The state Legislature stepped in to stop Ocean City officials from being the disruptive force blocking wind power from arriving off the coast of New Jersey.
In a pair of bills that buzzed through the state Senate and Assembly in two weeks, the legislation takes away Ocean City’s ability to deny Ørsted under-the-street and under-the-beach rights of way for its transmission cables from a wind farm off the coast to connect to the southern New Jersey power grid at the former B.L. England generating plant in Beesleys Point.
Although the legislation could affect other communities as well, it was aimed directly at Ocean City, where some members of City Council have been attacking Ørsted’s Ocean Wind project that plans up to 99 electricity-generating wind turbines off the coast of Atlantic and Cape May counties.
Ørsted wants to connect the power transmission lines for its planned wind farm to the grid at B.L. England and at the former Oyster Creek nuclear plant in Ocean County. Another wind farm, Atlantic Shores, is also in the works, proposed for another plot in the ocean just north of Ocean Wind.
Starting last December, The Sentinel has been reporting on the increasing opposition to the wind farm rising from some members of City Council. They used the occasion of a late-2020 presentation by a representative of Ørsted, the Danish company behind Ocean Wind, to start attacking the project. Since we first reported it, those attacks have continued unabated and have increased.
A majority of the fears about the wind farm have been based on what is perceived as the threat to the tourism economy at the shore and a hit on property values by having a massive wind farm 15 miles off the coast, but visible because the turbines are on towers 853 feet tall. There are other fears about wind farms as well, including impacts on sea life, the recreational fishing and commercial fishing industries, among others.
Some fears are grounded in legitimate concerns that we hope to see addressed in the environmental review, but others are based on speculation.
Ocean City Council members and other citizens and groups have every right to oppose massive wind farms proposed off the coast. We also know this world needs clean energy sources to wean its addiction to fossil fuels contributing to global warming, an issue of special importance to coastal communities like this here at the Jersey shore.
For those who believe Ørsted should be given carte blanche to do what it wants because it has shifted its business focus to clean energy and building wind farms, forgive us for not viewing any multi-billion-dollar company as any type of savior. The two-year environmental impact review of this project is critical and we want it to address all concerns that are raised.
However, we can’t help but wonder if some of the political hyperbole coming from our local council members and some of their other actions in an underlying power struggle helped prompt this legislation, which is expected to be signed by Gov. Phil Murphy. (Murphy is a big proponent of clean energy and wind farms in particular. The Ocean Wind project plans to generate 1,100 megawatts of power. Murphy is calling for at least 7,500 megawatts of wind power off the coast.)
The gnashing of teeth at last week’s City Council meeting was expected, coming hours after the Senate and Assembly passed the bills, with some members decrying the Legislature’s move ending “home rule” over utility rights of way as the end of democracy. That’s overblown. It isn’t the end of democracy or home rule. This bill was tightly tailored to give the state Board of Public Utilities (BPU) jurisdiction in local communities trying to block wind farms from using their rights of way.
We don’t believe council members overstepped in bringing up concerns about impacts on the tourism economy and real estate values, but we’re sure they raised ires by stepping firmly into the political arena with their attacks on the governor and Trenton over the issue of wind farms.
For a supposedly nonpartisan body, some members of council have been overtly political in their attacks. The votes in the Senate and Assembly on the bills was almost exclusively along party lines, with Republicans (like the council members) voting no and Democrats voting yes.
What’s more, revealed at last week’s council meeting, is that individual members of council have been meeting with Ørsted officials without informing some of their own colleagues or the administration. They vehemently denied they were “negotiating” with Ørsted – something statutorily reserved for the mayor under Ocean City’s form of government – but if they talked to Ørsted officials the way they have spoken up at council meetings, how would Ørsted have taken these meetings? Some, such as Michael DeVlieger, have said for months he would do everything he can to stop the wind farm.
It doesn’t surprise us that Senate President Steve Sweeney would propose this legislation because a massive economic development project to support wind farms is already under construction in his district even before the wind farms have been approved.
Critical council members said the bills give more power to a foreign entity, but the legislation was an all-American political move to stop one community from harming economic development in another.
This fight is far from over. Groups have fought wind farms in other parts of the country and City Council members alluded to finding other allies and means in their ongoing fight. Stay tuned.
