OCEAN CITY — Activists who rallied at Mark Soifer Park in Ocean City and then took their signs to the walkway along the causeway said it was more than a protest against the offshore wind turbine farms planned off the coast.
“We’re not just here to wave the signs and make noise,” island resident Doug Crawford said. “It’s to educate the arrivers to the seashore. They need to know their seashore is in grave danger of being destroyed or heavily impaired.”
Crawford and other activists gathered at 9:30 a.m. Saturday and listened to an off-the-cuff speech by U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who talked about efforts to fight wind farms including Ocean Wind 1, which is planning as many as 98 massive wind turbines 15 miles off the coast of Atlantic and Cape May counties.
If Ørsted, the Danish company proposing the project, receives final federal and state approvals this summer as expected, work could begin as early as this fall on land-based elements. Transmission cables would be run beneath the beach and streets of Ocean City leading to Upper Township, where they would link with the power grid in Beesleys Point.
But that is only one of multiple proposed wind farms, including Ocean Wind 2 and Atlantic Shores North and South, that could put hundreds of turbines along the coast of New Jersey.
“There is no group sponsoring this,” Crawford said of the rally. “We’re all a team of concerned citizens. The main reason we’re here today is to bring awareness to the terrible aspects the offshore wind turbines are presenting. We really want to hold it off, study it and likely stop it.”
Others who gathered and spent hours along the causeway holding signs offered multiple reasons why they are against the wind energy plans for New Jersey that proposes bringing enough offshore turbines to generate 30 gigawatts of energy by 2030. Ocean Wind 1 would provide about 1,100 megawatts of power.
Asked why she was at the rally, Kathleen Harper of Dennis Township, who was wearing a shark headpiece, said, “To save the whales. I was born in Marmora but grew up on the 34th Street bridge. The ocean is my life. I am worried about all these whales washing up and the more I learn about wind turbines and how dangerous they are for the ecosystem of the ocean, the more upset that I get.
“We need to stop this. This is not good, green energy,” she said.
“I am here today because I am against the whales and the dolphins and the mammals dying in our oceans,” Stephanie Tuthill of Ocean City said. “But I’m also here because it’s ‘we the people’ who are supposed to be telling our government how we want our country and our land to be used by us, the people. And I’m here to make sure we’re following our Constitution. We’re getting our constitutional rights taken away. I’m all about ‘we the people.’
“Part of it is to save the whales,” Jacqui Delario of Margate said about why she turned out for the protest. “I want to stop the wind farms, period, even without the whales, because there is nothing green about them. They’re going to be expensive for us and I think it’s going to be a national security issue. This is a foreign government and it’s going to have control over our energy. I can’t see why this isn’t treason. And like Stephanie, we the people should be telling our government what we want. This shouldn’t be shoved down our throat.”
Dan Ciarlariello, who identified himself as a power industry contractor, said he has worked all over the world on turbines and at the former B.L. England Generating Station in Beesleys Point. He has owned a home in Ocean City for more than 30 years.
“I know inside and outside how the industry actually works,” he said. “What they’re trying to do now is not feasible. It’s just a big money grab. A lot of people have been paid off and it’s not right. Our kids are going to suffer the most. They’re going to ruin the ocean and in 25 years the (turbines) will be put away in a landfill.”
“We need to make people aware of what’s going on. It’s not a good thing. The biggest thing is education. Make your own informed decision. Then you can do what you want to do. Get a good understanding of what it’s all about,” he said.
“At the end of the day,” he said, the wind turbines “are not reliable power.”
He said the rally was intended to get people to know what is being planned offshore.
“People are not even aware of what’s going on out here,” he said.
Bill Price and his wife Joanne, of Margate, had their signs ready, reading “Stop killing whales and dolphins” and “Save our shore: no wind turbines.”
“Ocean City has a population of about 15,000 people in the winter and 140,000 in the summer,” Bill Price said. “Cape May County has less than 100,000 in the winter and 700,000 people come here in the summer. This will destroy tourism in this state.
“Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent in this state on tourism. The biggest draw in our state are the beaches. People come here for the beaches. If they have to look out there at hundreds and hundreds of windmills a thousand feet high spinning their blades out there, hear the noise from it 24 hours a day, see the lights at night disrupting their view, especially the people on the frontier (beach front) with all their million-dollar mansions, you think they’re going to like this?”
Price believes there are more whales and dolphins that have been harmed that haven’t yet washed up on shore.
He questioned why Gov. Phil Murphy is supporting projects in southern New Jersey.
“He’s in north Jersey. When he retires in a couple of years he can go back to his villa, wherever it is, and forget all of us … but the people in south Jersey have had quite enough, thank you very much.”
Price’s wife, Joanne, agreed with her husband and the others who weighed in. She said it was great to have such a big turnout for the event on Memorial Day weekend.
“Tourism is our life,” her husband added. “If you take that away or ruin it in some way, where are you? Do you want to cripple the state? I sent Gov. Murphy three emails that said the same thing: do you want to go down as the most hated and despised governor in the history of the state, then you go ahead.”
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff