County Commission Director Desiderio, Ocean City Mayor Gillian host forum; Donohue gives status of project, expected impact
OCEAN CITY — The moderators took pains to stress they were not against wind and other renewable sources of energy, but they made it clear they wanted a delay, at minimum, in the Ocean Wind 1 project slated to place as many as 98 massive wind turbines 15 miles off the coast and run transmission cables through the island to connect to the power grid in Upper Township.
At the information session Wednesday evening, hundreds of audience members nearly filled the Ocean City Tabernacle auditorium, overwhelmingly and audibly against Ocean Wind 1, a project by Danish company Ørsted projected to be operational in 2024.
Ocean Wind 1 is one of multiple offshore wind projects stretching from New England to North Carolina. Ocean Wind 2 and Atlantic Shores are others planned directly off the coast of Cape May and Atlantic counties, with some turbines proposed closer than 15 miles.
The session was hosted by Leonard Desiderio, director of the Cape May County Board of Commissioners, and Ocean City Mayor Jay Gillian.
Michael Donohue, a lawyer and former Superior Court judge who represents the county on wind farm issues, provided an update of what is happening with the project, the negative effects they believe it will have on the economy and where the city and county are in litigation dealing with the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.
Gillian said their priority is to get the facts out about the project and urged the audience to listen. He said when doing a project of this magnitude, they have to get it right.
Desiderio said Ocean Wind 1 has been pushed through and rushed and they “should put the brakes on it” until the true effects are understood.
Donohue said there is a “very long list” of “legitimate concerns” with the project and how it will affect tourism, fisheries, marine mammals, electromagnetic fields, bird strikes, increased electricity bills, noise pollution, disruptions of currents and cold pool, sediment plumes and erosion, disruption of the food chain, mariner navigation concerns, an electrical grid that is not ready, hundreds of gallons of oils and fuels, no demonstrable climate benefit and dozens of critical “unknowns.”
He presented slides showing the scale of the monopiles that would hold the wind turbines, which would have blades reaching nearly as high as the Eiffel Tower, will be 43 feet in diameter at the seabed and penetrate 164 feet below.
Another showed how the amount of rare earth minerals needed for power generation through offshore wind is magnitudes greater than what’s needed for natural gas or coal power, and how mining for those minerals is rife with human rights abuses.
A slide quoted BOEM (the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) as saying it anticipates “no collective impact on global warming as a result of offshore wind projects … .”
Donohue referenced the substantial number of whale deaths along the New Jersey and New York coasts and how agencies (including the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, see related story) argue they don’t know what is causing the deaths, but “somehow we know it doesn’t have anything to do with wind projects.”
“That’s the point. We don’t know what we don’t know. It’s a concern,” Donohue said, noting in the past it was a rare occurrence when a whale washed ashore.
That is one reason why they are calling or a 90-day pause on geophysical survey work done offshore to map the ocean floor in preparation for the wind farm to see if that decreases the number of whale deaths.
“That is what elected officials have been asking for,” he said. “It’s not going to happen.”
Commercial fishing,
tourism industries
Donohue said a Rutgers University study shows wind farms will reduce clam fishery revenue. Reports cited Atlantic City-based fishing vessels could face 25 percent losses and that the cost of scallops and clams would rise.
The impact on tourism, he said, would be “stark.”
The statistics from Cape May County Tourism Director Diane F. Wieland are “kind of shocking,” Donohue said.
He said a survey showed 85 percent of visitors who come to the Jersey Cape would return even with the wind farm visible off the coast. Putting that in perspective, he said, that would still be a 15 percent reduction in visitors.
Erasing eight years of growth, a 15 percent drop would mean:
— A $993 million decrease in total visitor spending;
— 1.54 million few visitors;
— $414 million lost in lodging;
— $229.5 million lost in food and beverage;
— $189 lost in retail;
— $99.1 million lost in recreational spending; and
— $62 million lost in transportation.
On a personal note, Donohue talked about how tourism provides the menial jobs for young people like he had as a teen washing dishes. Those are the jobs that sustained them and that the adults now want to ensure the same for their children and grandchildren.
“This was our livelihood,” he said. “We all had these jobs.”
Loss of home rule
Donohue talked about the quickly-enacted law that took away home rule over controlling property rights of way.
In June 2021, a bill made it through the state Legislature in 10 days that transferred consent regarding utility projects such as wind farms from the municipality or county that owned the properties to the state. In the past, utilities wanting to use a city street or property applied to the municipality. (Ocean City officials’ vocal opposition to the Ocean Wind project was cited as a reason the Legislature quickly came up with the bill and moved it through to allow certain projects to bypass local officials, in this case Ocean City and Cape May County.)
Signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy, a proponent of offshore wind, the change allowed Ørsted to apply directly to the Board of Public Utilities for permission to use parcels of land in Ocean City to run transmission cables for the project. The BPU granted its approval.
Donohue said the decisions made for the 92,000 residents of Cape May County were taken from their elected commissioners and Ocean City officials and put in the hands of five BPU members appointed by the governor.
Although Ocean City and the county appealed, the BPU denied the arguments that Ørsted failed to comply with pre-action requirements, that the city and county were entitled to due process protections under the Eminent Domain Act, that discovery and cross-examination of Ørsted’s witnesses should be allowed and that the matter should be handled by an administrative law judge.
Donohue said they also argued that the BPU, acting as a quasi-judicial body functioning like a court or judge, had to be objective, but couldn’t be because it actively supports the wind farm project. (He drove that point home with a slide showing BPU Commission Chairman Joseph Fiordaliso wearing a wind turbine pin.)
He did cite one commissioner, Dianne Solomon, who voted against Ørsted, referring to her as a “profile in courage.”
He showed a recording of Solomon saying there was a need for the BPU to move swiftly, but because the petition challenging the ruling over the rights of way was the first of its kind and was a contentious matter, it deserved a more diligent review of the project.
That included whether Ørsted’s planned route for the cable, which comes from the wind farm, crosses the beach at 35th Street and runs out Roosevelt Boulevard to Beesleys Point, was the necessary route.
“We give Dianne Solomon a great deal of credit,” Donohue said.
He also noted how she was objecting to the fact that financial promises made by companies when they are bidding on wind farm projects are disappearing, that costs are increasing above what the BPU heard initially and that investment credits and capacity payments meant to offset the expense of the projects for taxpayers were being shifted over to benefit the companies doing the projects instead of taxpayers.
She said people are relying on the BPU to make “prudent decisions” on the impact of costs to New Jersey, but the projects are moving ahead without knowing many of the effects of the project.
Before Donohue turned the program over to the public to comment, he suggested people should follow the website capewindinfo.com to stay up to date on the project.
“We heard you loud and clear,” Desiderio said after a few dozen people spoke, nearly unanimous in their opposition to the wind farm. “We want you to know we have been working with our special counsel, Judge Donohue, and we need your help. You’ve heard it tonight. Those of you who are second home-owners and live in New Jersey, we need you to write to your legislators. You’ve heard where our legislators are. They are firmly with us here. We need you to write to your Congress people if you are from another state.
“This is something we have to do together. And working together we will achieve the extraordinary.”
“This shouldn’t be about politics,” Gillian said. “It’s about families, our children.”
He reiterated the evening was about getting people to work together by presenting facts.
– STORY and PHOTOS by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff