Moving fast in Legislature, it limits right of municipalities to control rights of way
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
OCEAN CITY – A new bill moving quickly through the New Jersey Legislature would take away leverage Ocean City has to hold up the Ocean Wind off-shore wind farm project.
That leverage is the ability to deny Ørsted the right to use public right-of-ways for its transmission lines to cross the island.
The bill “Authorizes certain offshore wind projects to construct power lines and obtain real property interests; grants BPU (Board of Public Utilities) authority to supersede certain local governmental powers upon petition from offshore wind project.” That is the synopsis of Assembly bill 5894 and Senate bill 3926.
Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney (D-Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem) and Sen. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex and Somerset) sponsored the legislation in the Senate. It was reported out of the Senate Environmental and Energy Committee June 15. The Senate approved the bill on a voice vote Monday, June 21.
Assemblymen John Burzichelli (D-Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem) and James J. Kennedy (D-Middlesex, Somerset and Union), sponsored their version of the bill. It was reported out of committee on June 16.
It may be up for a vote in the Senate as early as Thursday.
Although it would give the state Board of Public Utilities the right to supersede any local community’s authority anywhere in the state, it appears initially targeted at Ocean City, where opposition to Ocean Wind has been vocal. It has been led by First Ward Councilman Michael DeVlieger, who has railed against the project since late fall, lambasting the governor and Legislature and asserting the wind farm will harm the city’s tourism economy and real estate values. He has claimed it is a northern New Jersey idea foisted upon the southern part of the state. Other council members have joined him in opposition to the project.
The OC Flooding Committee also has opposed the wind farm, as has protectourcoastnj.com, a group of residents from multiple southern New Jersey communities who have banded together to fight the wind farm.
That the legislation comes from a senator and assemblyman in District 3 is no coincidence. The state is supporting the New Jersey Wind Port in Salem. The Wind Port is already under construction even though there has not been any final approval of wind-generating farms off the coast. It is billed as a green infrastructure project expected to create up to 1,500 jobs and generate $500 million in economic activity. The port is for the manufacture, staging and assembly of the components that go into wind turbines.
Burzichelli and Sweeney represent that area and are counting on the off-shore wind industry to boost economic development and create jobs there and across New Jersey.
Assemblyman Antwan McClellan, (R-Cape May, Atlantic, Cumberland), said Ocean City is definitely being targeted by this legislation, but the ramifications will be felt across the state.
McClellan, a former Ocean City councilman, voted against the bill in committee and said he will oppose it if it comes to the full Assembly.
He explained it takes power away from municipalities to make decisions and would allow entities such as Ørsted, backed by the BPU, to come in a pretty much do what they want without having municipalities weigh in. “That’s the reason I voted no,” he said.
Asked if the bill arose because some Ocean City officials raised objections to the project, McClellan said, “It 100 percent has to do with that.” He added that although it began with Ocean City, it now will affect all communities. “This now creates an issue with the rest of the state that no municipality would have any power” to impact the decisions, he said.
The bill didn’t come up in Monday’s voting sessions of the Senate and Assembly and as of Monday evening McClellan wasn’t sure if it would be on the Assembly’s agenda Thursday.
He said he would oppose the bill in a vote in the Assembly, but is concerned it will pass because Democrats have the majority. The Senate also has a majority of Democrats. “I noted my concern with chairman of the Appropriations Committee,” he said. “He was trying to say that wouldn’t be the case (affecting) Ocean City but looking at the language in the bill it is the case.”
“It’s really unfortunate,” McClellan added.
Phone and email requests for comment from Sweeney and Burzichelli weren’t returned before the Sentinel’s deadline.
The OC Flooding Committee is raising the alarm and asking Ocean City visitors and residents to contact state legislators immediately in opposition to the bill.
In a blast email sent Monday, Suzanne Hornick, chair of the OC Flooding Committee, wrote that “our N.J. legislators are trying to take away our right to determine what we do with our own community and we need your help to stop this!
“Please join in with us on a Twitter storm to express our opposition to bill 3926 in the N.J. Senate and bill 5894 in the N.J. Assembly proposing that the state can override decisions made by local municipalities about what they will or will not allow.”
Hornick cited concerns about the negative impacts of the wind farm.
“This is especially important because if we allow this precedent to be set and our rights to do what we choose to do with our own land as individual communities, what will you lose the right to do next? We, the coastal residents,” Hornick wrote, “should have the right to say what goes on our land and in our water just as all communities should be able to. Please help us stop this now!”
Gov. Phil Murphy, a huge proponent of wind energy, wants the state to produce up to 7,500 megawatts of clean wind energy by 2035 and to use only clean energy in the state by 2050.
Ocean City is one of the two communities along the southern New Jersey coast where transmission lines would come ashore from the massive project by Danish company Ørsted to put up to 99 wind turbines – each 853 feet tall – in the Atlantic Ocean starting 15 miles off the coast of Cape May and Atlantic counties. Ocean Wind is expected to generate 1,100 megawatts of power if approved.
One line is proposed to run beneath the beach and streets of Ocean City and then along Roosevelt Boulevard to Upper Township, where it would connect to the power grid at the defunct B.L. England generating plant in Beesleys Point.
The other transmission line is proposed to connect to the grid at the former Oyster Creek nuclear plant in Ocean County, going across Island Beach State Park.
In 2020 Ørsted had approached Ocean City government about obtaining right of way to bury its power cables beneath the beach and city streets, but the administration and council have never taken up any measure to that effect.
The company needed the support of the city to use the rights of ways because even though it is an electricity producer, it is not considered a utility, which is allowed to use the rights of way.
To that end, the eight-page bill concludes “Lastly, the bill provides that a qualified offshore wind project approved by the board is to be deemed an electric power generator for the purposes of section 10 of the ‘Municipal Land Use Law,’ P.L.1975, c.291 (C.40:55D-19).”
By qualifying the project that way, Ørsted would not need the city’s approval to run its transmission lines. That decision would be left to the state Board of Public Utilities.
As recently as the last City Council meeting in June, DeVlieger reiterated his plans to keep fighting the Ocean Wind project. A grassroots group, based in Ocean City but including members from other shore communities, also has risen up to fight the Ocean Wind project and another proposed wind farm just north called Atlantic Shores. That group has a website, protectourcoastnj.com.