're gaining is worth what we potentially will be losing. I want to encourage yourself, Chair and Vice Chair to continue to include tribes, in language and in participation of panels such as this. It's important that we continue to know and see ourselves min mathis conversation it's important because of where we've come and where we're heading.

I think tribal organizations like Yurok and others want to see a better future, want to see a world that is in balance and a new industry such as offshore wind has the potential because we are creating it now to be an industry that is sustainable and in balance. The Yurok tribe has not came out in opposition or in support of offshore wind and it's because we don't know what it looks like yet.

We are still developing this industry, we're still developing the regulations, we're still developing the structure of what it's going to be. Until then, we'll hold our opinions. But I will say from what I have heard and what we have done so far that we are heading in a direction that seems like we have learned our lessons to ensure the protection of our ocean, our fisheries, our landscape, our world is critical. Putting that at the forefront of the project is key.

I think we as tribal people were concerned when we heard the initial goals for offshore wind and putting goals before making sure that the goal is sustainable is nerve wracking for us travel folks that we've seen this practice done before. I want to make sure that we continue that thought process of the goal is only the goal. As long as it works within our environment, as long as it works for the systems that we're building, as long as it works and continues to benefit our ecosystems, as long as there is no impacts that we can't mitigate, then those goals are fine.

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I want to make sure that those are simply that and that is what we continue to think about. Just as we've had these discussions here today and appreciate the moments here to speak and look forward to the questions and engaging with my colleagues here on the panel.

Mr. Vice Chair. Thank you so much. It is wonderful to see you. Mr. Vice Chair is going to be hanging with us for conversation. I would like to be able to look to the committee here. We have heard where Boem, the federal government has moved in regards to the leases, talking from the CEC Ocean Protection Council and the Coastal Commission about how the state is beginning to implement.

And we heard from the Vice Chair about the importance of involving native communities and leaders in the development. And since we're starting from the ground up, we can do this. Right. As the Vice Chair was incredibly eloquent on that. We'd like to be able to see who would like to kick us off and we're going to turn it over to Senator Nguyen.

Again, I'm very new to this, so I'm starting from scratch. So excuse me if my questions are not for this committee. It might be for the next one, but it perks my interest is that will there be or has there been studies in regards to the effect of mammal life and their behavior on how they react to these windmills that's been put in place?

Let me go to Ms. Miller first from BOEM, and we'll look for state representative as well, please, Ms.. Miller.

Yes, I can start. Our environmental studies program has done quite a bit of work on marine mammals and Entanglement studies for floating offshore wind, because that's one of the things that's really different for floating offshore wind versus the fixed bottom foundation that you see. We have 27 commercial leases on the Atlantic and they've been doing fixed bottom foundation offshore wind in Europe for about 20 years.

And so there is quite a bit of work around marine mammal interactions. But we do need to do more that's specific to the West Coast and specific to the environment here in the United States. But I can say that our environmental studies program has done quite a bit of work. And one of the studies that has really received a lot of traction was the Entanglement study that looks at potential Entanglement risk due to potential floating cables that will connect the wind turbines here in the Pacific.

That was identified as a potential risk. So we do have active studies ongoing, and have completed quite a few. And are those Entanglement tends to be larger mammals or smaller mammals, I mean, fishery. So the Entanglement Study focused mostly on the larger mammals because it's out, it's off the coast about 20 miles, and that's where you see a lot of those larger whales.

And then we do have marine mammal mitigations that have been in place for our Alantic leases. And it includes a lot of passive acoustic monitoring for activities that are occurring on vessels and in the ocean with protected species observers on board as well.

Do you see then a behavioral reaction from these mammals toward getting closer to it or further away any erratic behavior that we haven't noticed or seen.

I'm not a marine mammal expert. I'll just be honest. I'm not that subject matter expert. No information that indicates that is the case has been brought to my attention. I'm not aware of it, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. There have been, I would say on the east coast. You might be aware of a number of mammals, of whale deaths that occurred on the East Coast, and I think almost all of them were directly related to shipping. They could see impacts from shipping.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you so much. That's an item. And we'll look if Ms.. Eckerley won't want to jump into this, this is going to have to be an issue that's studied over here on the West Coast, and that is absolutely going to be part of this process as we move forward as looking at the environmental impacts. But please, Ms.. Eckerle and then we'll see if the Senator has any other items, and we'll go to the Vice Chair. Please.

Thank you. Yeah. You hit the nail on the head, I think. What your questions really amplify and highlight the need for ongoing baseline monitoring and then ongoing monitoring through all of the stages construction and then ongoing operation. And what makes offshore wind development off the coast of California so unique is that our continental shelf, it's very shallow, and then it drops very quickly close to shore.

And so that's why we need to use floating offshore wind. And we have unique ecosystems and uses out here that are different from other places everywhere else in the world. So we really need to rely we can lean on some of the information that we have, and we have to do that using best available science. But we also have to prioritize baseline and ongoing monitoring so we can track any potential impacts and then adjust and adapt as needed. Thank you.

Thanks so much.

I'm good for now. Thank you.

Thank you very much, madam Senator. We're going to turn it over to Madam Vice Chair.

Thank you so much. I have a couple of questions, the first one for BOEM, and I know there's been a lot of talk about the credits. I think locally there's some confusion and probably just general interest in understanding in more detail how the credits work, how much money specifically for the different kinds of credits, how communities are going to get that money, is that money tracked, those kinds of things. So I was wondering if in real layperson's terms, you could flesh this out a little bit in terms of what BOEM's thinking.

Yes, of course. The bidding credits were designed to—specifically the community benefits agreements bidding credits were designed to be tracked in not a penny by penny amount, but the stipulation says it has to be equivalent to the dollar amount. And the idea is that the Lessee will make those community benefits agreements with the communities that are impacted and qualify based on either the lease use area or the general community benefit agreements.

The General community benefit agreement, in order to qualify for the bidding credit requirement, the communities, stakeholders, or tribal nations have to be directly impacted from the development. And that's because BOEM's jurisdiction is on the outer Continental shelf. And so we have to be very tightly tied. Our lease stipulations that are related to money that will go into the US. Treasury, anything that reduces that volume has to be directly tied to the project based on the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act or OCSLA and our obligations within that.

We do see the community benefits agreements and these bidding credits as a floor for opportunity and not a ceiling. And what the federal government has provided is what we are able to provide based on federal law. And that doesn't prohibit local or state community benefit agreements, incentives, or any other type of community benefit agreement taking place. But there are some stipulations that are tied to the community benefits agreements.

So for the the lease use area community benefit agreements, those have to show impacts to basically folks who are using the lease area. So the most natural association is fishermen or people who are those resources that are harvested from the area. So another top of the mind group would be seafood processors. So it's really geared at those folks who are using the lease area and would lose that ability potentially with development.

And then the General community benefits agreements, that one's more general, but they still have to be related to impacts from development, say extra construction on the roads, limited housing, that type of stuff, where you can directly tie the impact back to development.

And then, what was the dollar figure?

So it's 5%, and it's 5% of what the Lessee paid for those leases. And so we don't have a total like that like we do for the supply chain because the value has to be commiserate with, and so it's not a dollar for dollar accounting, whereas the supply chain and workforce development bidding credits, those stipulations do require receipts, if you will, to add up all of the community benefits agreements or all of the workforce and supply chain developments to make sure that they really do add up to the amount of credit that the Lessees were able to get.

Okay, and not every lessee took the credits, correct?

Correct.

Some did, some didn't.

I would say not every lessee qualified.

Okay. And then, I just have a much broader question, and it really goes back to the chair's comment around how critical it is that we make movement on the climate issues that we have. It's my personal belief governing in a coastal city, but now having a district that has 200 miles of coastline dealing with a lot of climate issues, that combined with needing to really respect the needs of local communities, protect our ocean, et cetera, and there's a real push and pull there.

And so I'm just really wondering what each of you see as the most important next step. There's a lot of confusion about how all this is going to roll out, and people are kind of wanting to know step by step, what are we going to do? And I don't think we have time to outline everything. But most important next step to each of you.

And if it's all right, we'll do about a minute and a half from each, and we'll start from the left, work to our right, and then we'll go to the vice chair. Madam Vice Chair, is that okay with you?

And that's my last question for this group.

No, it really is.

No, you're good.

I didn't mean it like that.

No. And for the chairman, for the vice chair, the New York Vice chair, I would love to hear from him as well.

Thank you so much. Ms. Miller, why don't you kick us off?

I want to say, I just want to mention that we did execute the leases, and so that is hot off the presses. We signed them yesterday. And so in that vein, the very first thing that's due to BOEM are the communications plans. And we have a fisheries communications plan, a Native American tribes communications plan, and an agency's communications plan. And I would say the first thing to get right are those communications plans. How you're going to communicate with these very important groups, how you're going to reach out to them.

And then the first level of activity that we expect to see are survey plans. What does the communication look like around survey plans? How are we going to make sure that we reduce conflicts in the ocean and make sure that that information exchange is real and genuine and effective? And that's really what our focus is in this next 120 days, when those communication plans are due, making sure that they're robust, they're thoughtful, and that they consider all of the needs.

And that goes to the point where resources, a lot of those groups are resource constrained. And how do we make sure that that engagement is as regular as needed but not overbearing? And I think that challenge should not be underestimated.

Thank you so much. Why don't we go to the Energy Commission? Minute, minute and a half, please.

I just want to echo what Jen said. A key part of any of this to be successful is coordination at all levels, and that includes joint participation. I'd like to say it mirrors what the partner agencies at the state level have been doing, but we have begun listening sessions and consultations with fisheries, with tribal government to government and with other stakeholder industries. And we are at the point now where we'll be up in Humboldt in June, we'll be in Morrow Bay in mid June. And it's because of our partnership with the fisheries that they actually found locations so we could be there on site.

And we have to do more of that collaboration with the local governments where they invite all the parties in and work with us on timing. But to me that's going to be key that we're hearing the same thing at the same time.

And that one of the things that we learned on the East Coast, because they have the same stakeholder groups and tribal governments that we often have to come to the table with what do we want to achieve from it? And this is not about winners or losers, this is about compromising and collaboration and that we can walk away from the table with the same perspective and the understanding. There's some give and take that's going to have to take place to ensure all the things we've talked about.

Thank you so much. Very grateful.

I have two answers to that question. One builds on what Elizabeth was just talking about around collaboration, but really focused on our responsibility as state agencies in partnership with BOEM to have clear and aligned messaging and approach and vision for how we're doing this to minimize confusion, to increase transparency and really make sure that anyone who is interested in this and cares about next steps and how to engage that we're all moving in the same direction. So there's clarity from our side.

And then the second piece, I'm just going to be a broken record here and it's all about making sure that we've got best available science. So moving forward with this environmental monitoring guidance, that will probably take about two years to get that framework in place, that does not mean we're not doing anything in the meantime. And so making sure that's moving forward and in parallel, we are identifying additional near term scientific gaps and that making investments to fill those gaps.

Thank you so much to the Vice Chairs. Question please, Coastal Commission.

Finally. So, I am going to sound a bit like a broken record with everything that's been said. I absolutely agree with the need for coordination. I think on the Coastal Commission side of things, now that the leases are signed, getting our Condition 7c, a working group going sooner rather than later is our top priority.

One thing I didn't have a chance to talk about earlier, but through our consistency determination, we also get review over the survey plans and the site assessment plans. And so working with BOEM in collaboration to do that as we move forward is going to be really important for us.

And I would just round it out with seconding all of Director Eckerle's remarks about best available science and getting our science needs dealt with in a timely fashion being a really high priority for us. Thank you.

Thank you so much. We're going to go to Vice Chair Myers on the assemblywoman Madam Vice Chair's question, please. Mr. Vice Chair.

Yeah, I think we're all on the same page, absolutely, for next steps. For our tribal sovereign nations, I think one of the very next steps that we need to do is actually collaborate within ourselves and start to organize our tribal communities to look at the project as a whole. We haven't to this point actually sat down with each other and had the full discussion. for us, that's our very next step here, I think, absolutely.

Making sure that we have funding available for travel participation for the larger community participation, I'm sorry, for when the communication plans are rolled out, and then, obviously, as fast as we can, start rolling up our data collection for pre-project studies and proposals.

Thank you so much, Mr. Vice Chair. I'd like to turn it back to Madam Vice Chair to see if there's any other questions or comments, Madam Vice Chair, that you have, please.

That's it for now. Thank you.

No, thank you so much. Very grateful. I'll be brief here: Look, going off of the theme that Madam Vice Chair just advanced, because I think it was a really good one is that the state is not prepared just on some of the basic levels. We don't have staff at some of the key regulatory agencies. Literally, the Coastal Commission has one friggin staff to do everything and she's here. So let's just hope something offshore wind doesn't break right now because she's here with us.

But in all candor, there is no way this industry is going to get off the ground in the state of California. There is no way that we're going to meet our green energy goals if we don't staff up the appropriate permit agencies. I mean, that's the bottom line of it. And the Coastal Commission can't do it with just one staff.

So I think we need to acknowledge that in budgets are value statements and, if we value our climate and we value the expediting and weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels, we're going to invest in the people that are going to be able to get it done. And that's candidly a challenge that we're here. So I really appreciate the Vice Chair asking that because I think that's the right question.

A few other items is that to the CEC--and I just want to say thank you so much, Ms.. Huber. We've had conversations about this--I think another challenge that we have getting this industry off the ground is our transmission system. It's antiquated.

I will take a moment to say PG&E, Humboldt County neck of the woods, right, If we're looking at the Humboldt call area, they have not kept up on their deferred maintenance. There is no way in hell that the current lines that we have available are going to be able to take on the additional load. This is very common. We've seen this in the UK. We've seen this in Germany as well.

But we're going to haney to make sure that utilities get their act together to ensure that once these turbines are up and running, we can actually get that energy into the rest of the grid. Comment from the CEC on this issue I know this is of utmost concern to you as well. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it is of a concern.

Well, you have to be able to deploy that electricity into consumers' homes, right, in California's homes, for it to be successful. So I do want to start out by sharing a couple of studies that we're doing.

One of the critical studies underway is to identify the potential transmission projects and investment in the existing infrastructure. We actually are working with Cal Poly Humboldt at the Shatz Center and where we applied for a federal grant to fund research evaluating the potential transmission corridors, including studies around the environmental impacts both in the Northern California and Southern Oregon sections of the coast.

That work is focused on mitigating potential impacts on offshore wind to the Department of Defense training operation areas through National Defense and identify concerns on the central coast with delayed identification of sea space.

We're also working with the Department of Energy on a bigger picture for West Coast transmission. It's a study for offshore wind that was launched just last week and to identify the transmission needs specific to offshore wind and how to deploy that. The Shatz Center is also working with the Cal ISO and on their TPP program and on our West Coast offshore wind study.

Another critical study we want to put in front of you is just completed by Guidehouse that we're now reviewing, and it assessed the availability of the transmission technologies to support large scale offshore wind development. And this study is noted in some critical technologies that we've used through our HVAC and HVDC cables and floating substations for other industries that were referenced earlier.

So yes, we're going to hold a workshop on that in early June and bringing in experts from around the country and then our partner energy agencies because it is critical, and it's one of the three key things in order for us to be successful in deploying offshore wind.

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And again, not trying to kick PG&E in the knees, but also trying to kick PG&E in the knees on this, that we need to get moving, right? Where we've seen other countries, for example, like my understanding in Great Britain, offshore wind developers share in the cost of the modernization of the upgrades to the transmission lines. And depending on where you're at, if it is a privately owned line or a governmental owned line, then that is deeded back to whoever owns the line. And that's been more successful. This is not uncommon. This isn't just a California challenge.

But I think we have two issues. We have antiquated lines and right now the only way to be able to pay for it will be through ratepayers. And I think that also needs to be taken into consideration because of our high rates, right? And how we're going to be able to advance that with as little impact as possible to the ratepayers. So I think everything needs to be on the table. And I'll just give you a 30 second chance to respond, Ms. Huber on this, to be able to get the funding in place to modernize the transmission lines as well.

Yeah, what we've learned, and again, the California Public Utilities Commission and the CPUC and the Cal ISO are the lead on this.

You're absolutely right.

In working with, on our working group, the CPUC lead role is to ensure the protection of the ratepayers and the costs associated with any expansion and rehabilitation of our transmission system. What we've learned from our sister states on the East Coast is that it is a collaborative funding between state, local and federal monies to help support it as well as with the developers. So again, it's a partnership. It's not all on one entity because of the benefits, the long term benefits that will happen in that community.

And the last thing I'll just say on this is I think, and I know that there's some debate on it, but the only way is that centralized procurement guarantee that rate to be able to ensure investment.

And then what I just heard you say, Ms. Huber, is that Ms. Miller is going to have to bring home the bacon from the federal side. Ms. Miller, bring a check next time. So that's the good news: You got the leases signed, now we need the check. So Ms..Miller will never come back to this hearing again.

But wonderful. I want to welcome Senator Cortese to the hearing as well. I'm grateful for his work on this. Would like to be able to see . . . I have one last question for Vice Chair Myers, actually.

Mr. Vice Chair, workforce training is really critical, especially for native communities. It's something that you're very focused up in the Humboldt Call area, working with College of Redwoods as well as Cal Poly Humboldt. But, Mr. Vice Chair, I know this has been a real passion of yours of making sure that we have folks working at the ports, building out this new industry reflective of the community in which the port is located. Mr. Myers, if you could please respond to that.

Yeah. Thank you, Chair. Absolutely. This was one of our number one priorities going into the discussion about offshore wind is to make sure that our Members are going to be able to participate at all levels of the project and making sure that our young people have an opportunity to get the education and the skills necessary to join this workforce.

We have a large amount of young people on the reservation from our schools and our high schools and around the area. As you well know, the three largest tribes in California are in Humboldt County: Yurok, Hoopa and Kaduk. We have a huge population of tribal Members right near where the Humboldt lease areas are. We want to make sure those individuals and the future generations have a place in a very clear path to be able to participate.

That's why we wanted to engage with Cal Poly, Humboldt and College of the Redwoods right off the bat to start working on these agreements that would allow a space for the entire community to get the education needed to join this.

But specifically for what has been always historically underserved tribal communities, not just for our own membership, but for memberships across the board, that there is a clear path for tribal participation in this project so that we can create careers and futures for our families for as long as this project moves forward.

Mr. Vice Chair, thank you. Thank you for being with us to all of our governmental representatives. We are so appreciative of your time today. Thank you so much for being here and do appreciate your hard work on this really critical issue in the Golden State and of course throughout the West Coast. Thank you so much.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are now going to be moving on to our second panel. We aye grateful that we have industry representatives who are going to be joining us along with labor leaders who are going to help build this out here in the decades to come.

So our next panel is going to be focusing on mitigating any potential environmental and fishery impacts. We're going to hear a briefing from the industry that we're going to be coming forward. When we call your name, if you don't mind coming up to the dais, please.

We're really grateful that Molly Croll is here today from Pacific Offshore Wind. She is Pacific Offshore Wind Director for The American Clean Power Association. Ms.. Croll, that was really easy for me to say.

We're grateful that Rick Robins is with us. He's the Marine Affairs manager for RWE Renewables.

We're grateful that Elizabeth Marchetti is here. She is the Fisheries Liaison Officer for Equinor Wind here in the United States.

And of course, we have the one, the only Ms. Erin Lehane, a legislative representative on energy policy for the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California. And of course, they already have an agreement up at the Port of Humboldt to be able to build out that infrastructure when it comes to offshore wind. We're grateful to each and every one of you for joining us here today.

Ms. Croll, it's wonderful to be back with you. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule. We're going to give you five minutes and I'll give you a 30 second prompt. Take it away.

Thank you very much, Senator McGuire and the committee, for having me. As Senator McGuire said, I'm Molly Croll. I'm the Pacific Director for offshore wind for American Clean Power Association. ACP is the largest clean energy trade association in the US and has been leading offshore wind policy development since its inception on the East Coast. We have in California eleven developer Members, including representation of all five leaseholders.

I'll start by recognizing the state has set ambitious offshore wind goals up to 25 gigawatts by 2045 for several reasons. One, because we need offshore wind for portfolio diversity and to achieve our carbon free electric system goals reliably. Two, because of the great potential of offshore wind for local economic development and job creation.

And three, because if we're going to achieve our 30 by 30 conservation goals and distribute the footprint of renewable development, equitably and responsibly among the desert, agriculture-rich Central Valley and coastal regions of the state, we need to be developing on land and offshore.

The 580 sq mi of ocean space, which has been awarded to the five leaseholders, represents just 0.2% of the outer continental continental shelf off the coast of California. We aren't talking about industrializing the ocean, but using a small part of it in the fight against climate change.

We must also acknowledge that all ocean users and species are affected by fossil fuels and climate change, whether that's releasing hot water into the ocean from a coastal power plant or climate change induced warming and its effects on fisheries and ecosystems. Ocean health is tied to climate mitigation, and offshore wind is an ocean climate mitigation strategy.

Regarding the direct interactions between fishing and offshore wind, ACP stands behind the mitigation hierarchy: avoidance, minimization, mitigation, and, last, compensation. We recognize that fishermen want to keep fishing on the water and this supports the state's food security and community heritage goals. ACP Members are committed to working collaboratively with the fishing industry to support investment in mitigation that builds resilience as the offshore wind industry develops.

By way of example, offshore wind developers on the East Coast have worked closely with stakeholders and regulators to design wind farms with regular turbine spacing and transit lanes to assist fishermen to continue operating through and around projects on the East Coast.

Developers and ACP are also working with states and the fishing industry to stand up a regional fisheries compensation Fund on the Atlantic Coast. To promote coexistence in California, it's important to bring all fishing stakeholders to the table commercial, recreational, for hire, and tribal to understand how and where they fish, hear their concerns, and learn how we can operate together.

This process has already begun, in part via work of BOEM and the Coastal Commission. The BOEM sighting process included consideration of data on species, habitat, ocean use in identifying the five lee area, and avoided some of the most heavily fished and important ecologically sensitive areas based on historical data. Notably, after consideration in 2021, the Morro Bay Eastern Expansion was removed from the auction due, in large part, from concerns from the fishing industry.

The Coastal Commission also has authority and responsibility to protect the fishing industry and tribal fisheries and has plans to do that as outlined by Holly prior. ACP supports the development of a statewide working group for offshore wind and fisheries.

This working group should develop a comprehensive program that addresses interactions in all lease areas while allowing some mitigations to be tailored to each project or region as appropriate. A statewide process promotes certainty for the industry on both sides of the table as compared to bilateral agreements in which the ultimate developers may change.

The working group should allow for incorporation of new leaseholders as they emerge and facilitate a fair, transparent and data driven approach to mitigation and compensation.

The working group should be tasked with first, identifying highest priority interactions between the two industries, whether they're environmental, physical, or otherwise; determining the best data sources and methodologies for assessing interactions; recommending best practices of mitigations; and, for unavoidable economic impacts, establishing a framework for compensation.

State agencies may then use their statutory authorities in permitting or consistency review to implement mitigations. Our state agencies will be ultimately responsible for permitting decisions and for managing a fisheries working group, and the state should provide them the budget and staff resources necessary to do this.

In closing, I'll reiterate: coexistence is the goal and protections are built in. Fishing stakeholders have already been protected in part through careful planning before leases were issued, and will continue to be protected via CZMA and state and federal permitting. We're confident mitigations and adaptations will be part of the solution, and in instances where impacts can't be avoided, fishermen will be compensated. We're at the beginning of this process of collaboration.

There are many unknowns about fishing and offshore wind interactions and what kinds of adaptations are feasible, but this is a great time to be started. We'll need ongoing commitment from the state to advance offshore wind responsibly and sustainably to achieve our 2030 and 2045 offshore wind goals with successful projects. ACP and California leaseholders are committed to working in partnership with fishing stakeholders, tribes, local communities and the state to find the best solution. Thank you.

It's good to see you. Thank you so much. I appreciate that we're going to be having you hang out with us here for just a bit, and obviously we'll be getting into conversation with the Committee. Thank you so much.

We're grateful that Mr. Robins is here today representing RWE Renewables. Mr. Rbbins, it's good to see you. We'll give you five minutes, sir, and a 30 second prompt as you get close. Floor is yours.

Thank you very much, Senator McGuire. I'm Rick Robins, Marine Affairs Manager of RWE, a leader in offshore wind energy development generation and provisional leaseholder of lease 561 located offshore Humboldt.

We want to thank the Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture for the opportunity to speak today about offshore wind power and fisheries. We also want to compliment the State of California for its strong commitment to being a global leader in floating offshore wind, a critical energy resource which will bring tremendous benefits to the State and will improve the resiliency of California's energy grid.

RW is one of the world's leading renewable energy companies, with commitments to expand our green generation capacity to 50 gigawatts internationally by 2030 and an investment to back it up with a commitment of 50 billion to support the growth. With over 19,000 employees globally, the company has a well diversified portfolio, including offshore wind, onshore wind, utility scale, solar PV, and energy storage, with a combined installed capacity in excess of 13 gigawatts. Our growth is powered by more than 1500 employees based right here in the US.

We're committed to developing offshore wind energy in a socially and environmentally responsible manner, with strong commitments to local communities, environmental justice, sustainability and biodiversity. I'd like to take this opportunity to explain how RWE thinks about coexistence with fisheries in the US and how we plan to achieve it.

Some may view coexistence as a freighted term that implies a future for fisheries that is delimited or somehow constrained by offshore wind. That would dismiss the US fishing industry's remarkable history of innovation, research, adaptation, and perseverance through myriad regulatory, economic, and ecological challenges and the ability of our industries to work together to solve problems and create opportunities for successful outcomes.

Our vision of coexistence includes a thriving US fishing industry that contributes to the nation's food security and maintains its social, economic, and cultural continuity within coastal communities with the support and collaboration of our industry as we work to responsibly meet the demand for renewable offshore wind power in the transition to clean energy. RW's fisheries team has decades of high level experience min the management of US fisheries and understands the challenges fisheries have experienced.

We understand and respect that fishermen are concerned about offshore wind energy development, and we recognize that US fisheries have important considerations that vary by region. We're committed to meeting fishermen where they are to listen to them and to understand their concerns.

We're also committed to working closely with the fishing industry early in the process to develop a detailed understanding of how, when, and where fisheries operate within the project areas so that we can coordinate appropriately with them and integrate that curated local knowledge into the design of our projects.

RW recognizes that many of the best and innovative strategies to mitigate impacts to fisheries and support the future success of those same fisheries will come directly from the fisheries. So close coordination and collaboration between our industries will be essential to ensuring successful outcomes. And we're committed to working alongside the fishing industry to develop and support mitigation strategies that will achieve those.

RWE benefits from our experience to successfully developing 18 offshore wind energy projects globally, and we actively share innovations across the enterprise. On the east coast of the US, our fisheries and engineering teams have met directly with commercial fishermen to develop solutions to accommodate fishing practices within the project design process. Being able to understand which mitigation strategies or which strategic initiatives for mitigations are going to be successful within any given region are going to require a commitment on our part to work very closely with the local fishing industry.

I would just note that associations in California have played an important role in the history of collaborating with fisheries. California's fishing industry has already worked extensively and proactively to self organize and prepare to engage with the offshore wind industry in the Humboldt Area.

I think a great example is the California Fishermen's Resiliency Association. That's an association comprised of many individual fisheries associations from Santa Barbara to the Crescent City who have been organized and represent the industry and engage with offshore wind developers to avoid and minimize impacts and to achieve a successful future for the fisheries. We look forward to working closely with the fishing industry to support an inclusive approach to fisheries engagement.

We think the Fisheries Working Group that was identified under Condition 7c that Holly referenced earlier is an example of a group that can also advance that inclusive approach. RWE, as well as the four other provisional leaseholders, are in the very early stages of project planning, design and development.

As the first floating offshore wind developers in California, we're all committed to early engagement and active listening with the fishing fleet to understand their concerns about project development in order to avoid and minimize impacts to the fisheries.

And RWE has met with representatives of the California fishing industry to understand the operational details of the fisheries that operate in our project area, and we're already feeding that back into the project team to determine how to best coordinate with fisheries and avoid impacts. RWE participates in regional science initiatives on the East Coast and will support coordinated regional approaches to research and monitoring strategies on the West Coast.

We firmly believe that close collaboration with the fishing industry, tribal nations and local communities will drive innovation throughout the process to avoid, minimize, and mitigate impacts and generate benefits to support the resiliency and future success of California's fisheries so that we can achieve outcomes that are truly mutually successful. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Really appreciate the comments today. Thank you so much. I'm going to have you hang out, Mr. Robins, and we're going to come right back to you here as we get through our panel. We're now going to bring in Ms. Marchetti. Really grateful. She is the Fisheries Liaison Officer for Equinor Wind here in the United States. We're grateful that you are here today. You have five minutes. I'll give you a 30 second prompting. Good afternoon.

Excellent. Thank you. Hear me okay?

Yeah. You're coming aloud and clear.

Thank you to the California Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture for providing me time today to speak of coexistence with the fishing community and offshore wind development.

My name is Elizabeth Marchetti, Equinor Wind US fisheries Liaison Officer. I've been working with the commercial and charter fishing communities for over 20 years, both as a field scientist and fisherman. I have extensive experience working offshore on fishing vessels and a great understanding of a diverse range of gear types such as bottom and mid otter trawls, long line gill nets, lobster, fish, and conh pots, along with rod and reels. In 2015, I was selected to be the first US Fisheries Liaison for the Block Island wind farm off of the Rhode Island coast.

Today, I passionately continue working with the fishing community for Equinor's East Coast projects, and I'm here today to share how we engage with, consult with, and support our East Coast fishing fleets and communities. Equinor is a global Norwegian company with over 50 years of working alongside the maritime and fishing communities in oil and gas. Headquarter's in Norway, but Equinor is located in 30 countries with approximately 20,000 employees worldwide.

Equinor has been here in the US since the 1980s with an office in Stanford and currently holds offices in Houston, Brooklyn, Boston, and Emeryville. Equinor has more than a decade of experience in offshore wind, and which includes the first commercial floating wind farm in High Windland, Scotland.

Equinor Wind US is developing offshore wind projects in two loan and lease areas on the East Coast--Empire Wind, approximately 14 nautical miles south of Long Island, New York, and 17 nautical miles east of New Jersey, and Empire Wind sorry, I lost my train here, and Beacon Wind, which is 20 miles south of Martha's Vineyard and 17 nautical miles southwest of Nantucket. And both projects will power over 2 million homes.

Equinor thinks about impacts on communities with our projects. As a company, environment and economic development are on the forefront. That means consistently demonstrating respect for the environment and for the people who are affected by our projects. We strive for transparency by engaging and communicating actively with stakeholders, even before we know all the answers. We seek to minimize our impacts on the environment by collaborating with conservation, preservation groups, fisheries, frontline communities, tribal communities, among others.

Equinor wants to create local jobs, including working with unions and sourcing in the US whenever possible. Equinor understands local concerns, and Equinor Wind US teams are composed of local residents and continue to grow locally.

Diving deeper of our past and current experiences working with the fishing communities, our coexistent goal, we can demonstrate our commitment to the fishing community through a number of strategies--contracting with fishermen as offshore fishery liaisons upon survey and installation vessels to support with mitigation and avoidance of fishing gear and conflicts; utilizing fishing vessels as scout and safety vessels; consultation with fishermen and organizations in the planning of the layout of the wind farm and cable routing; Cross industry collaboration with fishing industry representatives to support with fishing consultations and project development; regular port hours and engagements; modify survey schedules to avoid areas with active seasonal fishing; participate on multiple state fisheries working groups; joint collaborations with neighboring leases; establish an executed gear claim and application process; has secured 25 million in fisheries and wildlife regional research grants and project fisheries; and benthic monitoring studies pre-, during, and post-construction.

As an example of joint collaboration with neighboring leases and fishermen is our work with the New England Aquarium, six developers of the Rhode Island, Massachusetts Wind Energy Area, supporting a regional study of highly migratory species. HMS species such as shortfin mako, bluefin dusky sharks are tagged and acoustic receivers aye employed on the seafloor to track migration and movements of these magnificent animals. Aquarium scientists work with local fishermen for the deployment of receivers, offshore and tagging of the animals.

Equinor is strongly committed to safeguarding the marine environment in which we operate. For Empire Wind and Beacon Wind projects, we're working closely with marine scientists like the Wildlife Conservation Society and Woods Hole Institution to carefully track and monitor the marine environment for the presence of whales. Equinor deploys sophisticated passive acoustic monitoring buoys in the vicinity of Empire Wind to obtain real time whale acoustic data in partnership with the scientists. Equinor will continue this work collaboratively with marine science and other experts on this important issue for future projects.

Equinor is also heavily engaged in other outreach, both at the statewide level and locally, regarding other types of research and data mapping relevant to offshore wind development and marine impacts. We're focused on equity in our outreach, planning and execution and have begun outreach and tribal government Members as well.

About 30 seconds.

So yeah, thank you to the committee for this opportunity to speak today, and I look forward to continued discussion and engagement with the fishing communities here on the West Coast.

Thank you so much. We're grateful you'll be hanging with us here for just a bit as we'll have further conversation from the committee. Thank you so much for your testimony today. We're now going to turn it over to Ms. Lehane. Not only is she with the state building and Construction Trades Council, I think she's one of the few that have ever worked on a lobster boat, which is honest to God truth. Now, if she's ever a Jeopardy question, you have the answer. So, Ms. Lehane, take it away. Representing the working women and men of the Trades Council.

Good afternoon. Thank you for having us here today. I do have the privilege today of representing the nearly half a million hardworking blue collar Members of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, and that truly is a privilege, as Senator McGuire said. I do also have the way back experience of working on in the Gulf of Maine.

I am from the beautiful coast of Maine, and as many kids that grew up on the Gulf did, we grew up working on the boats. And I have a great love and respect for the working fisheries in this country, and I feel it in a way that I'm fortunate to.

We have enormous goals to meet nationally, and certainly in the state of California. The 2030 goals are--I'm going to use a lot of water metaphors today--it's like a tidal wave, right? And we're all standing on the beach and we're having to reach goals that we are not ready for, at this point. So the urgency with issues like offshore wind, I think, cannot be understressed the state buildings trades have been at the forefront of renewable energy.

We fought for the entitlements and built the vast wind and solar fields in the high deserts and around the state of California. We were training workers a generation before it seems like the rest of the state caught up to the urgency around climate change. We have the workforce; we have the training facilities to meet the climate crisis. We just need some help to get going.

There are enormous workforce benefits that will be recognized across the state with the deployment of offshore wind. It cannot be underestimated what this is going to do on the workforce side. I heard from the vice chairman about the expectancy that the tribal nations will be brought in.

The trades have a long history in different parts of the country in different hart of the state of partnering with tribal nations, especially my brothers and sisters and the Iron Workers have a real story tradition of working with tribal nations.

There will be opportunities, abundant opportunities, to bring hardworking Californians into the building trades, apprentice programs to meet the needs to build the offshore wind, to build the carbon capture, to build the biofuels that California is going to need to do soon to meet the climate crisis. So I don't know if the Vice chairman is still listening. Like there are partnership opportunities and there's no better place than the building trades to partner on workforce issues.

The White House has been very clear about how they see offshore wind getting deployed in the United States--and that's being deployed with a skilled and trained workforce utilizing apprentice programs. We have a very labor friendly White House, finally, and it is up to the folks in this building to make sure that that does happen in the state of California.

We are in conversations with the offshore wind leaseholders. We're excited to partner. We're excited. There are so many levels of which construction workers will be brought into this process. There are going to be barges built in San Diego with the union workforce to drag my word, drag this equipment offshore.

There is going to be the vast infrastructure that Senator McGuire has talked about, the transmission infrastructure that's going to be done by electrical workers in the state of California. The iron workers are going to put up these gigantic turbines that are even hard to imagine.

I mean, the workforce benefits that will happen here and will happen locally because that's another part of the building trades, as we have a long history of working with local communities to bring local people onto job sites and train them in a trade that they then will be able to utilize the rest of their life.

But to get there, we need help, right? We need to get this process moving. And I can't state enough the sense of urgency we have, not only for the goals, but also for the climate. The fisheries are already experiencing the effects of climate change. We're seeing that already.

I appreciate the comment about, I mean, this is a response that in part will improve conditions in the ocean where I'm from in the Gulf of Maine, at least my daughter tells me this, the Gulf of Maine is warming at a rate faster than any other body of water. I don't know if that's true. That's like a middle school citation now, but this is affecting the fisheries right now.

So we need to act yesterday to meet the climate crisis, and offshore wind is going to be a huge component of that. But we need help with the permitting, we need help with the infrastructure. We need help with the red tape that will enable us to get this online in the state of California. It was report today that two thirds of the country is at risk of major power outages this summer.

Again, the time was yesterday to get this done, but it's all about partnership: partnerships with the workforce, the local communities, the fishing communities, the tribal nations, and these companies that will be expected to invest millions, if not billions, of dollars to get this energy to Californians. So on behalf of the blue collar workforce of the State Building Trades, let's get going so we can build some stuff.

Thank you so much, Ms. Lehane. Very grateful that you were here today. We're going to be turning it over to the committee here for conversation with our panel, and I'm going to turn it over to the vice chair first.

And we'll go to Senator Cortese. The one opening comment I'll have is the joint committee has been focused over the past decades on ensuring Golden State's commercial fishing fleet thrives for generations to come. And in particular, since 2015, they have faced some of the strongest headwinds that we've seen in over a century.

And it is this committee's belief that we need to take a statewide approach, not a port-by-port approach, when it comes to compensation for lost fishing grounds, when it comes for needed infrastructure, for dock improvements, for processing improvements, and that the fleet has to have a seat at the table 100% of the way.

And it can't be advisory, it has to be mandated, and to ensure their long term success. I say that because I don't think it would be fair if we opened up this conversation without it and do appreciate the engagement by the industry with the committee on this really critical issue. I'm going to turn it over to the Vice Chair for opening comments, please, and questions.

Well, I want to thank the chair for those comments about the importance of the fishing industry and having a seat at the table and being part of the process. And I've already referenced this a couple of times, but coming from the city of Morrow Bay, we had incredibly early engagement from one company, a lot of conversation and direct action when it came to the fishing community, and so I've heard from many of you that the fishing community is important to you.

But I'm wondering, in terms of actual things that have happened so far, where those conversations are at, what you see the trajectory, so not so much the future that you're planning for, but what's happened in the past, what's happening right this moment, and then what the trajectory will be.

Who would like to kick us off, please? Ms. Croll?

Yeah, sure. Well, I'll let Elizabeth speak to interactions in the central coast. As an association, I think we have been preparing for overall engagement with the fishing industry. Up until the auction, we weren't sure who we were going to be the ultimate winners, so the one company that was very actively involved didn't win the auction.

But that by no means does that mean that the companies that won have not been involved. From my understanding, conversations are happening all of the time now on this issue. And as an association, we're also thinking about sort of more broadly, how do we approach this opportunity for collaboration, I should say in a sort of holistic way.

So, what Senator McGuire said about a statewide program where we're looking at all of the fisheries, tribal, commercial, bringing everybody to the table, setting up something that's comprehensive. Since the ocean is large, there are fishing organizations that travel very far, some ports that you wouldn't think are part of the equation really are. Bringing all of those groups together with the offshore wind developers and with the state agencies are going to be responsible to figure out how do we address this holistically? Starting with mitigations and adaptations and thinking about a compensation framework. So we're really thinking from an association level, what is the policy and process we should be putting in place?

Yes. Thank you so much. As you are aware, we've met the Morro Bay guys, which are great, in March. And we're just at the beginning of our conversation and discussions right now. We are looking at the previous agreement that they've had with a non lease. Non Lease Owner we're going to be looking at that and starting our own conversation and discussion with them regarding compensation.

What we see on the East Coast right now is it's project by project compensation, but we're also supporting a federal regional, so it would be eleven states are in support of this regional compensation, which we see when that gets up off the ground and secured. We envision it to move to the West Coast as well to be a more encompassing regional compensation.

We also have our Fisheries Communication plan already drafted, which I will share to the Morro Bay guys, and we also have our tribal communications plan. So we're moving forward and continual discussion is key and engagement.

Madam Vice Chair, thank you for the question. So RWE's approach to development in the offshore environment here in the US is one of a very long term partner with the local community. We propose to develop, own and operate the project throughout its lifecycle, which, as you're aware, is in excess of 30 years.

So when we think about community engagement and engaging, whether it's the fishing industry or the tribal nations or the local community, it's with that frame of reference. We recognize clearly that building relationships and building trust takes time. But that's what we've jones from day one when we came to California to start that outreach with the fishing industry.

One of the first things that we have to establish is a good, accurate understanding of the nature of the fisheries activities in the area. That information may not be publicly available and that requires that type of direct engagement with the fishing industry. We have to understand who low, when what and where operates within that area so that we can effectively coordinate around those activities.

In order to coordinate successfully, we really have to have a good understanding what that is. So that's been one of the primary focal points for us of our initial engagement with fisheries. We're feeding that back, so we work to curate that local knowledge and then feed that back into our project work stream so that when we come to the point of planning an offshore geophysical survey, we will have a detailed understanding what some of the seasonal considerations are, for example, about the fisheries.

Because in order for us to successfully work together, we're going to really have to coordinate well. I think coordination is going to be a big part of that impact avoidance and minimization as our industry moves forward and wicks to avoid impacts in the California fisheries. Thank you.

Thank you. Vice Chair, any follow-ups, please?

That's it for the moment. Thank you.

Thank you so much. I turn over to Senator Cortese. If there are any items that you have, please Senator.

Just a General question. For me it was kind of queued up by Senator McGuire's comments a few minutes ago. If I'm outside of the lane that we're in with this panel, just let me know. That's fine. No offense will be taken, but it seems to me like any other I should pause and say this could be for the next panel specifically, but any such endeavor, and we see it landslide all the time, with major transportation projects that go through urban centers or protected areas or whatever.

There needs to be not just a mitigation plan, but there needs to be the financial capacity to, in effect, mitigate. I would say min terms of the opening Weber heard in terms of the building trades involvement and so forth, the same thing. Ones for making sure that whatever happens in terms of implementation of the plan creates good jobs.

You could add the same thing, I think, in terms of equity. And I know we're talking specifically fisheries here, but it's people who are impacted, of course, all the way through this process. If you could just talk is there thought given when we talk about offshore or when we do these offshore? Can we do these projects now in terms of building in to the actual construction mitigation process, if you wilk, the kind of financial capacity that's necessary to cover those kinds of things, just including basic human displacement in terms of businesses and so forth.

Yeah, well, I can start. Thank you very much for the question. As you said, offshore wind projects are large infrastructure projects. So when the developers are thinking about how do we do this? Equity, environmental impacts, the supporting infrastructure that's needed, all of that is what the company is thinking about when designing a project. We're at the stage right now where the leaseholders just have identified their areas where they can build.

The next step is site assessment plans, where they're really going to understand what is the seafloor like, where are we going to potentially be able to put anchors, what is our spacing that will uncover a lot about potential mitigation opportunities, the learnings from that then gets built into a construction and operation plan.

And all of the financial modeling that companies are doing of here's the total capital cost and here's the operation and maintenance costs, environmental mitigation, considerations of equity, how we can support workforce training. All of that is absolutely taken into account from the sort of inception of conceptualizing a project toward getting an area, toward moving, as we are now, into actual planning of a project.

For this purpose. Because I know there's been some cooperation, collaboration with building trades. The first year I got here a couple of years ago, that was already going on. But is there resistance to building in the financial capacity? I'm on the developer side now. We do see that. We see that with major I'm a little new to this topic, but we see that with major rail projects.

For example, everybody says we're going to put a construction mitigation plan in place but it's always funded. And so we end up with a situation where there's impact a few months into the critical path and no resources. Right. The bidding is closed. Sort of the cost has been wrapped up. I have always found that to be general resistance to really 100% on the dollar mitigate not just haney the plan but build into the overhead and general conditions of the project. If I can just speak as a construction person the actual cost of mitigation. If not I hope the answer is yes. I don't have an agenda here.

Yeah, well, I'm not a developer so I can't speak from the developer perspective though I was previously with a developer. I think the offshore wind industry is different than industries of the past. We know that especially in the areas where we're trying to build Morro Bay and Humboldt, other industries have come in and been extractive and exploitative. Offshore wind is an opportunity to really undo that.

Right. So I think the companies that want to do this are ting sort of a risk and initiative min a very important climate mitigation strategy because they believe in it and they want to do right by climate and community. So I think they are building those things in. We will need state support and federal support again. Big infrastructure projects, port development, transmission.

Individual developers can't do this all on their own. But I think companies are very ayes wide open about the challenges and the need to build min space for mitigations and adaptations along the way.

Thank you Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Please follow Mr. Chair. Senator Cortese, please.

Yeah, thank you Senator, through the chair. So I appreciate the question and I would make several points around this and one is that BOEM clearly recognized some of these concerns. I think when they're min the final sale notice for California built in the provision for community benefits agreements that could be related to impacted communities and specifically to the fisheries I'm thinking of at this point.

But beyond that, BOEM is also developing fisheries compensatory mitigation guidelines and we would expect to have those in place. Certainly our industry expects to have those in place very soon from the agency. And so as we go forward with the development of our construction and operations plans we're going to have an aye towards what it's going to take to meet those compensatory mitigation or other mitigation guidelines that BOEM comes out with.

As a lead agency on this industry, I would just say though that beyond that we talk a lot about compensation but that comes at the very end of the process. So every day when we're working within our project work streams, we are working holistically to try to avoid minimize mitigate impacts and so we follow that hierarchical approach, but we devote a lot of energy in our thinking as project teams to thinking about how we can effectively mitigate impacts.

And I think that's where this coordination with the fishing industry is going to be so very important because the fishing industry will have a lot of excellent ideas, I think, about mitigation strategies. The fishing industry wants to keep fishing and we want to see that outcome as well. So I think by working collaboratively together we can identify strategic initiatives that would promote resiliency and adaptation within the fisheries and continue to support the long term success of California fisheries.

And I think that to me is an early focal point for us min the processes and if that's done successfully and effectively chen when you get to the end, you have less of an impact that you're actually compensating. But we want to be proactive because I think achieving that type of successful outcome through collaboration early is going to be important.

I would just say I would add that it's my belief that some compensation needs to be iterative throughout the entire process, especially in terms of the human impacts or the business impact, because they're not set up to sort of wait till the end. And you almost have to have the equivalent of a teller window where people can come in and sort of get whatever it is.

My opinion, my experience actually and been around these kind of things, especially public works projects, long enough to have seen those set up on an emergency basis because people got in it, things were bit. Look, we'll put whatever you want in terms of mitigation in as long as it doesn't exceed 15% overhead.

General conditions and overhead sometimes becomes the norm. And then all of a sudden this is what I was alluding to earlier. You're part way in and you don't really have the actual compensation to keep people alive, keep people thriving. But I would imagine there are few operators, especially at the middle and lower end economic levels, that could survive to the end of one of these projects without having some soria of a stipend equivalent.

I don't know what that is. It may not be cash, but something coming in to keep them going during the middle of the process. I'm not suggesting that you disagree with that. I just wanted to clarify my thinking on that.

Thank you so much, Ms.. Marquetti, please. Senator Cortese's comment?

Yes, thank you so much, Senator, for those comments. So from a fisheries perspective on the East Coast, it's a million dollar question, what you asked right there's. So many moving complexities guys may hail out of Rhode Island but are landing in Virginia and Massachusetts.

So how we're handling it with on the East Coast is you got to get the states involved and the federal agency involved min NOAA low it's progressing is we're seeing that compensation fund come when the projects are getting closer to development for all this stuff to come together. And also, that's why all the states and the developers are supporting that federal regional Fund. So there's one administrator, one entity that the developers and offshore Wind could agree on and trust.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Secretary.

Any items you have, please. Thank you. Madam Vice Chair.

Very brief question for. The trades and just if you could talk quickly about the conditions needed to get the workforce up and running, the time you think it'll take, apprenticeship programs, what we should be thinking about as legislators. I know you mentioned permitting and that whole piece of things, but for the workforce itself.

We're ready to go. And I'll you know, in in all reality, we have started training. I mean, these are, these are hard skills that our Members and apprentices are already trained in. The building trades, by the nature of the work, is fluid in the way that we grow from job site to job site, industry to industry. But we are ready to go. We will be ready to go.

We have apprentice centers around the state, state of the art apprentice centers that will supply the workers that will bring in local kids and train them to start to work on these sites, to work in the ports, to do the work that's going to be necessary. But we're watching this very closely. If you were to say there was a magic wand and we could waive it and say we're going to start in a month, we'll be ready in a month. Thank you, though.

Thank you so much. Madam Vice Chair. Madam Vice Chair, any other comments, please, that you have for the panel? Thank you. Senator Cortese, any other items you have? No, thank you. Okay, thank you so much. Just some brief comments.

Again, what I truly appreciate is leading up into this hearing, at this hearing, the industry has been willing to be at the table and in fact, they are knocking at the door, constantly, wanting to be able to have collaborative conversations, which I greatly appreciate. This is very personal, I think for many coastal communities, whether you're on East Coast or West Coast, but here on the West Coast, if you take a look at where many of our ports are, they're in rural parts of the state.

And in these rural parts of the state, they have had traditionally natural resource based economies and in those natural resource based economies, they've been struggling on the North Coast. I could speak since I'm honored to be able to work on the North Coast is that it was fishing and timber. Timber has fallen out. Fishing has struggled incredibly over the past many years and it's only getting tougher.

And I think what is important is that we can't sacrifice one industry for another. And there are some unique challenges here in California. I want to talk about where I think the state needs to go, obviously with our federal partners. Number one, I'm fong to say it time and time again, budgets are value statements. If we value the fishing industry and we value our climate goals, we have to ensure that the lee can continue to thrive and we're able to deploy in an expedited manner offshore wind off of the California coast.

That's why the state has invested $11 million alone for environmental and engineering at the port of Humboldt to be able to kick start that project for manufacturing of these turbines before they are taken out to sea. That's why we've invested 340,000,000 in Cal Poly, Humboldt to be able to work with the trades in College of the Redwoods for highly skilled training programs.

And I also believe that the industry, offshore wind industry is going to have to have skin in this game. There's some unique perspective that we have in California. If you take a look at the north coast we have marine protected ayes that are already off limits for commercial fishing. Then we're talking about enhancing these no fish jones for floating turbines which Chen impacts our fishing fleet.

There is going to have to be some type of mandatory compensation for lost fishing ground. My opinion. Two, we know that this climate crisis has impacted the fleet as we see a shorter Dungeonous crab season. California is home to the oldest commercial Dungeonous crab fleet in America, and they're struggling. And we're going to need to be able to work with offshore wind to ensure that they're going to continue to thrive, since we're going to see additional areas of the Pacific that will be off limits for them to be able to do their job.

Same thing with California's iconic salmon fleet as well. And I also believe that it can't just be an advisory or on a port by port basis. I will show my bias. That's why I think that we need legislation that would bring all sides together, the fleet, the industry, labor tribes and the environmental community to talk about and front load this conversation prior to the state permitting process kicking off. I've been here for eight years.

I've done local government, and we can all talk about what our goals. Aye, but unless we're forced to sit at the table, just bains honest life is too busy and details will be missed. And I think we're going to have to be able to come together to figure out how these things are going to coexist.

That's just my own personal opinion and I think that we can do it. The last thing I'll just say is when you take a look at the East Coast, at least when we talk with state representatives out of that potential eleven state consortium, there are some real challenges to be able to bring to herd all the cats. And there are also very diverse opinions depending on the state in which you reside.

In the great piece about California, we are so large, I think that you're going to be able to grove some enhanced consensus amongst the ports won't be easy. But again I think that we're going to need to front load this process to be able to get it done and I don't think we can wait for the federal government to be able to do it, especially depending on which Administration is in and which is not.

We won't go there because I don't want to start cussing. So that said, want to get perspective and comments from industry representatives. And again, I can't say this enough. You all have been here, you've been wanting to have this conversation. We truly appreciate it. If you want to kick us off Ms. Croll, any comments about what I just said.

Thank you, Senator. As I said in my remarks, we think the idea of a statewide working group makes a lot of sense. I mean, California is a big coast. There are a lot of different fishing industries. We are building the first five projects. They might not all happen exactly at the same time, but we're starting this process together. So it makes a lot of sense to be looking at this collaboration comprehensively.

Agree with you that compensation should be part of the puzzle. Again, as part of the hierarchy as Rick also said first goal is avoid areas of most of the highest fishing importance. You mentioned crab, salmon. The areas of Humboldt and Morro Bay don't have historically a lot of crab fishing, which is much closer to shore, some salmon, but they're not like the hottest areas of fishing activity.

So the federal government and the state has already started with that step. Next, mitigation making accommodations for the fishing fleet, making adaptation. So concerns about, well, what if my bonta strays into this area? Could there be radar and detection systems? But obviously compensation is part of the puzzle and I think it's a great idea to start talking about that now. I appreciate them. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr Robins.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I really appreciate your comments about a statewide approach here because on the East Coast we've been challenged in several ways. We've had multiple cohorts of lease auctions and so they were on different timelines. So as they developed or developed. Whether, It was their engagement with fisheries, whether it was their development of scientific monitoring plans, those things were on different timelines.

And so I think we have a unique opportunity here in California as this industry develops to have a more coordinated approach. And that's true across the board. I think that's true for stakeholder engagement. I think it's true for and I think if we do that we can bring consistency and fairness to the process. I think there'll be a lot of additional benefits that come from a coordinated approach. So I think that is important.

I think having early engagement between the industries and the various regulators at the state and federal lee is going to be important. And then coordinating on how we ting about regional science and research and monitoring strategies. I think that's a ripe opportunity to advance early in this process as well. But these are long lead time projects. There are still important questions and policy clarifications that are needed, I think particularly on the procurement and offtake side, that will bring clarity to the process and for us as developers soon. I think we need to start collecting information so that we can answer engineering questions as well. But having everybody together at the table, as you suggested on that basis would be important.

No, I appreciate that. Thank you so much. The points that you just brought up in regards to the monitoring, how that's going to work, how it will roll out and what wilk be focused in on is absolutely critical. So I appreciate you mentioning that as well. Mr. Robbins. I don't mean to look down when you all are talking. I'm literally just taking notes. So I don't mean to be rude. So thank you so much, Ms. Marchetti.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for those comments. And I understand and agree with everything that you're saying. And I know I referenced the East Coast a lot, but we Equinor know it's not a cut and paste approach. We know the West Coast is very different between the technology and the communities. And I think it's key just to continue our conversation and discussion with the fishing communities and get everybody at the table and start early and often, and we have the time. And I think your vision of compensation could be a reality.

Yeah, look, I think that there's going to be a lot of conversation ahead and not at all. Hope I didn't come off trying to call you out. Ms.. Marchetti on the East Coast in our conversations with East Coast representatives, we have received an ear full and of varied opinions about how it should work and who should be compensated, who should be at the table.

And it's really valuable lessons for us, as well as talking about those nations that have deployed in Europe and how that has also worked. I think we have a lot to learn for earlier. Sometimes it's good not bains. Number one, we can learn from mistakes and lessons learned, which we hope to be able to do here in California.

Especially when it jones to preserving fishing fleet who are economic drivers in our most rural and at times impoverished areas of the Golden State and making sure that they're going to be able to thrive and haney the resources and infrastructure to thrive in the years to come. And I know that's a commitment that you have as well. Thank you so much. Ms. Lehane, any other items that you'd like to be able to add before we ask the Members if they have further questions?

I would just say it's okay not to be first, but we should still strive to be number one in California. We have an incredible asset in the state of California. The coastline we have, the workforce we have. So that's just nitpicking. I really appreciate that from the lobster fisherman, truly.

No, you're absolutely right. My point to that is I think that we can learn from where offshore has already been deployed, right both on the East Coast as well as in Europe. But spot on. Thank you so much Ms. Lehane. I like that. Anything else from the committee at this time want to say thank you very much for the opportunity to have this conversation today.

Thank you . Right, as we've said, we're bringing everybody to the table here today. So we have gone from hearing from the federal government, state government and tribal government representatives. We have just heard from industry representatives as well as representatives from the women and men who will get this job done by building out offshore wind in the state. Now we're going to hear from perspectives of environmental leaders and we're really grateful and we're going to ask each of them to be able to come forward.

We're grateful that we haney Andrew Johnson here today. He is with the Defenders of Wildlife. If Mr. Johnson can please come forward to the dias. We have Gary George here today. Mr. George is a Director of the Clean Energy Initiative with the National Audubon Society. We welcome Mr. George.

And, of course, Dr. Whiteman. Dr. Whiteman is a frequent presenter here at the committee. She is truly one of the best. She is the Executive Director of the California Ocean Trust. So what we're going to hear from each of our panelists is their perspectives. I think that we can all agree offshore wind is important but we have to do it right with a balanced approach and we can't sacrifice one without the other and especially when it comes to environmental protection for our coastal resources.

So why don't we start with Dr. Whiteman as Executive Director of the California Ocean Trust? And then we'll go to Mr. Johnson and Mr. George. Madam Director, it's really good to see you. Thank you so much. You have five minutes. We'll give you a 30 second prompt.

Good afternoon, Chair Committee. Thank you so much for the opportunity to provide testimony today. A quick reminder California Ocean Science Trust is a legislatively created organization reporting in fact to this Committee with the mandate to bring actionable science to the decisions shaping the future of our coastal ocean. My remarks can be summarized top line into two points a recommendation to give science broadly and scientists a seat at the table.

And I wood offer that we can here in California but we are not yet unlocking the full potential of the scientific community to bains solutions. We've heard a lot about moving quickly but doing it right with science as a foundation. So let's unpack that a little bit. We sometimes, I think can diminish science inadvertently to solely being about a body of knowledge, the faceless body of knowledge that we can grow incrementally by funding individual science and research projects.

That body of knowledge is important. Let me be clear and in being clear about what we know and don't know is important. The scale of unanswered questions science questions on the environmental and ecological impacts of offshore wind is significant. As we've heard, we can learn a little from offshore wind in Europe and the East Coast, but ultimately the ecology, technology and far offshore deepwater environment is very different here.

Also, the full picture of what we do know is not clear.

There are lots of desperate organizations holding different pieces of the puzzle in different research projects funded through different programs at different timelines, many of which are still underway.

I was struck in listening to a science webinar convened this morning, which my colleagues participated, convened by the California Marine Sanctuary Foundation on just how many pieces of this puzzle there are. And I acknowledge that some synthesis efforts are beginning. But Wood also echo that we can do more on that front and echo the urgent call for more multidisciplinary cross sector efforts to build that full picture of what we in fact do know today and prioritize those urgent investments in science moving forward.

But coming back to my starting point that science is much more than just this faceless body of knowledge. It's a community of people with specific tools and approaches to solve problems. It's people who can offer site specific real time advice as this moves forward. It's an immense institutional capacity, externally funded in our marine laboratories and coastal university campuses.

And it's the students for whom mathis sector is a unique opportunity to train for a place in the engineering, technology government workforce that we've heard about and have deep need for. And it's the unique knowledge and expertise held by tribes and local stakeholders. So, as I said, I believe we can, but are not yet unlocking that capacity and potential.

Let me give a couple of examples to make it real. Science leaders at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and at Humboldt Poly are committed to science and research that addresses local priorities and pays back in their local communities. With seed investment in coordination, that word has come up a lot today.

The state can support in unlocking significant additional likely federal funding in bringing that local trusted university expertise to bear the innovation and technology expertise in institutions like MBARI and Scripps is already attracting catalytic private and philanthropic investment to speed the movement of monitoring technology solutions from academia to the market.

Again, with seed investment in coordination, we can unlock further resources and ensure that state needs and priorities are reflected. We can learn from elsewhere on these institutional level partnerships. In the EU, current monitoring programs of some of the installations have been critiqued for being minimal representing a lowenthal lost opportunity to adaptively manage and the data there isn't always trusted.

If we invest upfront in independent science with pooled resources in as near real time as possible, for example, through our robust ocean observing systems or the existing multi institution collaborations that already exist and are ready to engage, we can set the stage for doing what we've heard. Also a lot about first avoiding and reducing mathis negative perpetuating cycle of causing harm and then figuring out how to mitigate it.

And finally, we can learn from other contexts. I was privileged with many partners to lead in writing the baseline Marine Protected Area Monitoring RFP that led to the first tribally led ocean monitoring program in California. From that starting point, the state has really demonstrated a commitment and a growth to deepening the tribal leadership in science and monitoring. We can learn from that effort.

I offer, in closing, that our colleagues and partners in the science community are committed and ready to engage. We have lee the way on using science to establish climate goals. Let's not miss the opportunity to invest in science and give scientists a seat at the table to enable moving forward and doing this right. And finally, just as a legislatively created entity, they mentioned reporting to this committee we exist in part to be a science resource to you. So please reach out beyond today if we can be of any support in building a strong, sustained science platform for moving forward.

Thank you, ma'am, Executive treasurer. Thank you so much. It's always good to see you. She's going to be hanging out with us here for conversation. Thank you, for your words. We aye now going to turn the hearing over to Mr. Johnson. He is fantastic. Representative for Defenders of Wildlife. We welcome you here today. You have five minutes, sir, and we'll give you a 30 second prompt.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Chair McGuire, Vice Chair Addis, and Committee Members or Committee Member. I'm Andrew Johnson, California representative with Defenders of Wildlife. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in today's panel discussions. Defenders is dedicated to the protection of all native animals and plants in their natural communities and has a strong, long standing interest in the responsible development of renewable energy.

Achieving a low carbon energy future is critical for California's economy, communities, and environment. How we realize this future has ramifications for California's treasured wildlife, marine habitats and coastlines. We support the rapid development and deployment of offshore wind energy, but intensive research is critical for understanding potential impacts to wildlife and ecosystems and for implementing appropriate precautions.

Defenders has serious concerns about the effects of offshore wind development and operations on wildlife ecosystems and oceanographic processes. Preliminary modeling that's a hard word. Preliminary modeling suggests the potential for consequential impacts on upwelling and other vital processes in the California current ecosystem.

We could see changes in primary productivity and the disruption of food webs and wildlife species might have to alter their migratory behavior, foraging ecology, and reproductive strategies. We have to understand what those effects will be. To that end, Defenders supports Vice Chair Addis' Assembly Bill 80 to establish a west coast offshore wind science entity through the California Ocean Protection Council.

This entity would organize and drive the systematic, integrated and comprehensive study of potential offshore wind impacts and would establish a strong monitoring programs in advance of and throughout offshore wind construction and operation. The OPC recently funded the creation of comprehensive environmental monitoring guidance for offshore wind development in federal waters off the California coast.

But the amount is literally a drop in the bucket. Substantial funding for the science entity must be identified and acquired. Defenders also supports the spirit of Chair Maguire's Senate Bill 286 to streamline regulatory and logistical processes for offshore wind energy projects. However, we have reservations about the bill's elements.

In practice, policymakers and developers must appreciate the difference between streamlining and shortcutting so that we don't create problems that can't be resolved down the road. The pressure to exploit offshore wind resources leaves little time to identify knowledge gaps, pursue relevant research, and employ effective protocols and innovative technologies.

Given the scale and costs of offshore wind development projects, adaptive management will be difficult after the deployment of these giant structures. Therefore, we must commit to understand how these structures will affect ocean systems before they are deployed. I think everyone realizes the immense scope of offshore wind development and espouses the responsible development of renewable energy.

But the perceptions of what is considered responsible is influenced by a range of socioeconomic and equity values. We are pleased that the California Coast Commission will require lessees to adhere to a ten knot vessel speed limit during site assessments and future offshore development operations.

That's a responsible action. The questions about environmental impacts must come to the forefront. Despite the inherent desire of some economic interests to evade them, there will be impacts. The deployment and operation of these massive structures will cause environmental harm to nutrient flows, to hydrodynamics habitat structures and wildlife. We know that after the fact.

Mitigation by levying ones changing procedures or even ceasing site operations in some cases, rarely resolves these harms. In our view, the onus falls to state and federal agencies and the energy industry to Fund the necessary science in advance rather than defaulting to programs of compensatory mitigation. The conservation of wildlife, ecosystems and oceanographic processes will come at a cost, but the cost can't accrue to the environment the renewable energy development is supposed to protect.

Defenders applauds the California agencies for their efforts to create a transparent and inclusive processes for community involvement in the development of offshore wind policy and planning. I think everyone is using the term, we have to do it right. We absolutely agree. Let's get this right. Thank you.

Mr. George. Thank you so much. Really grateful that you're here. Mr. Johnson.

I'm so I'm Mr. George.

Hey, it's good to see you. Mr. George, I apologize. Moving too quick.

Thank you. No problem.

Thank you so much. Mr. Johnson and Mr. George. We're grateful. Mr. George is here representing the National Audubon Society. Grateful for your work. You're actively engaged the society is actively engaged up in Humboldt and also in Marina, Richardson Bay. We're very grateful, sir. It's wonderful to see you. The floor is yours. You have five minutes. I'll give you a 30 second prompt.

Thank you, sir. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Vice Chair. Thank you for inviting us here today. I lead a team across North America on clean energy and transmission planning, siting and permitting, including offshore wind in the Great Lakes, Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and here in, the Pacific. We're the oldest and biggest conservation organization in North America, focused on birds.

Birds are everywhere, people grove birds and the places birds need. So in terms of science, I want to remind you that Audubon's 2019 science available at climate.Audubon.org reveals that if warming gets a three degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, we may lose 389 species of North American birds and let's lose them completely.

So this frames our work. I'm part of the climate strategy, and we support rapid deployment to get to 100% clean energy as fast as possible. And we can do it right. The three P's, right? Procurement, ports and permitting have been discussed here, and the T for transmission, these are big obstacles. And we agree with the chair that the state needs to address these issues with the urgent need for state action.

So in order to protect the California marine resources that are on and above the water, that would be birds and bains, the state of California needs to ensure that the siting and operation is informed by good, collaborative, independent science. Here's that word again that is publicly available during the baseline and during baseline data collection and during operations. There's a lot of it happening.

So BOEM is doing an amazing job doing baseline data collection. There are a lot of other research going on, funded by the California Energy Commission, funded by the Department of Energy. It's very exciting time for collecting data as a baseline. This will provide certainty for the industry and inform responsible siding and operation on land.

We monitor the wind projects for birds and bats by walking around the turbines and picking up carcasses, and that's a way we know, but this is not possible in the offshore environment, as you can imagine. But there are new thermal imaging, radar and acoustic technologies, again developed with funding from the Department of Energy, Nycerda, CEC other funders, that not only collect detections of collisions of birds and bats, but also can show the avoidance rates of birds and bats of these turbines with actual images.

That's something that hasn't been done on land, but can be done offshore. And we're very excited about that. The fact we just saw the first report from a turbine in Virginia that was a year's monitoring with thermal imaging, et cetera. And I'd be glad to help give a presentation on that at some point and get the folks who invented the technology and put the technology the company that owns the turbine, Dominion Energy, perfectly happy to have that publicly available.

There's lots of images. In fact, they can actually identify a kirtlands warbler and a flicker from you can actually identify the species of birds. So for us, this is a big advancement. We think this is very important for monitoring these projects, not only for the collision, but also for the avoidance.

I serve on the steering committee of the Regional Wildlife Scientific Collaboration for Atlantic Offshore Wind that's eleven states, federal agencies, state agencies, industry, and NGOs. So I'm happy to answer questions more about how that works. We're having some tremendous successes right now. Thanks to NYSERDA's procurement standards, we'll be managing an investment of 12.5 million from Equinor.

There are more coming. We are now completing our science. . So it's been a great success so far, and we want to establish the same kind of regional wildlife scientific collaboration here in California. I want to thank Vice Chair Addis for AB 80 and her support of that concept. We think as an independent agency that would be as an independent entity that doesn't have regulatory authority and that is science driven, would be a valuable, valuable asset for California and maybe the entire West Coast as a matter of fact.

Because we're not going to stop with offshore wind in California, and some of the offshore wind in Oregon is going to be related closely to offshore wind in California, as you know. So we support the establishment of that. And if there's any questions, I'm happy to answer them. I'm happy to be here. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much. Quick question. Favorite bird species?

What mine in the world or here in California?

No, your personal.

No pressure. It's actually called Wilson's bird of paradise. And it's found in New Guinea. And I have it tattooed on my leg.

Mine's a crow. So I'm really boring, but I now need to start looking into a crow tattoo. So there we go. Wilson's. One more time.

Wilson's bird of paradise.

I'm going to look it up after the hearing.

It's incredible, really.

All right, thank you. Very grateful. And I have a couple of questions, but I'm going to turn over to the Vice Chair and then to anyone else, please, Madam Vice Chair.

Thank you. First and foremost, I want to go back to something the Chair said earlier about needing funding and absolutely agree with needing funding for Coastal Commission staff. And I think you mentioned as well funding for scientific monitoring and how important it is. And want to thank you both for your support and your comments about AB 80, which is critically important in my opinion.

As we talk about needing to go quickly, one of the things that makes us move more quickly is trust, right? There's a concept that wallis that's called the speed of trust. And what it means is that when we have trust, that what we're doing is protecting our environment, is serving our communities, is taking all voices into account. Then we tend to move much more quickly.

And so as I think about science and I think about monitoring, to me it's all for the purpose of getting this going rather than slowing this down, knowing that we are set. And I do believe that statistic, and whether I believe it or not, the science is real, right? So 389 species of birds set to go. That's what the science says to us. And so we certainly don't want that to happen.

So we've been kind of focused on monitoring in the ocean and out at sea. And I'm just wondering where your thinking is at in terms of connectivity to land, connectivity with the ports and sort of the science around that and the monitoring that's going to be needed and investigation that's going to be needed as offshore wind hits land and as we're doing a lot of construction around the ports and then moving things around the ocean.

Any comments, please? Yeah, please go right ahead.

Okay, sure. Absolutely. As these cables come up on the shore, we have a big conservation movement on nesting species of bird on the shore. I think you may know that Morro Bay is very involved in that. Morro Coastal Audubon is very involved in that. Santa Barbara Audubon. We have beautiful species that nest on the beach.

So we're going to be wanting to make sure that those cables and those substations and converting stations that they're in the right places when it comes up, that's for sure. That's heart of it. The coastal resources, it's clear from the science and data, especially that bones developed. You can see it online. There's a California offshore wind portal that's available to the public.

You can see that as you get farther out, there's less species, less resources. So the species that are closer to the coast are more intense. There's more of them. There's lots of coastal nesting birds that forage in the coastal area, two to 3 miles off. This is why we have grave concerns about the state. There's a state offshore wind project that's proposed. We have grave, grave, grave concerns about that.

We don't think it's appropriate. We don't know what it's supposed to demonstrate. So we'll be watching that closely later for that. We're very unhappy about that project. But as you get closer to the coast, there are more resources, I think, also from marine mammals, not only birds. So that's going to take a lot more consideration.

As you get closer to the coast, most of these cables will be underwater. So there's also ethnic resources, but they're not in my purview, luckily.

If I might just add on to that. I think we're used to thinking about many different natural science disciplines, and we forget that the social sciences aye equally as diverse and have a role to play here. And we have a still small but growing social science capacity in our universities. And I think we need to commit to figuring that out.

It's been a long standing challenge in California. We also have experience on issues like sea level rise, ocean acidification, marine protected areas, and what it means to build a coupled human socioecological monitoring program. And I think there's more conversation to be had about how we can do that.

Please.

Yeah, I'll just add. I mean, I certainly echo what Gary and Liz said. But I think from defenders perspective, obviously, with the closer the coast aspects, a lot to be considered there. And my General comment, I guess, has to do with as we bring the power to shore and distribute it and figure out where, as Gary said, where to put these substations and how we develop the ports out in responsible ways. I like what you said about trust, that we're building trust.

I think we have a great brain trust in all the groups that are working on offshore wind with development and ecological groups and others and just ting to get to the point where we avoid litigation. Because I think if we're heading toward a thing where we're starting to butt heads and get to say wait, let's not put that there, but we have to put that there, that's where it's going to end up. It costs a lot of money and it's going to take a lot of time.

So that's along with the ecological components, I think we just have to keep that in mind as we proceed.

Any follow up that you may have? Wonderful, thank you so much. I want to first and foremost go to Mr. George. Mr. George, if you were to take a look, top three lessons learned east coast that California should learn from.

Great question. Stand up, a regional wildlife scientific collaboration as a third party entity. And Haney, those folks talk about the standardization of the data collection and the standardization of the monitoring so that we know and can understand over the long term what the cumulative impacts are and what to do about them.

That would be number one, to ensure monitoring technology moves forward and that at some point it finds a market, either regulatory or just because the industry this is very possible, may say, okay, I had this conversation with a BOEM Director last week at the conference. I know you were there. It was really a good conference.

That BOEM and Department of Energy and the Fish and Wildlife Service should work together to find out some way to certify these monitoring technologies so that the companies can feel secure in adapting them and maybe get some incentives for using them. And that to make them really economically feasible, there's going to have to be a market for them. So you can't just buy one.

There needs to be some market and that can either be created regulatory or by the industry saying we're going to create that market. So that's two and I get a third one exactly like the genie in the bottle. Let's see, what would the third one be? I really think that if you really want offshore wind to be supported, and we all want offshore wind to be supported, we need to tell the stories with science that it's working and what we're doing about it.

It can't be secret, it needs to be public, it needs to be transparent. The more that we tell these stories, look at how we resolve this. Look, we put this in the right place. Look, I mean, the good news, the more the good news can come out, the better we're all going to be in supporting offshore wind and our federal agencies. And our state agencies.

So I appreciate regional wildlife collaboration. Monitoring technology. Yeah, monitoring technology. And those incentives and transparency.

Transparency and trust.

Yeah, I appreciate that very much.

Dr. Whiteman know that you've looked at this as well.

I remember when I first started engaging on this issue a while back, I was struck. It's big. It's, like, way bigger than anything we've confronted before. And I think no one entity, no one piece of the sector, even within the science sector, can tackle it all. So really figuring out what we mean by collaboration and partnership and keeping that at front and center is going to be super important.

Appreciate that. Please, any items that you'd like to be able to add?

Certainly would add on to the collaboration part. I mean, there's so many different interests at work in this, be it different types of commercial enterprises and so forth. But certainly as representative Defenders of Wildlife, just making sure that we keep the oceanography, the habitats, the species that are out there in mind.

And as we bring the power to shore, we just have to make sure that we don't mess things up. As I said, there's a cost to protect the environment, and we don't want to pay that price of having renewable energy to help climate change, yet we damage and harm the systems that are so important. Absolutely.

Thank you so much, Mr. Johnson. Last question, Mr. George, on the technology, the heat sensing technology that you mentioned, I think you were referencing an onshore turbine, but has it been deployed offshore as well?

it's actually thermal imaging.

Excuse me.

No, you're right. It is heat sensing. But it not only senses it, it takes a photograph.

Got it. And that's also been deployed offshore, do you know?

It has been deployed the first turbine in Virginia, a dominion turbine, that has been deployed there for a year.

One year.

And there is a report that's available.

That's great.

And I can set up a hearing or a webinar at some point with the folks who actually did it.

We'll definitely be following up. Thank you.

We're following that closely. And any monitoring, we're following closely.

Thank you. Before we adjourn the panel, I'd like to better check-in. Secretaries any add-ins?

No, I'm fine. I appreciate the presentation. I apologize for in and out, trying to keep up with things here. Thank you.

It is a busy day. Yeah, no. Thank you to our three panelists. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedules.

We're grateful that you were with us today. Thank you very much.

Thank you for inviting us.

Thank you so much. Mr. Johnson, Mr. George, Ms.Whiteman. Thank you.

All right before we get into our fisheries panel, we do want to say thank you. We have Ms. Emery here representing Congressman Huffman. And really grateful that we have Congressman Huffman's office represented here, as he is very focused on the federal side on all issues of offshore wind.

We want to move into our panel with leaders from the leet. We are going to be bringing up three individuals. Ken Bates, he is a commercial fisherman out of Humboldt County. Mr. Bates, it's good to see you. Alan Ward, a commercial fisherman out of Morrow Bay. We welcome you, Alan. It's to see you. And Mike Conroy, he is the West Coast Director and unfortunately a Dodgers fan, which we always need to give him a little bit of crap for. And he is with the responsible Offshore Development Alliance and immediately past Executive Director of PCFFA. And it's always good to lee Mr. Conroy, as well.

So what we're going to do is we're going to ask each of our panelists to be able to take five minutes. We'll give you a 32nd prompt, and we're going to welcome Mr. Bates. Mr. Bates, it's good to see you. Just want to say, Mr. Bates, thanks for making the trek from Humboldt.

It's good to see you. And the floor is yours.

Yeah, it was nice. We were shocked at how warm it was here. I had to take off my long underwear. Yeah.

No bird tattoos, hopefully. No, I'm kidding.

So good afternoon, Committee Members, and guest speakers, and hearing participants. My name is Ken Bates. I'm a commercial fisherman fishing out of the port of Humboldt Bay since 1974. Before that, I fished out of San Pedro.

I've been directly involved in offshore wind development since 2018, and I'm also jones of the founders of the California Fisherman's Resiliency Association.

The CFRA was incorporated as a 501 C6 nonprofit in January of 2022. It was incorporated to establish a point of contact for commercial fishermen's port associations in their collective efforts to coexist with offshore wind energy developments.

The CFRA was established at the request and with the support of the California state agencies, including the California Coastal Commission, state lands, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the California Energy Commission.

The CFRA is funded by the Ocean Protection Council. Fishermen greatly appreciate the financial and the technical support that we have received from the Ocean Protection Council and our efforts with the offshore wind.

The CFRA is democratic and broadly inclusive in its membership, and although it has experienced some expected growing pains, its fishermen's association membership extends from Crescent City to Santa Barbara.

Fishermen collectively understand the need to address wind power developers with one voice. The CFRA goals are to increase long stern resilience in fishing communities through industry to industry agreements managed by regional fishermen's management committees.

The CFRA has submitted extensive written comments on expected impacts to commercial fishermen from OSW development statewide. But today, I would like to take this opportunity to describe another impact to commercial fishermen, the loss of continuity within state agency staff.

One thing that has proven very beneficial for us is to have a point of contact with each agency, a person that we can call and answer questions. We have appreciated the agency staff that have worked hard to cultivate relationships with fishermen. However, when a staff person leaves, we feel that the whole process of reestablishing a working relationship starts over.

We've experienced staffing changes at the Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Coastal Commission, the Energy Commission, and the Ocean Protection Council.

A case in point, after a significant staff change within the Energy Commission, new staff hired a consulting firm to conduct yet another set of, quote, fishermen's meetings to somewhat repeat what we've already done over the past six years.

Fishermen would like to see robust coordination between state agencies and their outreach to fishermen. This lack of coordination and continuity between state agencies is negatively impacting fishermen's abilities to effectively participate in OSW planning.

We feel that the state agencies are struggling to meet the increased demands of OSW development. We believe that the complex planning and permitting of OSW development by the Coastal Commission has been loaded onto staff Members who already have other critical responsibilities in that agency.

This permitting process is critical to the forward process of renewables and the protection of fishing resources. We would ask that you please make funds available to the Coastal Commission to hire additional full time positions dedicated to both OSW outreach to fishing communities and long term planning.

These additional staff positions wood need to require be funded for at least twelve years.

The Coastal Commission is the only state agency mandated to protect coastal commercial fishing, a coastal-dependent activity. Having more than one staff devoted to OSW permitting will provide long-term continuity between fishing communities in this agency.

We appreciate and support the work that Senator McGuire's request for additional funding for the Coastal Commission, and we look forward to working with his staff on Senate Bill 286. We'd like to thank everybody for the support that we have gotten from the State of California for commercial fishermen and for our communities. And thank you.

Thank you so much, Mr. Bates, we're grateful that you're here and for your perspective. Mr. Bates is going to be hanging out with us here for a bit as we can have a conversation as our joint committee.

We're grateful that Mr. Alward is here today. Alan, it's really nice to see you. Thank you so much. Commercial fisherman out of Morrow Bay in the vice Chair's neck of the woods. The floor is yours, sir. You have five minutes. We'll give you a 32nd prompt. Welcome.

I thank the Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture for the opportunity to speak about the impending collision of fishing and offshore wind in California.

My name is Alan Ward, I am a commercial fisherman. My home port is Morro Bay. I also have a bachelor's degree in civil engineering with some graduate-level studies min coastal structures from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

My speech is time constrained, so I'm going to skip some of the courtesies, and I'm afraid I'm going to step on some jones here, but I apologize for that in advance.

There are some people who live amongst us, many people, maybe most people, who think that if you do a thing for a good altruistic reason, your ideas are golden and beyond reproach. But this is a logical fallacy. Everything has to be and will be weighed in the balance.

And it is the consequences of what is done that matters not the high morals of why they were done. To this fisherman, it looks like the federal and state government have succumbed to a kind of greed for taking the high moral path at the expense of the balance.

All this rushing to make a big splash on the war on climate change will have consequences known and unknown. Yet we behold government desperately laying the tracks in front of the oncoming offshore wind train without having surveyed the route for sinkholes and swamps.

It scares me to see our government on a rampage, knocking down the fences that previously kept the ocean sacrosanct and rushing to speed up the process. We have five lease areas in California that have been auctioned, and the first stage of development, site survey, is poised to begin. The only sighting consideration for these leases was what was most expedient for capturing the wind.

Environmental and fishing industry concerns are only beginning to be considered retroactively in what appears backward process.

This is wrong. There is no other possible way to view it. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's process for site selection was and remains hopelessly inadequate for addressing the needs of ocean users and the environment. Bohem's myopic process revolves around identifying the most expedient areas for developing offshore wind, leasing them and getting them built as fast as possible.

The cart is about 6 miles in front of the horse. The ocean is not a vast blank canvas yearning for the touch of the industrial brush. Floating offshore wind is still in its infancy and should especially be deemed and approached carefully and as experimental technology.

The Pacific Fisheries Management Council has asked Bohem that the present lease areas in Oregon be withdrawn and the siding process be restarted, with a comprehensive evaluation of all the consequences stemming from development.

The council would do this for the leases in California if they hadn't already been auctioned. The process is flawed. So what to do? Well, we have these five leases that are already given and are pretty much beyond recall. The supremely logical thing to do in California would be politely to ask Bohem to take a seat on the bench for a bit while everyone rethinks this process and watch how things unfold with these first five leases.

As an experiment with site survey activity and its impacts beginning possibly within a year, there is very little time to gather the before data so important to a scientific evaluation of the effects of these projects on the environment. And consequently, fisheries for fishermen are wholly dependent on a healthy environment.

Very little is known about the performance, survivability and impacts of this experimental technology, and there are substantial questions that can only be answered by running this experiment.

During my education at Cal Poly, I was taught that engineers need to test whenever possible prototypes of experimental structures, devices and systems. Modeling can only go so far and actual testing remains the only sure way to verify theory. The effects and consequences of offshore wind energy development are complex enough and potentially dangerous enough that we need to take a pause in the race to line up projects to cover vast amounts of our offshore waters so that we can test and verify.

We need to let these first five leases run for a while before pressing on so we can answer some of these supremely important questions. You will have to ask an impartial scientist how long that should be. All I know is that it is an important step that needs to take place to have the best solution for climate change, the ocean, ocean users, and the California electrical grid.

By pausing the process which is evolving by pausing the process which is evolving will only get better. The technology will also evolve and get better. Right now, fishermen are staring at impacts from site survey activity that will possibly begin within a year.

Meanwhile, the machinery of government has just begun to consider how to address the impacts of offshore wind onto the fishing industry. The state working group or groups that will attempt to address this had not even been formed yet, with no conclusions to be arrived at for unknown years. Down the road, a just process would address impacts as they occur, but everything is being rushed.

Fishermen believe that wind industry to fishing industry negotiations and agreements are the best way to achieve a just and cooperative balance between the two industries. To the degree that that is possible, a fully formed agreement already exists with established mechanisms for this process tailored to the particular local circumstances in the case of the Morrow Bay wind energy lease area and that agreement was negotiated by two willing parties.

We would like to see the state recognize our agreement as the best available solution in our specific case.

About 30 seconds, sir.

We do not object to oversight, but we feel fishermen are the best designers of mitigation measures for commercial fishing.

What we know is that it takes a long time to hammer out this kind of agreement, even when only fishermen in industry are involved. As these seats to the table for people who don't understand the issues will assuredly make the process take even longer.

So I propose a further experiment. Let the existing industry-to-industry agreement in Morrow Bay and the CFRA negotiation framework proceed and evaluate how they perform concurrent with this first development experiment.

Let the task force reap the benefit of watching these two processes while it deliberates. If your immediate goal is to make the process simpler, this will surely accomplish that. In the case of Morrow Bay in Port San Luis, the task can be accomplished with three signatures by developers on the existing agreement.

The CFRA has a more difficult task, but I'm sure it will accomplish it. Only this course can bring relief to struggling fishermen. When relief is needed, let this mitigation experiment run for these first leases and during a pause in development, while physical results are being verified, let the best system of mitigation for any future leases mature so timely, adequate protection for the fishing community can be in place for what follows. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Appreciate the words. And Alan is going to be hanging with us here. Mr. Alward, until we get to conversation with the entire committee.

Want to welcome now Mike Conroy with Responsible Offshore Development Alliance. Conroy, it's good to see you, as always. The floor is yours. You have five minutes and I'll give you a 30-second prompt.

Yes. Thank you. Mr. Chair, vice chair, and Committee Members. Just real quick, the Dodgers won today, and give you that update.

I know you're...

Here we go.

Very concerned.

Is here.

There we go. Bringing it.

So thanks. Our panel is entitled can wind and fish coexist? Or will the plan Flounder? In short, we don't know. No one knows, as there are no large-scale floating offshore wind farms currently in existence anywhere, as highlighted by both Ken and Alan. We know that there have been, there are, and there will be impacts, but the scale of those impacts remain unknown.

There are also impacts that are possible but remain unknown and or unstudied. If large scale industrialization of the US West Coast takes place, what will be the impacts on upwelling, larval transport and other ecosystem functions necessary for a healthy and productive California current large marine ecosystem? Senator Wynn asked about what about impacts to seabirds and marine mammals.

Her concerns about the fishing and ecotourism business in Newport Beach and Dana Point are warranted. As you know, Senator McGuire, and you mentioned this earlier, one of the state's most important fisheries is managed based on the risk of interactions with humpback whales, blue whales or leatherback sea turtles.

We don't know what the impacts will be on migratory patterns or populations of those or other protected species. We appreciate the comments by Miss Eckerley earlier today. And then Vice Chair Addis we do appreciate the intent of AB 80 and do look forward to ensuring that all voices are heard in there regarding impacts to those dependent upon access to the ocean and access to living room resources, our state's wild capture seafood providers, buyers and processors, dependent fishing communities, and the discerning California seafood consumer.

We acknowledge there will be temporary and long-term jobs created by offshore wind, but you must acknowledge that there will be seafood economy jobs that are lost.

With regard to seafood harvesters, in 2019, the last year for which data is publicly available, California's seafood producers landed 20 million pounds of seafood in the Eureka Port complex with ex-vessel value of 38.7 million. These represent revenues paid to the vessel. It doesn't account for the downstream economic impacts. And not all fish landed in an area are harvested by vessels based in those ports.

Our harvesters are mobile and impacts from the lease sites will not be limited to harvesters home ported adjacent to these lease sites. The Albuquerque fishery is a good example. There are harvesters from San Diego all the way up to Washington that have historic dependence on waters contained in the lease sites off the California coast.

It is imperative that developers, regulators, etc, understand this and seek to involve each impacted fishery and gear type. If the Port of Long Beach, they've submitted that proposal for the Pure project. If the Port of Long Beach becomes a hub for Assembly and deployment then commercial, recreational and charter boats in LA Long Beach will feel the impacts as well.

Buyers and processors impact to those they base their business models on x number of pounds coming across their docks. In conversations with buyers based along the north coast, there is a real fear that they will have to close their doors due to a lack of product. If this happens, our fishermen and women lose much needed shoreside support and markets.

A fishing community under Magnus and Stevens Act is defined as one substantially dependent on or substantially engaged min the harvest or processing of fishery resources to meet social and economic needs. Grassroots organizations representing fisheries interests qualify, as would gear manufacturers, bait operations, etc. Impacts to the state's food security; I heard it mentioned a couple of times min March of 2020 our industry was deemed essential.

Despite significant disruptions to additional seafood supply chain, we persevered direct-to-consumer sales home deliveries. All played a role in ensuring that all Californians had access to the living marine resources off the coast. More and more science is touting the important role wild capture seafood plays in a healthy diet.

Californians are discerning consumers. We are cognizant of where our fish comes from and how it was harvested. Fisheries off the California coast are amongst the most well managed in the world and those listening should be sure to ask your local fishmonger where your seafood is coming and purchased US.

Back to the question can offshore wind and fisheries coexist? I appreciate the question as our experience is coexistence is presumed. The fishing industry has some serious concerns. As Alan noted, we have been asking to slow down the process. Build out the five leases, let them operate so we can actually see what the impacts will be.

If offshore wind will wreak havoc on the form and function of the California current large marine ecosystem then we need to stop it. Once unavoidable minimized and unmitigatable impacts aye identified and better understood compensating impacted community Members should be a priority.

Senator, we appreciate your leadership in outlining a framework for compensatory mitigation and remain committed to working with you and staff on this. In concluding AB 525 Strategic Papan has a chapter that requires identification of suitable sea space to meet the state's goals of 25 gigawatts by 2045.

Using today's math, we are looking at another 2400 sq mi of grounds off California that wilk be deeded to the offshore wind industry.

Early versions of these maps show this sea space would line the coast from Fort Bragg to the California-Oregon border. This would functionally kill the fishing industry North of San Francisco for a state that prides itself on equity and justice, where the justice of putting the burden of electricity generation on the shoulders and livelihoods of our state's iconic and historic fishing industry.

Mr. Conroy, thank you so much for your comments. And that's why we are here today, to be able to have this critical conversation with everyone in the same room. So what we'd like to be able to do is open it up for the committee to have conversation.

I want to check in with Madam Vice Chair if you want to kick us off and just want to also welcome Senator Limon and acknowledge her leadership on coastal preservation, her focus on the fleet as well. We're grateful for her partnership.

Madam Vice Chair, please.

Well, first of all, it's wonderful to see somebody from Morrow Bay and thank you to the other commercial fishermen that drove all the way up here. I know how far that drive is.

And so I want to appreciate the time it took for you to be here, to be able to speak for a short time with us and I want to appreciate kind of the straightforwardness with which you gave your testimony today.

Alan, and know that in Morrow Bay there has been a different process in the past that started years and years ago, far before anybody knew which leases were going to come to the community. And that process did work pretty well, I would say. And I think that's what I'm hearing from you.

And yet we've come to this point and it's a very difficult point and I'm hearing that from the folks here that are giving testimony. And so I'm wondering, given where we're at at this moment, and I asked this question to an earlier panel, but what you think the best next immediate step is, given the vast amount of concern that there are from everybody here that's giving testimony.

And then I'll just thank you for your comment on AB 80 and we look forward to having our partnership on that in the future. But if you could just kind of give for us, knowing the concern that's in the room, where do you see this very next step being?

Please, why don't we go to Mr. Bates and Mr. Alward?

Thank you for the question. There are no rules. There are no rules. Where we are right now, we have these big projects coming and we are, collectively as a community, as a state, we are behind the curve in coming up with how these things are going to function, how fishermen are going to interact with these projects and with these project managers in the permitting process. We don't have anything that's set up to take care of those things. I'm going to drag us back into the weeds for a second and talk a little bit about fiber optic cable agreements in California that have been around since 2000, and I think the year 2000 was the first ones in Morrow Bay.

There's one sentence in the Coastal Commission documents that requires a fishing community benefit agreement for a cable. What does that mean? What is that? Is it like what Morrow Bay did, where two fishermen's associations work with the cable companies and put together a beautiful system that everybody basically is looking forward to? Or is it three fishermen assigned agreement off to the side and check the box? That's my comment.

Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Mr.Alward.

Yeah, well, I appreciate Don's help in this effort. She's always been sympathetic, and she's gone the extra mile to help us out.

I think that it's important to consider why the fishermen are supporting the agreement that they came up with in Morrow Bay and that agreement came about because the wind company wanted something. She wanted the city to allow her to bring her transmission cable ashore. And so the city supported us by saying, well, we're not going to allow you to do that until you come up with an agreement that satisfies fishermen.

So when a wind company is forced with the condition that it has to satisfy the fisherman. Suddenly, doors open and we got a wind company that had already said that they knew they were going to have impacts, and they felt like the just thing to do was to work with us to figure out what it was going to be.

Now we were imagining everything, and we're still imagining everything. We don't know what the impacts are going to be, but the fact that we had a willing wind company working on this negotiation was the key to coming up with something that worked for us.

And I think that's what we're hoping to see from the Coastal Commission is that the wind companies are said, you are told you have to come up with something that satisfies the fishermen. And in this case, in our case, in Morrow Bay, the fishermen were not greedy.

The agreement was generous, but the company was the one that made the generous offer, not the fisherman. And we we were happy to accept what we were given. I think that process where, I've already said it, when they're told they have to satisfy the fishermen, the fishermen aren't necessarily going to bend them over a barrel. We want to work with the wind companies. We were told by Allah what their problems were, what they could do and what they couldn't do.

And we worked with them to figure out something that worked for both of us. And that's what we're talking about when we talk about industry to industry. We came up with an agreement that worked with them and we came up with agreement that worked for us. That's why we support what Ken's CFRA has accomplished.

It's a wonderful start, and if we didn't already have our agreement, we'd be part of that. We'd be signed on and we'd be expecting that to work for us. We're happy with our agreement. If our agreement doesn't come about, we're going to be in align to get on with Ken.

So it's a different approach than what is envisioned at this point. But we all make mistakes and we all have to learn as we go. So I think that's my input on it.

Mr. Conroy, please.

No, I fully agree with what both Ken and Alan have said. Learning today that the leases were executed last week I think is a good step. It'll be incumbent upon the developers.

They have 120 days to get their fisheries communications plans done, and I think it's going to be incumbent upon them to begin to do the outreach to the fishing communities both in Morrow Bay and in Humboldt. But understanding that there are fishing industry participants based as far away as Washington and San Diego that have to be included in those conversations and then go from there.

Follow up, please.

Thank you for that. And I guess I would reiterate, I think that there is a footprint for success because we've had a footprint for success. We don't know what the impacts are. I absolutely agree with you.

But there is a footprint for an agreement to be made, so we're not starting from scratch. And I just hope all in the room that are listening really take that into account what's being said here in testimony. That we kind of know a path that we can go down to make sure that we are compensating people well, taking into account the concerns and the connections with the ocean and that we uplift those pieces that were already successful and move them forward and really have the fishermen a seat at the table. Not just communicate to them, but bring you in as part of what's going to be decided.

So thank you.

Thank you so much, madam Vice Chair.

We're going to turn it over to Senator Limon.

Any items, please, ma'am.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. And I think I want to echo that part of this conversation and really part of this public hearing is so that we understand how to mitigate the potential impact. And I think that's part of it.

It's not this idea that for us, it's just we're going to go full force without really understanding what the challenges are and also how to solve for some of these challenges.

I know I have commercial fisheries in the district I represent off Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. And so that's something that we're aware of as well. And we may not have even close to some of what people are envisioning in other parts along our coast, but there will be some level of impact.

One of my General questions, and it can go to whoever wants, is if you had to outline the top three things that aye most important to you for us to consider in a mitigation process, what would those three things be? And they can be hierarchy, I know you'd like to go into the deep weeds, so if you want to, you can.

But just what do we need to take away the top three things that we should know to mitigate the type of impact that we may or may not see?

Why don't we start with Mr. Conroy, then go with Mr. Ward, and then Mr. Bates? Mr. Conroy?

That is a great question. One leapt to the forefront of my mind and that is an understanding of the cumulative impacts. The process to date hasn't considered that it's been a project-by-project, kind of, piecemeal approach.

But as we're looking down the barrel of 25 gigawatts or over 3000 sq mi , California, then you have a call area right on the California-Oregon border that could be more. The cumulative impacts of all of these projects, not only on our operations but on the ecosystem as a whole, on marine life, on the ports and harbors that are dependent upon our activities, that's the one that comes to the forefront.

Another one would be developing a common language. We talk about the fishing industry and I think if you were to ask everybody what that means, you'd get vastly different answers. It consists of fisheries targeting specific stocks, using specific gear types, specific times of the year, and each one of those gear types fisheries and whatnot needs to be incorporated.

I know that's two. The third one would be it's an unequal playing field. I mean, we can sit here and say that it's not, but in terms of the process to date that the fishing industry has not been an equal partner in this process. So just an understanding of that and now your turn.

