Speaker after speaker at Tabernacle cites reason after reason that wind farm off the coast will harm the Jersey shore and economy
OCEAN CITY — The opinions of the few dozen people who lined up to comment on Ocean Wind 1 Wednesday evening, March 15, at the Ocean City Tabernacle, were nearly unanimous: stop the wind turbine project off the coast of Cape May and Atlantic counties.
The first half of the information session hosted by Leonard Desiderio, director of the Cape May County Board of Commissioners, and Ocean City Mayor Jay Gillian was a presentation on the status of the project, ongoing legal wrangling and what local officials believe will be the detrimental effect of having 98 massive wind turbines situated 15 miles off the coast with transmission lines running through Ocean City on their way to connect to the power grid in Upper Township. (See related story.)
That part of the session was to present facts, Desiderio and Gillian emphasized.
The second half was the chance for audience members to share their opinions.
Rich Baehrle said he is an Ocean City High School graduate who took a lot of environmental courses at Stockton University. He said the wind farm would have a “devastating effect” on the area, including to birds, whales and the coastline.
“We have one time to stop this because if it continues we’ll be devastated,” he said.
“We’re going to destroy our area,” he said, for energy “that will get shipped out of here.”
He added it is a potential security risk “if somebody bombs” the wind turbines.
“What I ask for, for we the people, is to not have this happen at all …. What’s the benefit to the people of our counties? I say zero,” Baehrle said. “I challenge everyone to stand up and figure out what is the most effective thing to stop it now.
“It’s our coast. It’s our New Jersey,” he said to cheers from the audience, “and we need to stop it now.”
Former Ocean City councilman Michael DeVlieger, who led the opposition to the Ocean Wind project when he was in office, said even when project developer Ørsted first came before council a few years ago to make a presentation, the company couldn’t answer the questions he posed.
He said the project affects everyone who owns, rents, visits, fishes, eats a meal or has a business here. He said there is “causation” between the project and the dead whales that have been washing up on Jersey shore beaches.
Jack Dina of Sea Isle City said it would be better to invest in geothermal to save more energy than would be produced by the turbines, which he claimed would work only 20 percent of the time.
Seaville resident Bob DiIorio, who said his grandparents bought property in Sea Isle City, called Ørsted “an evil Danish monster” that wants to “ruin our ocean” and hurt the best place in the country to work, relax and enjoy life. Continuing the metaphor, he said “the monster’s deadly tentacles” (transmission cables) would come through the heart of Ocean City, “gutting the main boulevard to Upper Township, continuing north on Route 9” to the tract in Beesleys Point to connect to the power grid at a substation there.
“I does not matter what any of us believe,” he said. “In the end, folks, Upper Township Committee, our state and federal government, along with the blessing of the BPU (Board of Public Utilities), have already given Ørsted ultimate power and they have become the unstoppable mighty Kraken.”
Atlantic County resident Jim Akers described himself as an avid fisherman and said offshore wind power would be good for the environment, help slow climate change and a “huge boon” for South Jersey, creating thousands of high-paying jobs and diversity in the local economy.
Roseanne Serowatka of Ocean City said everyone in the room would like green energy “if it was really green” and were 70 percent efficient, but asserted it is only 40 to 45 percent efficient and the energy grid would still rely on fossil fuels.
“Everyone might be interested in it if was not outrageously expensive, so inefficient and didn’t damage our ocean and its inhabitants,” she said.
Serowatka said as a science education consultant in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, she knows what is being taught in the curriculum.
“They are taught everything is green,” she said. “And some of the people out there are pushing green and not all of it is good. They are idolizing the green energy gods.”
She noted people have been taken to beachside events sponsored by Ocean Wind. She called that “brainwashing” because they’re taught incorrect information about wind turbines.
Bill Mcguire of Ocean City said he recently retired from a career in the power generation industry and that there are “much, much better alternatives to these wind farms.”
He said there is a design for small modular nuclear reactors that would be suited for locations already approved for the power generation, including at the former B.L. England Generating Station site in Beesleys Point and at the other site for the Ocean Wind 1 transmission line hookup at the former Oyster Creek nuclear plant in Ocean County. “Why are we not using those sites?”
Mcguire said wind turbines don’t last, they’re not economical and “they’re a blight to the shoreline.”
Other speakers said there should be healthy skepticism on how they have been sold the “green scheme,” that Upper Township Committee members should be voted out for not opposing the wind farm, that they didn’t want to live by a transmission line, that America’s Greatest Family Resort is going to be destroyed by a tyrannical government, that the electromagnetic fields created by the transmission cables can harm people with pacemakers, that ratepayers will pick up the cost “if the wind farm falls into the sea,” that the officials doing the presentation should stop saying they’re not against wind projects, instead stating their clear opposition, and a fear about losing the simple pleasures of walks on the beach and bike rides on the boardwalk ruined by having to look at the wind turbines.
State Sen. Michael Testa took things in a decidedly political direction when he talked about the number of whales dying, call that unprecedented. Growing up, he said he could assume if someone had a “Save the Whales” bumper sticker they would be a Democrat.
“I have never seen this unprecedented number of whales washing ashore,” he said.
“I’d like to point out the utter hypocrisy of the left on this. And it is absolute hypocrisy,” he said, noting Mayor Gillian doesn’t want to make things political, “but that’s what I do.
“If this were one whale that had washed up on shore as a result of any type of sonar testing to pursue offshore drilling, I assure you, you would have the Sierra Club and Greenpeace surround the whale carcass, holding hands, tears streaming down their faces, singing ‘Kumbaya.’”
Testa said there was no harm in pausing the project.
“We only have one time to get this project either completely right or catastrophically wrong. And it appears to me that right now things are going catastrophically wrong,” he said.
“When you have this amount of marine life washing up on our shores, we should be taking a long pause and saying, ‘What is going on here?’ And yet I have a real problem with home rule being taken away, and a small amount of people deciding the fate of a great municipality like Ocean City.”
Thanking the organizers of the information session, Testa added, “Folks, this is transparency and government at its absolute best. You should be thankful for our Commissioner Director (Desiderio), thankful for all the attendees who represent their positions in government, and we should be thankful to the mayor of Ocean City.”
Desiderio told the audience the county commissioners planned more meetings on Ocean Wind in the future.
Former Superior Court Judge Michael Donohue, who is special counsel to the county on wind issues and led the meeting, told audience members to stay informed by visiting the website capewindinfo.com
– STORY and PHOTOS by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff