BARNEGAT LIGHT — More than 50 leaders representing 10 environmental organizations and thousands of members held a meeting Jan. 27 in Barnegat Light to discuss offshore wind projects.
Many in attendance expressed alarm at last week’s decision by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) to award two new wind projects.
According to a news release from Protect Our Coast NJ, a grassroots organization formed in Ocean City, with a leveled cost of $138.53 per megawatt hour for one of the new contracts and $165.14 per MWh for the other, the price is more than four times that of other forms of electricity generation (e.g., natural gas, nuclear) and New Jersey utility ratepayers and taxpayers likely will face higher charges in the coming years.
“These latest contracts provide more evidence that the harms and costs of offshore wind industrialization are limitless,” said Mike Dean, a New Jersey-based ocean advocate, according to the release. “All New Jersey ratepayers will bear the full egregious costs for these projects in exchange for zero environmental benefits and irreparable harm to our coastal ecosystem.”
Leadership from all of the organizations had an opportunity to share ideas and strategies, plan and collaborate.
Apostolos Gerasoulis, president of Save the East Coast, said “it was a great first meeting of all the grassroots organizations. This meeting united us to fight the industrialization of our oceans as one.”
According to the release, written by POCNJ spokesman Robin Shaffer, there was broad support among those in attendance for small businesses — including commercial and recreational fishermen.
“Offshore wind will decimate the commercial fishing industry as well as the recreational and for-hire sector,” the release stated, quoting Rose Willis of Fishermen’s Dock Cooperative. “The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management documents the damage to come, particularly in the New York Bight (the waters off the Long Island and New Jersey coasts). BOEM placed these lease sites in the most lucrative, historical fishing grounds, destroying a healthy, natural, sustainable resource. The fishing industry is the cultural fabric of our coastal communities. The impact to our coastal economies will be catastrophic. The livelihoods of thousands will be lost.”
The attendees included experts in the fields of acoustics, jurisprudence, marine biology, construction, business, energy, fisheries and more.
There was extensive discussion about the habitat destruction caused by large scale industrial wind installations in the ocean, according to the release. With scientific research closely correlating the construction activities of wind energy companies and what has come to be known as an “unusual mortality event” for myriad cetacean species — including the endangered northern right whale — there was a consensus to continue exert pressure on public officials in New Jersey as well as the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to do their jobs in protecting marine mammals under the Marine Mammal Protection and Endangered Species Acts, the release stated.
On Jan. 29, a northern right whale calf washed ashore in Martha’s Vineyard, a few miles from an active offshore wind construction zone. According to the Atlantic Shores OSW harassment authorization currently under consideration, NOAA estimates that there are only 368 northern right whales in the world — only 367 now — according to the release.
“It was such an impressive gathering of conscientious, talented people who only want to preserve the ocean as it is, and the treasure that is the New Jersey shore for generations to come,” Shaffer stated.