The Obama administration must juggle competing interests surrounding offshore wind farms proposed for the East Coast as it decides how the nation's ocean waters can be used, officials said last week.

Wind power was among several concerns Obama's Ocean Policy Task Force heard during a public meeting in Providence, its only stop on the wind-rich East Coast. The meeting came a week after the task force recommended creating a National Ocean Council to coordinate and hold accountable a hodgepodge of federal agencies responsible for conservation and marine planning.

The task force's next job is figuring out what uses the country should allow in its waters and where. Three states - Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Maine - are already creating their own management plans, in part to decide where offshore wind turbines could be placed.

"Offshore of the northeastern states is the most wind-rich area of the country," said Melville Cote Jr., manager of the ocean and coastal protection unit of the New England region of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Speakers who addressed the task force repeatedly asked the group to keep local concerns in mind when considering ocean uses.

No offshore wind farms have been constructed in the United States, but projects have been proposed in waters off states including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Delaware and New Jersey.