Nor’easter

Offshore wind opponents act locally

Energized by social media and publicity over winter whale strandings, opponents of offshore wind projects pushed one New Jersey town to literally pull the plug on Ørsted’s Ocean Wind 1 plan.

The Ocean Wind 1 export cable would come ashore on the barrier island at Ocean City, N.J., go under the back bay and connect to the grid through an electrical substation at Beesley’s Point in Upper Township on the mainland. The connection survives from one of New Jersey’s last coal-fired power plants, the defunct 447-megawatt B.L. England generating station.

Upper Township officials laid out a redevelopment plan for the Beesley’s Point neighborhood, envisioning a waterfront district, potentially with a hotel and marina, on the Great Egg Harbor River. To facilitate the plan, town officials, meeting Feb. 27, proposed moving the substation – Ørsted’s preferred connection to the regional power grid –and faced a standing-room-only crowd of opponents.

“Ocean Wind is clearly labeled on the plan,” said Roseanne Serowartka of Ocean City. “I do understand the people here who want jobs, who want that redevelopment, but not at that cost. Will the people who come to that hotel want to go to a beach with industrialization?”

That future industrial vista had clearly been at the forefront of objections coming out of the beachfront towns. New York State energy planners, who were pounded early on by local political pressure from Long Island homeowners over visual impacts, pressed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to keep wind energy areas at least 17 miles off those beaches to reduce visual objections.

“From Cape May to Manasquan, this shoreline will be forever changed,” said Chris Placitella of the group Save Long Beach Island, during a Feb. 11 public meeting in Brigantine, N.J. Both beach communities would look out toward the planned Atlantic Shores turbine field, a few miles north of the Ocean Wind 1 array.

The Atlantic Shores project would erect “375 Eiffel towers” that will be seen from beaches and the back bays along the Jersey Shore, said Placitella.

But opponents received new political momentum with news media coverage of whale strandings on Mid-Atlantic beaches, which they contend could be caused by survey work on offshore wind projects. Marine mammal experts and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration roundly reject those claims, but the story line has gained traction on conservative news media and with Republican elected officials.

The narrative is being promoted by Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, and U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., whose southern New Jersey constituents in beach towns would see the offshore turbines on clear days. Van Drew promised to launch a series of Congressional hearings into how federal agencies review wind power plans, and to write legislation to block the projects.

A 2021 New Jersey state law, signed by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, affirmed that state utility regulators can override local objections to cable routes. That’s frustrated Ocean City officials who oppose the project and the cable route under their resort town.

Across the bay from Ocean City, Ocean Wind opponents viewed the Upper Township deliberations as one more chance to slow the project. Upper Township Mayor Jay Newman tried to keep the sometimes-raucous proceedings on track, as one objector after another spoke out, pressuring the fivemember Township Committee to delay approval for moving the substation.

BY KIRK MOORE, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Contributing Editor Kirk Moore was a reporter for the Asbury Park Press for over 30 years before joining WorkBoat in 2015. He has also been an editor for WorkBoat’s sister publication, National Fisherman, for over 25 years.

“It will align you with the political goals of two persons: Gov. Murphy and President Biden,” warned Michael Dean, a Middletown, N.J., activist who opposes offshore wind. “You’re the only ones to put your political careers on the line … you will be linked.”

Tom Jones of the group Defend Brigantine Beach suggested Upper Township could get “a multimillion-dollar payment from Ørsted” for the substation plan.

With the interest from conservative national media, offshore wind has taken on a markedly partisan cast in New Jersey. The Murphy administration is heavily committed to the Ocean Wind and Atlantic Shores projects and hopes that its New Jersey Wind Port at the mouth of the Delaware River will become a future regional hub for Mid-Atlantic projects.

In turn, environmental groups that support offshore wind are pointing to opponents’ connections to conservative think tanks and legal foundations supported by fossil fuel interests that are backing court challenges to offshore wind plans.

The Protect Our Coast group that promoted the Upper Township protest links online donors to the American Coalition for Ocean Protection, a project of the libertarian Caesar Rodney Institute in Delaware, with a goal of raising $500,000 toward achieving “a permanent exclusion zone 33 miles off the entire Eastern Seaboard of the United States and to ensure any area offered for lease meets all the requirements of federal law.”

In the end, the Upper Township Committee narrowly voted 3-2 in favor of allowing the substation move – perhaps a signal of how local political battles may still ambush New Jersey’s offshore wind ambitions.

BY TIM AKPINAR