The Atlantic Shores offshore wind project would build up to 200 turbines, rated at a maximum 1,510 megawatts, off Long Beach Island, N.J. BOEM graphic.
By Kirk Moore, Ntional Fisherman Mid-Atlanic News
Local groups opposing New Jersey offshore wind projects hoped this week’s public meetings on the Atlantic Shores development would be a platform for voicing their strenuous objections.
But the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management held the first session Wednesday evening in a highway Holiday Inn hotel in Manahawkin, N.J., in the style of an informal informational session, rather than a formal public hearing on its draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) on Atlantic Shores.
Dozens of visitors, many of them seaside residents from nearby Long Beach Island, made a circuit of poster presentations. Presentations on how turbines will be visible from the beach – and the project’s impact on marine mammals – attracted the most attention.
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Some visitors went toe-to-toe debating with BOEM staffers and agency contractors about the DEIS findings. Others, who had hoped for publicly making their cases before an audience, were dismissive of the proceedings.
“Typically BOEM. Totally tone-deaf,” said Greg DiDomenico, a fisheries management specialist with Lund’s Fisheries in Cape May, N.J.
“It’s supposed to be all about dialogue,” said Cynthia Zipf, executive director of the Clean Ocean Action environmental group, which has been critical of BOEM’s planning for large wind energy developments in the New York Bight.
On arrival visitors were directed to a reception desk where they could sign up to present formal comments on the DEIS.
“The goal of these meetings is to help attendees provide written comments for the record,” according to email notifications from BOEM. “Comments can be provided by meeting with a court reporter at the meeting, by submitting comments to www.regulations.gov or by sending written comments to BOEM.”
BOEM released the draft environmental impact statement May 15 and is taking public comments for 45 days ending July 3. Four public meetings – the Wednesday session in Manahawkin, another Thursday at the Atlantic City Convention Center and online sessions June 26 and June 28 – will inform the final EIS, the agency says.
The two-phase project could build around 200 wind turbines off Long Beach Island, Brigantine an Atlantic City, an array with a nameplate capacity for generating up to 2,800 megawatts. It’s a 50/50 joint venture between Shell New Energies US LLC and EDF-RE Offshore Development, LLC, a subsidiary of EDF Renewables North America.
Export cables carrying energy from the project would come ashore at landfall sites in Atlantic City, and another about 60 miles north in Monmouth County.
Passions have run high among anti- and pro-wind power groups, since whale strandings on New Jersey beaches last winter that project opponents tied to survey work on project sites.
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