The Newsmagazine of Long Beach Island and Southern Ocean County

By Gina G. Scala | on August 10, 2022

Even as the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has extended the public comment period on the draft environmental impact statement for New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm, a Long Beach Island grassroots organization is questioning what’s left for the public to comment on as it relates to the project.

“The major decisions regarding the project, except the formality of its approval, have already been made outside the public view – e.g., the location and power output,” Bob Stern, president of Save Long Beach Island Inc., said Sunday evening.

Ocean Wind 1 is a joint venture between Ørsted and Public Service Enterprise Group. It is expected to be operational in 2024 and would produce enough electricity to power more than 500,000 homes. Engineering, procurement and construction contracts have already been awarded for the project.

As proposed, the scope of the project includes up to 98 wind turbine generators, up to three offshore high voltage alternating current substations, inter-array cables linking the individual turbines to the offshore substations, substation interconnector cables linking the substations to each other, offshore export cables, an onshore export cable system, two onshore substations, and connections to the existing electrical grid in New Jersey.

The wind turbine generators, offshore substation and substation interconnector cables are to be located in New Jersey’s Outer Continental Shelf, roughly 13 nautical miles (15 statute miles) southeast of Atlantic City. The offshore export cables would be buried below the seabed in the Outer Continental Shelf and state of New Jersey-owned submerged lands. The onshore export cables, substations and grid connections would be located in Ocean and Cape May counties.

Earlier this month, following three public hearings on its draft environmental impact statement for the project, BOEM extended the comment period by 15 days, giving the public until 11:59 p.m. Aug. 23 to have their say. It was previously slated for Aug. 8.

“The process is an insult to the public, and it’s time to take a hard look at it and the disparate treatment being applied to New Jersey,” Stern said.

Offshore wind farms planned off the Jersey Shore are less than 10 miles from the shoreline, while similar projects off New York will not be closer than 17.2 miles, to protect coastal communities there from the visible impact, he added. In Massachusetts, 15 miles offshore has been set as the minimum distance a wind farm can be built, Stern said.

“So, who’s minding the Jersey Shore?” he asked.

Stern, a former director of environmental compliance for the U.S. Department of Energy, said the industrial scale of the ocean development will have major and lasting economic impacts (including associated job losses) related to fisheries, shore rentals, local property values, tourism and electricity costs.

“There was no programmatic environmental impact statement done to secure public input before selecting these offshore wind areas for development,” he said. “To bypass potential local opposition, the state Legislature passed a law prohibiting local zoning ordinances from interfering with these projects. Despite numerous requests, state officials thus far have refused to meet with local mayors and citizens groups to hear concerns.”

In the meantime, BOEM noted the decision to extend the public comment period on Ocean Wind 1’s draft environmental impact statement was based, in part, on a technical correction to Ocean Wind 1’s construction and operations plan and the DEIS.

Ocean Wind LLC provided BOEM, an arm of the Department of the Interior, with an updated inshore export cable route option associated with the Bay Parkway landfall on July 7, according to the technical correction, which can be found on BOEM’s draft environmental impact statement web page for the project.

Under the update, the Bay Parkway inshore cable route continues for approximately 3,000 feet farther southwest, following the same route as the second Bay Parkway, Marina and Lighthouse Drive route options prior to turning west toward land.

While roughly 1,000 feet of that route deviates from what was already analyzed in the draft environmental impact statement, the entire amended route is in the inshore study area, according to the update. As a result, BOEM provided updated information regarding the Oyster Creek inshore export cable route options.

“The Ocean Wind 1 project design envelope includes inshore export cable route options and landfall locations to reach the onshore substation at Oyster Creek,” according to the update. “These options allow for route refinement and optimization.”

All the proposed inshore options are debated collectively as part of the proposed action, the technical correction says. The company could seek permits for and construct any of the depicted inshore routes.

“The analysis impacts resulting from cable emplacement and maintenance are not anticipated to change as a result of the updated Bay Parkway Inshore Export Cable Route Option,” according to the technical correction.

Still, to the extent that the updated route could result in changes to the proposed action footprint or associated studies, the updated information and any related activities would be addressed, as necessary, in the final environmental impact statement.

“The project is pursuing vessel surveys for cable routes all the way up the New Jersey coast into New York, so there’s no guarantee that the power generated from these turbines close to and causing adverse impacts on New Jersey will even go to New Jersey,” Stern said.

Yet, last June, the N.J. Board of Public Utilities agreed to use money from electric ratepayers to subsidize Ocean Wind 1 and Atlantic Shores, a proposed project that would place up to 200 Vesta-236 gearbox turbines standing 853 to 1,046 feet above sea level 9 to 20 miles offshore, he said. The estimated ratepayer money to cover the cost for the first 20 years of the Atlantic Shores project, according to Stern, is $7.3 billion.

“If we include the other projects necessary to reach the state’s 2035 goal, the new cost could approach $30 billion,” he said. “Who’s watching out for the New Jersey ratepayer and businesses?”

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