The future is uncertain for SouthCoast Wind, a planned wind farm south of the islands that would serve Rhode Island and Massachusetts via power cables routed under the Sakonnet River to Brayton Point in Fall River.

Earlier this month, officials from the United States Department of the Interior issued a filing in a Washington, DC court noting that agency officials intend “to reconsider” approval of the project. The news comes just weeks after the Trump Administration ordered work halted on Revolution Wind, another farm off the coast of Rhode Island that was 80 percent built out when work was ordered to stop.

The Sept. 2 filing was associated with a civil suit brought by Nantucket against Southcoast Wind, the federal Department of the Interior and the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). Filings also note that Interior officials seek a “voluntary remand” of previous federal approvals by this coming Thursday, Sept. 18.

Southcoast Wind, a 2.4-gigawatt farm that company officials said would power more than 800,000 homes in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, is currently under review by the BOEM following the Biden administration’s approval late last year of 127,000-acre ocean lease area about 30 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard and 23 miles south of Nantucket.

The plan has always been to connect electric cables from the site through federal and state waters, including the Sakonnet River, and eventually to an electrical substation at Brayton Point in Somerset, where it would link to the regional electric grid.

In a response to the reconsideration of the lease area approval by the former Biden administration, Southcoast officials wrote that the filing and "a pattern of unreasonable delays" is a political move designed to further the agenda of the Trump administration.

“This delay and the forthcoming request for remand are simply pretext for the unabashed desire of the President to eliminate all offshore wind projects from existence regardless of their impacts."

On his first day in office in late January, Trump signed several executive orders calling for delays in offshore wind projects up and down the East Coast. And even before the recent news that Revolution Wind work had been ordered to a halt, many here saw trouble ahead for Southcoast Wind.

At a July 23 public comment session before the Rhode Island Energy Facility Siting Board at Portsmouth Middle School, several said the writing was on the wall:

"Southcoast Wind knows they're in trouble," Portsmouth resident Sal Carceller said. "They've already said they're likely to delay by four years."

While many of the comments at the July meeting were from residents who feared the project's impact on ocean life, the Sakonnet River ecosystem and the livelihood of fishermen, others said the project would be a lifeline in an energy market dominated by fossil fuels.

Carmine Rossi of Laborers’ Local 271 in Providence was one of several union representatives who spoke in favor of SouthCoast and estimates that the project would create 17,000 local jobs annually.

“I’m a proud example of what a job like this can do for union workers,” Rossi said. “Because of projects like this, I was also able to provide for my family.”

But others questioned that number. Little Compton resident Lisa Quattrocki Knight, the co-founder of the local group Green Oceans, said the job numbers claim was based on an economic model that “ignores jobs that will be lost,” as in the fishing industry.

“This isn’t honest economics; it’s propaganda,” she said. “Offshore wind is by far the most costly form of renewable energy.”

Added Westport resident Constance Gee, an anti-wind advocate, founder of the Protect Our Westport Waters group and a member of that town's Offshore Wind Advisory Committee, said that if the project ultimately is approved, many here will suffer:

"Say yes to tripling your energy bill,” she said. “Say yes to destabilizing the grid and frequent power outages. Say yes to … killing marine animals. Say yes to destroying the Rhode Island fishing industry. Say yes to ruining the tourist industry and wrecking the views from our beaches.”

Others called that hogwash:

Christian Roselund, of Climate Action Rhode Island, said diversifying the nation's energy infrastructure is vital, as is moving away from fossil fuel sources.

“Dependence on a single source — natural gas — is the biggest threat to reliability” of the grid, he said.

— With reports by Jim McGaw