One of the things the Coast Guard looked at was the routes used by various vessels – tugs and barges tend to go one way and larger ships another, which is a divide they have done themselves. But wind farms may affect the nature of that traffic, so the service wants to look at the potential effects caused if wind farms force ships doing 30 knots into the same waters as ships doing 12 knots.

“Safe navigation also means [a] safe environment – we don’t want collisions between vessels or vessels colliding with generator towers,” Detweiler emphasized.

The agency has a pretty good handle on acquiring that data, but they need a risk analysis and modeling tool. The cooperative work with BOEM to create this new tool is a slow and complex process, but getting the funding under limited budgets is the biggest hurdle.

In addition to ensuring safe and reasonable access to and between U.S. ports, the Coast Guard also is concerned about the impact wind farms might have on the environment, from marine life to wind patterns to electromagnetic interference with GPS navigation systems. While the ACPARS is focused on current maritime traffic and vessels, Goward acknowledged they also are trying to look as far forward as possible, such as how routing might be affected by larger ships coming through the Panama Canal once an ongoing project to enlarge that passageway is completed.

As with port-centric PARS, the service is working with a wide range of local, state, and federal agencies and the maritime industry – from commercial fishing and cargo to cruise ships and the U.S. Navy. But despite the scope of this new effort, the placement and leasing decision-making lies with BOEM.

“Once we do get the risk analysis tool, we can plug in real data and come up with risk analyses so we can recommend – which is all we would do – as to whether a particular area is a good or bad idea. But I must stress, we are not a go/no-go agency – that is BOEM – and other agencies also are advising them,” Detweiler said. “Those include Fish and Wildlife [Service], National Marine Fisheries [Service], DoD [Department of Defense] – on how wind farms might impact their naval operations – and state and local agencies, because cabling will go ashore and be in their waters and shoreline.”

Wind farms are not the only energy project that could affect maritime traffic patterns. The most likely among other alternative energy concepts – hydrokinetics – is primarily based on the seabed and, depending on depth of water, is of far less concern to surface vessels. The ACPARS also will help decision-makers understand traffic patterns and traditional routes that could be used to evaluate any proposed structure or exploratory energy project to be located in U.S. waters.

“My understanding is there is still a lot of survey work to be done before anyone even decides where to put an exploratory well, so we’re probably a number of years off from seeing any new offshore drilling rigs in that area,” Goward noted. “But the ACPARS will provide data on current and future navigation routes that would relate to those as part of our responsibility to ensure safe navigation.”

Goward said the Coast Guard will issue an interim ACPARS report this summer, but added it “will provide more questions than answers.

“Our final report will depend on getting answers back from BOEM, developers, and other responsible parties, as well as developing the tools we need to use the data we collect,” he said. “My understanding is it will probably be a couple of years before we see the first full-scale wind farms going up off the East Coast.”

The concept of permanent maritime structures – whether close to shore or at the edge of the OCS – is a relatively new one for the Atlantic Seaboard, adding even more complexity to Coast Guard concerns for navigation and safety that have been growing for decades with more and more vessels, from private boats to massive tankers, plying U.S. coastal waters.

“Any structure placed in the water – an LNG [liquefied natural gas] port, drilling rig, desalinization plant, wind turbine, hydrokinetic, fish farm, etc. – could create potential risks to shipping. But multiple uses of coastal waters are increasing significantly and each of those results in legitimate concerns for the Coast Guard,” Detweiler concluded.

“When you get right down to it, this is still part of the Coast Guard’s navigation safety mission. Until now, there really haven’t been any structures in the water that mariners needed to be concerned about. Now there are – and there will be more. And that’s what we’re looking at.”

This article first appeared in Coast Guard Outlook: 2012 Summer Edition.