Okay, so there's a fishing mitigation template that's been circulated around. In fact, there's been more than one. And if you want the three concepts that are from there, I can tell you the most important one is resiliency.

What keeps the fishing industry fishing into the future? A lot of the guys who set up this agreement and were concerned about it, we are not going to be around when the actual impacts begin. Now that's becoming less and less true because the impacts are getting closer, closer and closer, but a lot of guys have already dropped off the vine.

But we got all these young guys who want to keep fishing and we need to see that this resiliency happens. Which means the kinds of benefits, things like that a fisherman has a chance to still go out and fish because he's able to get insurance, he's able to pay for the fuel.

That's the kind of mitigation that we're looking at in resiliency, is programs that help the guys who are actually fishing. It makes it possible for them to keep being economically viable. And so there's also a compensation factor for guys who were already fishing who didn't come to the area to take part in this resiliency thing.

These are guys who are already here who now are faced with a decreased opportunity, and we're talking about compensation. Mike was talking about guys from other parts of the coast, that fish.

I personally fish albacore as my primary fishery, which means I leave Morrow Bay and I take my boat to Oregon and I fish off the coast of Oregon all summer.

Right now I'm thinking and I fish albacore, which is an offshore fishery, and I fish alone. So I'm drifting at night alone. So what I'm looking at, personally, is that Morrow Bay will impact any winter fishing that I do. But the real impact is going to happen in Oregon.

So I feel that each agreement in each place has to take that into consideration. That there are impacted parties that are from out of the area that are coming through our area and being impacted by these things, and we have to bring them in too.

And in the latest version of our agreement, partly because it was one of the requirements of the Coastal Commission, we modified our agreement to more clearly spell that out, that the agreement has to work for all the fishermen.

I'd like to hijack the conversation for a minute to talk about risk, but I'll wait and see if I get a question.

Thank you. I'm going to limit my comment to the agencies that you people are in charge of controlling and directing and funding and those kind of things.

So if you look at site survey, site survey is the next thing on the agenda. The companies that are around right now, they're starting to have their fisheries license officers come. They're talking to fishermen. They say, when are you fishing? Where are you fishing? They're doing that because they're going to start bringing ships in to do site surveys.

Site surveys are not like a trip out in the skiff on a nice day. They are months and months and months of transects across these areas. And when that stuff happens, when that starts, that is going to significantly impact anybody fishing or traveling through that area. So the best thing that, collectively that I think, we could do is to get the Condition Seven working group with the Coastal Commission formed.

I'm hoping that that group also will check the box of the Bill that Senator McGuire is sponsoring so that there's continuity through that and start to figure out low to get everybody in the room to actually have conversations about how we are going to avoid the impacts from site surveys.

Those are the first things that I'd ask for. Mr. Senator McGuire's comment about budgets. The budgets are essentially how we determine what we think are important.

Again, it gets back to having funding for these agencies to be able to coordinate and to be able to outreach to fishermen and for fishermen to show up at these meetings and get this started.

Thank you so much. I want to turn it over to Senator Limon to see if there's any follow up from those comments.

Thank you.

Very grateful. I want to turn over to Senator Cortese to see if there's any items that you'd like to be able to advance, sir.

Yeah, I'm very much on the learning curve in one sense, although what's here is nothing new in terms of, again, its analogy in terms of construction mitigation on the land side. I mean, we run into urban areas, rural areas, protected areas, all these same issues.

And with industry as well because there's agriculture, there's urban retail, there's whatever property owners that have invested and don't want to experience a taking of any kind. That said, what I am familiar with is that when you're dealing with a public trust and you're dealing with encroachment on what has historically and legally been the public's domain, that usually, there's some kind of an encroachment permit that has to be pulled.

And I haven't studied your Bill, Senator McGuire, thoroughly, but I know that you're calling for what I think are all the right thing in terms of a couple of levels of direct mitigation to the industry itself, to the fisheries. But I think it's going to be really important, and I'd like to hear any reaction, to actually have a legal trigger that requires this mitigation and this compensation.

You can put all the plans together in the world and we walk away. No offense to any of us, but the state of California says that's done, that law is in place and these folks are left fending for how do we actually get the mitigation done. As I was alluding to earlier, what if the developer doesn't put adequate funding in their bid package to cover the mitigation to the industry that's actually needed it's very iterative, and I'd hope maybe your Bill already covers that.

But that's somewhere along the line in the discussions and the convening that you're going to do. There's some discussion about a hard legal trigger that folks can rely upon. You cannot pull whatever the equivalent is to an encroachment permit to go out and do this work, even the survey work, until you have a funded plan that meets the satisfaction of and that blank has to be filled in.

I mean, there's got to be a legal entity and an appeals process for that. But that's what I see as sort of the path if you don't want to completely reinvent the wheel because we've set those kinds of processes and triggers in motion, do they always work perfectly well? No. That's what scares me on this.

And I do think I thought it was a great point just now on the survey work that's happening now, it's got to be one of the top three things to address and take away from this hearing.

But that sounds like the survey work may require a repository for what I would call cash mitigation up front. Just because of that if it's going to displace industry whatsoever, is that going to be allowed to go forward without, in effect, a monetized trust in place? I would hope, in a perfect world would be if this word has come up 52 times already in this hearing coexist.

I think the reality is with this kind of disruption, the coexistence is a mitigated coexistence at best. At worst, it's displacement of some kind and some kind of a taking.

So I hate using the word monetization around or that term around this kind of work for people who have been out there in the industry living the life that they want to live without disruption. Now all of a sudden wind power is coming and you got to live with this disruption.

But I think we also have to say, what does it take to monetize this every step of the way and make sure the developers who are coming in with the deep pockets, every step of the way, are forced to deposit whatever they need to deposit to make things whole?

And again, Senator McGuire, you're immersed in this work. You probably thought that through. But I soria of would like to see some ironclad way to make sure that people in certain jurisdictions don't take the best intentions and the best rules of this Legislature and game them along the way in a way that really becomes a burden to the industry itself and to the.

Of life that we're trying to protect as well. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Senator. Aany comments from our panel? Senator Cortese, I'm very grateful for that as well, Senator Cortese. Any items that you'd like to be able to add to what Senator Cortese, please?

I would just like to bring up one thing and that concerns sea space. If Senator McGuire and I took a chart of California and, we each had a black felt pen, and we started coloring in all the areas that were closed because of marine protected areas, ocean outfalls, dumping grounds, cable lanes, I mean, stuff from the Department of Defense. It goes on and on and on. And then on top of that, you put all the fisheries regulations that we have. California has the most regulated fishery in probably in the world. It's a good thing we're not complaining about that. But by the time the two of us were done with the felt pen, the entire coast is black.

So when someone makes a comment, "Oh, we're only going to use two or 3% of the ocean for wind power", what you actually have to look at is what was actually available if you're looking at impacts to the fishing fleet, what's actually available for fishermen to working in these areas, you know, depending on time and species and season. So that that's the only comment that I would make. Thank you.

No, thank you so much, Mr. Bates. Very grateful.

Alan, I know you wanted to have an opportunity to be able to say a few words. We're just worried about - I want to do a quick check on time for the committee.

We're at about 5:20 Alan. I want to make sure that you were able to get everything you wanted to get out here on the committee. So why don't we give Mr. Alward two minutes? If you had some items that you wanted to be able to address.

Okay. And I just wanted to add to Ken's comment first is that proximity is everything in fishing. So when you come and take the area right outside the harbor, that's a bad thing because that's where people tend to go and it drives with the cost as you move further. That's what's happening in Humboldt, and it would have happened in Morro Bay except our agreement. We worked with Castle Wind, and the first thing she did was move it farther away from the harbor so that we were still viable. And it cost her it was a million dollars a mile, she told us, for the cable. But proximity is something you think about, and we feel that less fisheries are impacted, the further out you push them, because the whole ground fish industry was is the biggest industry for most of these ports takes place inside of about 600 fathoms or at least 700 fathoms.

So Offshore Wind is getting ready to make that step to go out into that deeper water. And when they do that, that's automatically going to have less impact on every fishery but mine, which is Albacore. Okay. And the thing I wanted to bring up, getting to that and I won't take the whole two minutes, but in my speech I talked about this terrible risk and problems and everything, but I just wanted you to give you a hint of what I was talking about as an engineer and as a fisherman. When I look at these offshore floating platforms and they're a mile apart and each one has three or more anchors spreading out and the depth of the water they're in, those anchors are almost interlocking between the one next to them.

So what happens if you have a storm like the Columbus Day storm in 1961 where it was blowing? According to a book I just read, a fisherman overheard the Coast Guard say 125 miles an hour. What if the Exxon in Valdez goes right through the Morro Bay lease area and knocks three or four of those wind turbines loose and then they're dragging along and their anchors are catching the ones next to them? If the wind is blowing really hard, I mean, you can see that there is a chance that the grid might wind up on its knees. And if that happens, if the whole thing is a tangled mess on the beach, it's going to be years to repair it. So when I say risk, I'm saying yes, it's probably not going to happen, but the consequences are so bad that that needs to be examined. That's it.

Thank you for bringing that up and really grateful and obviously we will take note as well. So wanted to make sure that you were able to say that piece. So very grateful. Before I make some very brief comments, I wanted to look to the committee. Any other comments that you may have? So, first and foremost, again, gentlemen, I just want to say thank you for your willingness to be able to participate in today's hearing here's. What I'll say is that I think that our goals are aligned one, we got to staff up the agencies. Again, I'm going to say it to him blue in the face. The one Coastal Commission staff member that handles all offshore wind from the entire state of California was here today. One, for the Coastal Commission.

We're desperately understaffed at the Coastal Commission. There's money for CDFW in this year's budget for offshore wind. Who is going to be involved but isn't going to be main point. There's money for the CEC. We need some additional funding for both the coastal commission and the state lands commission. That is bottom line. I think that everybody can agree whether you are the fleet or an industry. I think that's something that we can all come to agreement on and that is going to ensure our success for years to come.

Some good news. This industry is going to take some time to be able to build out and just being really blunt about it. It's also going to take some time to connect. Right. We have a lot of onshore work to do to ensure that the power that would be generated from offshore can get onshore and to the rest of the grid in the state. And that is, again, is something that we talked about earlier. That's something that's going to take some time and candidly years, if not over a decade.

Where I think we all want to be able to go is front load the process at the beginning of the permit, not at the back end so that the fleet, the environmental community, tribal interests, local communities are, having their say on the front end prior to a project being deployed, that's the way it should work. And we all come from local government and that's the way I always work for local government, is you start focusing on what potential mitigations are needed long term to ensure that we have that safety net established. That also includes those site surveys. That's something that, again, I'm not at all trying to promote legislation that we're promoting, that we're advancing, but it's embedded in there that we have to front load those site surveys as well.

And then I think the other piece is funding. How is that ongoing funding going to work to ensure that we are compensating the fleet for lost fishing ground? MPAs have been tremendous and it's also meant that fishing, commercial fishing interests are unable to fish in those areas and they're extensive on the north coast. So we need to focus in on that, on how we can continue to work collaboratively with the fleet to ensure that you're going to be able to thrive long term.

So I say all that is this is the beginning of the conversation. We need to memorialize this in state statute to ensure that everyone knows what the clear expectations are, how it's going to work and how we're going to fund until we have that. Just being honest. We're building the airplane while we're flying it. And that's why we need to formalize this process and do appreciate the fleet, the environmental community and the industry all willing to be able to come together on this. And I think that's going to be critical learning from those mistakes that we've seen in other areas

I'm going to wrap up my comments. I want to see if there's anything else from the committee. Before we adjourn this panel. I want to say thank you so much, Mr. Conroy, thank you Mr. Alward, thank you Mr. Bates, thank you so much for being here and for sharing your perspective. So ladies and gentlemen, we are now going to be public comment. We're going to be taking public comment in two ways. In two ways we're going to be taking public comment first here in room 2100 and then we're going to go to our live line. So we're going to welcome anyone who would like to be to provide public comment, to be able to come up to the podium here. We have 1 minute for each individual, and if you can, please give us your first and last, and affiliation and we welcome you.

Mr. White. Nice to see you, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good to see you as well, Mr. Chair.

My name is Brian White on behalf of Offshore Wind, California Association of Offshore Wind Developers and Technology and companies that fully support responsible development of Offshore Wind. It's good to see many of you who were at the conference last week to discuss some of these emerging issues.

Just to be clear, OWC Members, we are committed to responsible development of Offshore Wind power in a manner that fully engages key stakeholders and coexists well with other ocean users, including commercial fishers. Offshore Wind is poised to bring significant benefits to California with economy of scale that will help drive down costs, deliver competitively priced clean power, encourage industries to move to the state and play a vital role in addressing our state's great reliability issues. But to make this reality, we need to move expeditiously on a lot of things, including ports, permitting, procurement, all the things that have been mentioned, and transmission, of course. And we need to do that and looking at making sure that we have a robust workforce as well.

But we need to also make sure that we are engaging with key stakeholders, which is the tribal communities, coastal communities, commercial fishermen, and all the other ocean users. We have a strong track record of dealing with these issues. We look forward to working with you, Mr. Chair. We're actually supporting some of our small businesses on AB 80 and of course, we're working with you and your staff on SB 286. And of course, we would support wholeheartedly the need for staffing. And so we look forward to working with you.

We'll see a budget sub two. There we go. Yes, thank you so much. Mr. White, good to see you.

Hey, good afternoon

Hi, I'm Greg Herner on behalf of the American Waterways Operators, we run the tugs, crew boats, and other things. What we take union Members out there to develop these projects. And I just want to state that there's another issue that's going on here with the adoption of the Commercial Harbor Craft Rule, which you're very familiar with, Mr. Chair, but we actually have some very tight timelines and stuff to upgrade vessels that some of these products actually don't exist yet. Our Members are actually getting offers from East Coast Wind farms to move our vessels across to build their facilities there.

So, while, we are very interested in doing the work and participating in this. Both our vessel owners and the union Members that are on those vessels would encourage you to investigate this issue a little more thoroughly as far as what we can do to make sure that we have the infrastructure here to support the investments.