A senior House Natural Resources Committee Democrat is asking the Biden administration to beef up tribal engagement as the White House advances offshore wind in the Pacific Ocean.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the Water, Wildlife and Fisheries Subcommittee, wrote a letter to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management last week asking the agency to add a senior-level position in California to oversee tribal participation in offshore wind planning, a nod to recent opposition from some Native American leaders in the state.
“This is vital to the offshore wind effort and is responsive to the federal government’s trust obligations to tribes,” Huffman wrote in the letter to BOEM Director Elizabeth Klein.
A strong proponent of the industry, Huffman represents a district that straddles the Northern California coast where the Biden administration in 2022 sold two of the first ever offshore wind leases in the Pacific.
