OCEAN CITY – Before Saturday’s three-and-a-half hour meeting about the Ocean Wind 1 project at the Ocean City Music Pier, critics and advocates for the proposed wind farm were outside, some protesting, others handing out materials in favor of wind energy farms off the coast.
The meeting inside the pier attracted some 200 people who had the chance to ask questions of representatives of Ørsted, the Danish company wanting to place at least two wind turbine farms off the coast of Cape May and Atlantic counties. (See stories, page A1.) The first project, Ocean Wind 1, would install up to 98 turbines, with blades reaching 900 feet above sea level, in the federal lease area selected off the coast. If approved by federal and state agencies – it is in a review process now expected to last into 2023 – Ørsted would have the turbines operational and generating 1,100 megawatts of power in 2024.
Most audience members inside the Music Pier used the opportunity to say they supported or opposed Ocean Wind 1. Outside, the same thing was going on before the meeting.
“My concern mores is the installation of these things. They’re going to have to dig huge troughs in the ocean floor to put them in. I’m worried about the scallops and all the fisheries down here. And our commercial fishing and the environment,” said Lee Evans of Cape May CourtHouse, who was holding a sign stating her opposition.
“I worry about the electric grid and the fact that (Gov.) Murphy is planning on getting rid of natural gas in New Jersey eventually. If he does that, there are so many people who use natural gas – I think 70 percent is the figure,” she said. “And it’s going to cost $20,000 plus to convert to electric heat pumps. How many people can afford that?”
“It’s a wonderful idea but it’s a pipe dream. It’s not realistic,” Evans added. “I grew up in Pennsylvania and my parents had a house in Long Beach Island and Jersey has always been my second home. We retired here in 2017 so I can sit on the beach and look at the horizon. The thought of looking at hundreds of wind turbines does not warm my soul. That’s a minor problem compared to the other problems.”
She said she also worried about the wind farms causing a species of whales to become extinct.
“We just love it here,” Evans said, “but we have to save our coastline.”
Tricia Conti said she was protesting outside the Music Pier because of the harm she believes will befall the endangered North Atlantic Right Whales.
She and her husband live in Upper Pittsgrove but have a house in Ocean City.
Conti said she was doing research into carbon sequestration and that killing off whales since the beginning of the last century has had long-lasting effects.
“Doing research I didn’t realize how important whales were to our environment and carbon sequestration,” Conti said. “If we hadn’t killed all the whales from 1900 to today there wouldn’t be climate change issues that we have today. This comes from all the research we’ve done.”
She is now worried about the North Atlantic Right Whale.
“There were 343 in the entire world and they go from Massachusetts down to Florida when they migrate and they migrate right through the path of the wind turbines,” Conti said.
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirms there are fewer than 400 right whales left alive.
Ocean City resident Susan Cox said her main reasons for opposing the wind farms is because they are inefficient, will ruin fishing and because they’re being forced upon residents.
“There is scientific data that they’re going to ruin our fishing and the coldpooling (areas of the ocean where certain fish thrive),” Cox said. “They’re going through our island and we’re not getting anything from it except the danger to our ecology.” Ørsted wants to run transmission lines from the wind farm to two locations, one in Ocean County and the other through Ocean City to Upper Township, to connect to the power grid at the former B.L. England site in Beesleys Point. It would put them in rights of way along city streets.
“We have a very specific ecology off of our shore and they’re not studying that,” Cox asserted. “They’re just ramming this stuff down our throat. They’re taking away our ability to refuse it by having the governor step in and take away home rule. That’s not governing; that’s communism.” The state Legislature quickly approved a law, signed by Murphy, that gives a state agency control over deciding the use of rights of way in communities for projects of this nature. Normally, communities control the use of rights of way.
“We can’t govern ourselves on this issue. It’s not fair. And we’re not getting anything,” Cox said. “The electricity is not going to be used here, it’s going to be upstate. And guess what. The people upstate don’t want them (wind farms). We’re the guinea pigs for this thing.”
Asked if she felt it is an uphill battle with the governor and Legislature supporting the wind farms, and going up against a multi-billion-dollar company, Cox said, “It’s a fight that we’re wiling to put ourselves out there for. We feel it is important. We love our island. We live here and want to continue living here.
“It’s not that we don’t want green energy; of course we do, but we’re not interested in the way they’re shoving it down our throats,” Cox said. “It’s not fair.”
Ocean City resident Suzanne Hornick seconded Cox’s thoughts about losing local control and criticized the fact groups were at the Music Pier to support the project.
“I don’t understand why we’re having groups that don’t live in Ocean City handing out literature that is pro-wind when this meeting was set up at the city’s request for the residents of Ocean City and the neighboring areas to talk to Ørsted,” Hornick said. “This group is not local; they should not be here. They have no actual stake in what’s going to make us collateral damage for no good reason.”
“Look at why our rights were usurped by Gov. Murphy,” she said. “Let’s talk about why we’re going forward with this when the environmental impact studies are not done. And the ones that were done, according to BOEM (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) are null and void because they were studies of turbines and technologies that we’re not using for this.”
Advocates for wind power
Patty Cronheim with the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters was manning a table with others for New Jersey Wind Works, a coalition of groups that are advocating for wind power.
Responding to Hornick’s criticism, she said they had a right to be there.
“We’re here today to get people engaged in offshore wind. We launched recently with many environmental partners the New Jersey Wind Works, which is an information campaign so the public can be engaged,” Cronheim said. They want to help the public find out more information so people “can ask the tough questions that need to be asked so we get offshore wind right.”
She fully supports Ocean Wind 1.
“I think Ocean Wind 1 is an important project. It’s the first project. It’s key that it sets the bar,” she said. “We are in the beginning stages of this proposal and there are a lot of questions Ørsted needs to answer. I am heartened that they have events like this so people can ask those questions.
“We want the whales protected, we want to make sure that the birds are protected, that there are good local union jobs and that those jobs are accessible to low-income and communities of color that have been most impacted by fossil fuels,” Cronheim said.
“I’m a Jersey shore girl,” she said when asked if she believed they belonged at the Music Pier for the event. “I was born and raised in New Jersey and these wind projects affect me as well. My home is a mile from the beach so I’ve got some skin in the game too. I do care.”
She added that anyone who lives in the Garden State should care about having cleaner air and cleaner energy.
“We know that 75 percent of the people in New Jersey support offshore wind because they know how important it is to fight climate change and prevent the worst aspects of it which are flooding and sea level rise that threatens our shores and our homes and our businesses here,” Cronheim said.
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff