2014, RPS, Lynn and Inner Dowsing Offshore Wind Farms, Year 3 Post-Construction Environmental Monitoring

Description

The Lynn and Inner Dowsing (LID) offshore wind farms are comprised of 27 turbines at Lynn and 27 turbines at Inner Dowsing, and are located between 5 km to 8.5 km off the Lincolnshire coast. Construction of the wind farms commenced in 2007 and the wind farms were fully operational by March 2009.
This annual report, consisting of a Summary Report and Appendices, presents the results of the third and final year of post-construction environmental monitoring at the LID sites, and integrates the results of all previous monitoring to date. The overall purpose of this Summary Report is to fulfil the requirements of the FEPA Licences / Deemed Marine Licences (Lynn Licence 31792/10/1; Inner Dowsing Licence 31814/10/2; and drill arisings FEPA Licence 33553/07/0), which cover the offshore and near shore elements of these projects.
The LID monitoring programme covers a 10 year period, with some pre-construction surveys commencing in 2002, and the final post-construction survey taking place in 2012. The pre-construction surveys took place between 2002 and 2005, with during-construction surveys being carried out between 2007 and 2008, and the post-construction surveys taking place between 2009 and 2012. Eleven main physical and biological environmental parameters have been monitored during this monitoring programme, including suspended sediment concentrations, currents, beach profiles, subsea noise, fish communities, marine mammals, seabed morphology, ornithology, benthic ecology, archaeology, and drill arisings.