Abstract
The Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation (LEEDCo) has proposed the Icebreaker Wind project, a small, demonstration 6-turbine, 20.7-megawatt (MW) offshore wind energy facility eight to 10 miles (13 to 21 kilometers [km]) from the shore of Cleveland, Ohio. WEST has completed a review and summary of baseline data and other publicly available data on bird and bat use and other information of the Project’s environment for the purpose or evaluating the level of risk posed by the proposed project to birds and bats. The overall conclusion of this analysis is that the Project poses low risk of adverse impacts to birds and bats. This conclusion stems largely from two principal observations: 1) the Project is small in scale, consisting of six turbines; 2) the level of use of this area by birds and bats is low compared to bird and bat use of terrestrial or nearshore environments.