We believe the board is ready to steamroll the resort no matter what
Ocean City is continuing its fight against having transmission lines for the Ocean Wind 1 wind farm run through the island.
It looks more and more like the resort is still tilting at the giant windmills about as effectively as Don Quixote, but it’s not for lack of trying.
In May, New Jersey Board of Public Utilities Commissioner Joseph L. Fiordaliso, speaking at a public hearing, said city officials declined to comment on the diversion of Green Acres land on the island to allow for part of the transmission line’s route between the wind farm 15 miles off the coast and the former B.L. England site in Beesleys Point, Upper Township.
While technically true because city officials didn’t actually “speak” at the hearing, that was misleading.
The city had responded, via a letter from city solicitor Dorothy McCrosson, strenuously opposing using the Green Acres land. That letter was received by the BPU and entered into the record. Suzanne Hornick, of Protect Our Coast NJ (protectourcoastnj.com), challenged Fiordaliso and read part of the letter into the record. Ocean City Council President Bobby Barr, who was alerted to the hearing and tuned in, attested at a May City Council meeting that Fiordaliso was indeed making it seem like the resort had no official comment on the issue.
That is another step that revealed the BPU is not going to be an impartial arbiter.
The clearest sign came nearly a year ago when the state Legislature stomped all over Ocean City’s rights to decide what goes into the rights of way on the island. Knowing there was significant opposition from public officials to the wind farm, the Legislature quickly enacted a law, signed by Gov. Phil Murphy, that put specific decisions – such as those involving transmission lines for wind farms – into the hands of the BPU and out of the city’s jurisdiction.
It was clearly meant to prevent Ocean City from being the cog in the wheel that stopped Ocean Wind 1 from becoming a reality.
That law means the state board gets to decide if Ocean Wind 1 gets to put its transmission cables under the dunes at 35th Street and then bury them in the city streets (and on Green Acres land).
To be blunt, the Legislature and governor acted out of financial motives – they see an economic windfall. While they provide lip service about the benefits of wind power, they spend more time talking about jobs – construction jobs, maintenance jobs, jobs at the monopile facility being built on the Delaware Bay side of south Jersey, a facility that, not surprisingly, isn’t waiting to hear if the wind farms will get final approval.
On Friday, McCrosson was back at it on behalf of the city during the latest BPU hearing, this time speaking about the city’s opposition to the Green Acres portion and challenging the law that took the rights of way decision out of the city’s hands.
This time, at least, the BPU can’t claim the resort is a passive bystander to the plan for Ocean Wind 1, which is in the process of seeking state and federal approvals to bring up to 99 massive turbines to the plot on the ocean off the coast of Cape May and Atlantic counties. There also is an Ocean Wind 2 in the planning stages along with other proposed wind farms along the Jersey shore.
As we have noted in the past, we are not opponents of wind energy or the proposed wind farm. We believe renewable energy must be a part of the future for New Jersey, the nation and the world. We are, however, waiting to see the analyses of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement released two weeks ago by the Board of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).
What happens with that will go a long way toward deciding if Ocean Wind 1 – and other wind farms off the coast – will happen.
We asked to get more comment about the impact statement from officials for Ocean Wind 1, which is a joint venture of Danish energy company Ørsted and PSEG. We got turned down.
As they pointed out – quite fairly – the statement is some 1,400 pages and it will take time for the companies involved to go through it.
That impact – on sea life, including endangered North Atlantic right whales, commercial and recreational fishing, and the overall construction and operation of these massive off-shore facilities with a shelf life of up to 25 years – will determine whether we and many others can support this project.
We like the idea it can provide renewable energy for up to a half-million homes and businesses in New Jersey, but will the cost be too high? That is not just to what happens in the ocean, but here on land, including the hotly debated views about the view – what exactly will this look like off the coast and will it hurt the economies of the Jersey shore communities?
We don’t know the answers to those questions. We do know that entities such as the BPU appear to have their minds made up, which makes the entire process look biased.