Tuesday morning’s peaceful rally was mostly symbolic in fight against Ocean Wind 1
UPDATE: After this story was filed Tuesday morning for the Sentinel’s print edition, six people were arrested at the protest Tuesday afternoon by the Ocean City Police Department for refusing to leave the work zone where a contractor was beginning to dig test wells for the Ocean Wind 1 wind farm project.
The six people were each charged with 2C:33-1b disorderly conduct – failure to disperse, a disorderly persons offense; and 2C:33-7B(2) obstruction of highways of public pathways, a petty disorderly persons offense.
Those arrested and charged Tuesday afternoon were Denise Philipp, 53, of Doylestown, Pa.; Karen Corsi, 66, of Woodbury; Shani Kovacevic, 44, of Ocean View; Bonna Neang-Weinstein, 58, of Rydal, Pa.; Robert Weinstein, 73 of Rydal, Pa.; and Lee Darby-Rinaldi, 59, of Absecon.
According to Ocean City Public Information Officer Doug Bergen, police gave the protesters four warnings to vacate the road and asked for their cooperation. The first was at approximately 8:30 a.m. and the last was just after noon.
“They also showed them an area adjacent to the work zone that was approximately 10 feet from the work area and where they could have protested legally,” Bergen said. “The individuals chose not to vacate the work zone and forced officers to arrest them to provide a safe area for the workers.”
“This is how democracy works,” Mayor Jay Gillian said. “I wish we would not have had to arrest anybody, but I understand their passion. I hope that our state and federal officials are paying attention. We’re about to spend billions of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars on a project with way too many unknowns.”
Editor’s note: This is the story that appeared in the Sentinel’s print edition.
OCEAN CITY — Nearly 50 people gathered just after 8 a.m. Tuesday in a peaceful protest that stopped contractors from starting test borings on 35th Street, the initial phase of land-based work for the Ocean Wind 1 wind farm project.
Protesters stood in the middle of 35th Street between Asbury and West avenues and on the sidewalk right where work was to begin. The protesters knew it would be only a symbolic measure. While they did stop work temporarily, they only planned to be there for an hour or so. The work on the site is expected to last two weeks.
Ocean City resident Suzanne Hornick said the protest was intended to slow the project.
“My plan is to impede the work for maybe an hour and then go home,” she said. “This is a peaceful protest. We’re not looking to have anybody get in trouble or hurt or arrested. We just want to get the press to recognize that the people here don’t want this.
“We want everyone to know Ørsted is not welcome here because our governor took away our rights and our land and gave away our money to a foreign company,” she said. “We have to be out here to defend our own streets.”
Hornick said they weren’t placing blame on the contractors on site to do the work.
“We already apologized in advance to the workers because we know this is not about them and we’re not trying to offend them,” she said.
A contractor who gave only his first name as Matt asked the protesters to move off the sidewalk so his crew could work, but they would not. Hornick suggested the workers go get a cup of coffee and come back in an hour.
“We’re trying to set up a work area right now,” Matt said. “The protesters are here. We want to make sure all of our work is done in a safe manner, so we can’t start work until we set up a safe work area.”
He added the workers planned to wait out the protesters “because we have two weeks’ worth of work, so if we need to sit by and wait and let this pass through, we can do that.” He declined to name the contractor doing the test borings for Ørsted.
The protest was not organized by any group, but was a grass-roots event, explained Hornick, formerly head of Protect Our Coast New Jersey.
“This is just citizens of New Jersey saying it’s not OK to take away our rights, to take away our land, to take away our money, to take away our streets,” she said. “We don’t want it.”
To ensure the protest was peaceful, Hornick said she called and left a message for Ocean City Police Chief Jay Prettyman to ask for advice, but he didn’t return the call.
“I would have liked it if he would have helped us and gave the assistance and advice I was asking for,” she said, “but he did not respond to me. He had four days. I think that sucks because I’m a taxpayer, but I don’t want people to think that we’re just” causing any problems for the police.
Hornick did chat with New Jersey State Police who were on site, but were not interfering with the protest. State Police are used for traffic safety around construction sites.
The Ocean Wind 1 project, by the Danish company Ørsted, is expected to place up to 98 massive wind turbines 15 miles off the coast of Atlantic and Cape May counties to generate 1,100 megawatts of electricity.
Although citizens up and down the South Jersey coast are fighting the project, Ocean City has been ground zero of citizen protests because the transmission cables from the wind farm would come ashore here. The buried cables would run beneath the 35th Street beach and in the right of way beneath 35th Street out to Roosevelt Boulevard on their way to connect to the power grid at a substation in Beesleys Point in Upper Township.
When talking about the rights taken away by Gov. Phil Murphy, Hornick was referring to legislation quickly passed and signed by the governor that gave power over granting rights of way to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, removing them from local governments that historically controlled them.
That came about because Ocean City officials were vocal in their opposition to the wind farm project and state leaders, namely then-state Senate President Steve Sweeney, did not want any local governments holding up the project.
Ocean City and Cape May County have fought in court to stop the work on city- and county-owned property in Ocean City, but so far have lost.
Lynn Petrulio, who lives on 57th Street in Ocean City, said she was at the protest “because this is just crazy. The governor did not look into this. He took away our home rule and there’s nothing good about these turbines, not one thing.”
Asked what she hoped to accomplish Tuesday morning, she said, “Probably just to stall them. I know they’re not going to stop just because we’re here, but if we can stall them for an hour or two that will be worth it.”
She hoped protesters would take photos and post them on social media to raise awareness of the project and the fight against it.
“A lot of people are still not aware of what’s coming,” Petrulio said.
Roseanne Serowatka of Ocean City was among the protesters as well.
“This is the juncture where they’re putting the electrified cables in, which will carry EMF (electromagnetic field) and go to our beach about three blocks from here and kind of chop it up,” she said.
“We’re concerned about the environmental aspects of that because we have had close to 70 whales come up on the beaches and last count hundreds of dolphins,” Serowatka said, “so this is something that has to stop.”
Protesters held a large banner that read, “Destroying the ocean,” others carried signs opposing the project, and offered loud chants including, “Vote them out.”
Ørsted officials recently announced that actual commissioning on the Ocean Wind 1 project was being delayed until 2026 because of factors including supply chain issues and rising interest rates. However, they said the work on land would begin this week and that offshore work would start in 2024 with some power generation beginning at some point in late 2025.
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff