OCEAN CITY — Protect Our Coast NJ believes that in addition to having no impact on climate change, offshore wind farms such as Ocean Wind 1 pose a danger to marine mammals, in particular endangered North Atlantic right whales.
Protect Our Coast NJ has gotten more than 500,000 signatures on a change.org petition to halt all offshore wind activity along the Jersey shore. Although they took that petition to Trenton weeks ago, the group is now aiming for 1 million signatures to send to Gov. Phil Murphy and President Joe Biden.
When the group started the petition, it was responding to seven whale deaths along the shore. That number increased to 16 and a number of dolphins died as well.
Suzanne Hornick of Ocean City, president of the grassroots group, said the main reason to oppose the power-generating wind farm projects, including Ocean Wind 1 that would erect 98 massive wind turbines 15 miles off Cape May and Atlantic counties, is that they will not lessen climate change.
“That’s what we have been saying all along,” Hornick said. “If you read the COP (Construction and Operation Plan) for all these projects, especially for Ocean Wind 1, they basically say they will increase our use of fossil fuels, increase our carbon emissions and will pollute the ocean on an ongoing basis. It’s not just with oils and microplastics and fiberglass and all this other stuff, but also all this exploding and pile-driving and digging that is going to churn up the bottom of the ocean … for the first 10 years of construction.”
Offshore wind “is not green, it’s not clean and they know it,” Hornick said. “This is climate injustice for all of us. It’s going to do absolutely nothing but further contribute to the destruction of the Earth.”
While she asserts a direct relationship between geophysical surveying work being done for wind farms off the coast and whale deaths, something federal agencies deny, Hornick said the proposals and environmental impact statements for the projects acknowledge what they consider acceptable amounts of harassment and deaths of marine mammals, including endangered whales.
Unusual Mortality Event
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) declared a “humpback whale unusual mortality event along the Atlantic Coast” in April 2017, and reported elevated deaths between 2016 and 2023. During that period there were 191 humpback whale strandings, including 28 in New Jersey and 36 in New York. NOAA did not link the whale deaths to survey work being done for the wind farms and attributed a substantial number to ship strikes or entanglements (often with fishing gear).
In a Q&A on its website (NOAA.gov), the agency said, “At this point, there is no evidence to support speculation that noise resulting from wind development-related site characterization surveys could potentially cause mortality of whales, and no specific links between recent large whale mortalities and currently ongoing surveys.”
Answering its own question about authorization, NOAA said, “NOAA Fisheries has not authorized — or proposed to authorize — mortality or serious injury of whales for any wind-related action. Offshore wind developers have not applied for, and NOAA Fisheries has not approved, authorization to kill any marine mammals incidental to any offshore wind activities.”
Incidental Take
Authorizations
NOAA said the taking (killing) of marine mammals is prohibited under the Marine Mammal Protection Act “with certain exceptions. Provided certain findings are made, NOAA Fisheries may issue incidental take authorizations allowing the unintentional “take” of marine mammals incidental to specified activities, including construction projects, scientific research projects, oil and gas development and military exercises.”
Hornick said NOAA has issued incidental take authorizations (ITA) and incidental harassment authorizations (IHA) since 2016. “Take means kill,” she said. “Harassment means everything but kill, basically.”
“These authorizations are listed on the NOAA website,” Hornick said. “There are permits for approximately 1,000 right whales to be harassed or killed and there are only 343 right whales left in the world. That ought to tell you something.”
She added the government “is willing to force the extinction of an entire species for this project. Why? When we know it’s not green, it’s not clean, it will do nothing for climate change.”
Clean Ocean Action reports the National Marine Fisheries Service issued incidental harassment authorizations to multiple companies planning wind farms along the East Coast “which allow harming a total of 63,820 mammals” and five more permits are pending that would allow harm to another 90,000 mammals, according to its website, cleanoceanaction.org.
“While the cause of the grim record of recent (whale) deaths is unknown, it’s reasonable to suspect these offshore wind activities may be involved,” the group said (See related story).
“NOAA continues to say there’s no evidence the surveys for the turbines are killing the whales, but I disagree,” Hornick said.
Although the government attributed the increasing whale deaths, including the recent spate, at least in part to increasing ship traffic, she said her group plotted the number of ships from December through March and found a 20 percent decrease in ship traffic.
“The unique mortality events, as they call it, began in 2016, but from December though March we had 16 whales wash up in New Jersey and a few in southern N.Y. That’s not only unusual, it’s completely unprecedented,” Hornick said.
The only thing that is different, she said, is the geophysical seismic testing and sea floor mapping, that includes rapid-fire pulsing that travels long distances in the ocean and harms mammals.
“It’s blowing out their eardrums, and a deaf whale is a dead whale,” Hornick said. “What happens with a lot of whales, when they’re permanently or temporarily deafened, they rise to the surface in their panic. Especially right whales. If they can’t sense the world around them, they are going to get hit by ships. Was it the ship strike that killed them or because we blew out their ear drums and they panicked?
“The government is saying they are ship strikes, but I don’t believe that is actually the case because whales have been navigating around our ships for hundreds of years. They know when ships are near and they stay away.”
More than whales
One issue that makes Hornick and others furious is the legislation hastily written, passed and signed by the governor last year that took home rule away from municipalities and gave it to the state Board of Public Utilities when it came to approval of rights of way for projects specifically including transmission lines for wind farms. It came about after Ocean City officials had voiced their opposition to cables from Ocean Wind 1 running through the island on their way along Roosevelt Boulevard to Beesleys Point in Upper Township, where they would connect to the power grid.
That legislation allowed Danish company Ørsted to seek and get approval from the BPU for the right of way and taking of Green Acres land on the island, bypassing Ocean City and Cape May County, which previously would have control over that.
“It was absolutely un-American and unconscionable for Gov. Murphy to take away the citizens of New Jersey’s right to home rule for his plan when it doesn’t benefit us to begin with,” Hornick said.
“There is so much wrong with this. They’re going to run EMF-emitting cables across the island and they’re not going to tell the people laying on the 35th Street beach that they’re being exposed,” she said, adding state agencies would check to see if the EMF emitted was in line with acceptable limits once they are installed.
“In what world is there any allowable limit to put near my family? I will move. My family has owned this corner since 1942. I will sell,” Hornick said of their Ocean City property.
“Moreover we’re giving away our coastline, our national security and our food chain to a foreign country and foreign companies. What happens when Ørsted realizes this is a a money pit and backs out … and China or Russia comes in and buys it? Then we have an unfriendly country controlling our coastline, our power grid, our national security and our food supply.”
She added the state and federal governments are “pushing this through despite really valid arguments. More and more people are realizing the truth of it and want it stopped, but they’re pushing it through without even having a final environmental impact statement even completed.”
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is expected to issue its final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) this summer, according to Ørsted, and a Construction and Operation Plan for Ocean Wind 1 could be approved a month later, leading to land-based construction for the project to begin as early as this fall. (See story in the May 3 edition of the Sentinel or find it online at ocnjsentinel.com.)
“Everything is being rubber stamped whether the people like it or not. That doesn’t make sense,” Hornick said. “Why would our government approve something if we don’t even know what the final impact will be?”
The official stance of Protect Our Coast NJ is it needs “everybody’s help. We are going to take this to court as are all the other groups. We believe several of the things that Gov. Murphy as well as our federal government did are not legal and we intend to bring that up through legal action.”
To learn more about the group, visit protectourcoastnj.com. Ørsted’s company website for the project is oceanwindeone.com.
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff