Protesters gathered in the nation’s capital Wednesday to protest the ratification of President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory over President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
CAPE MAY, NJ — A South Jersey man is among the protesters who have been arrested for storming the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, according to police records.
Leonard Guthrie, of Cape May, is charged with unlawful entry, the U.S. Capitol police said in a press statement Thursday. Authorities did not release his age.
The Capitol police reported 10 arrests for unlawful entry, and four people charged with assaulting police or firearms charges.
Wednesday’s mayhem overwhelmed Capitol Police, who evacuated members of Congress as violence escalated, and a California woman was shot to death. Three other deaths were reported around the Capitol grounds. D.C.’s police chief said one woman and two men suffered fatal medical emergencies, but did not elaborate.
On Thursday, the FBI asked for tips and digital media from the rioting and violence that can to lead agents to the D.C. rioters. The agency said anyone who saw unlawful violent actions is asked to submit their information, photos or videos at fbi.gov/USCapitol. Witnesses also can call -800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324) to report tips.
New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm will also be among the first in the world to be powered by the biggest and most powerful turbines ever built, the project’s developer said.
Ocean Wind, a planned farm about 15 miles off Atlantic City, is due to start operating in 2024, using as many as 99 Haliade-X turbines — giant machines that will tower 853 feet (260 meters) above the ocean’s surface, using blades that are 351 feet (107 meters) long, and can each generate enough electricity to power 16,000 homes.
The technology, built by GE, has a working prototype near the Port of Rotterdam in The Netherlands, but it hasn’t yet been commercially deployed. The turbines are also scheduled to be used for the planned Skipjack wind farm — much smaller than the New Jersey project — off the coast of Maryland, that is expected to start operating by the end of 2023.
GE says each of the turbines, each with a 12-megawatt (MW) capacity, can generate emissions-free electricity that equates to taking 10,000 cars off the road annually.
Reducing costs, environmental impact
Building bigger turbines helps offshore wind developers to cut their costs and install fewer of the machines. “The industry trend is to use larger offshore turbines to reduce cost and environmental and visual impacts,” said Gabriel Martinez, a spokesman for the Danish company Ørsted, which is developing several wind farms off the U.S. East Coast, including Ocean Wind.
The project is designed to generate 1.1 gigawatts (GW), or about one-seventh of New Jersey’s 7.5 GW goal for total offshore wind power by 2035, as set by Gov. Phil Murphy. Murphy has said he wants New Jersey to achieve 100% clean energy by 2050, and about 18% of it would come from offshore wind if the 7.5 GW target is hit. That would be enough to power almost all (94%) of the state’s homes, according to the Board of Public Utilities.
Underscoring the importance of offshore wind in the overall clean-energy goal, Murphy has also announced the construction of a state-owned wind port where turbine components would be made and assembled, serving the growing wind industry off New Jersey and throughout the East Coast. In December, Murphy also highlighted a new privately owned $250 million factory at Paulsboro for construction of turbine towers, or “monopiles.”
The U.S. industry’s growth is being underpinned by the commitment of seven East Coast states to buy offshore wind power. Collectively, the states have agreed to buy 24 GW of offshore power, or about three times New Jersey’s goal, by 2035, according to a study by the University of Delaware✎ EditSign (UD) in 2019. New Jersey’s goal is the second-largest after New York, which has committed to buying 9 GW. Just one East Coast wind farm, a small project off Rhode Island, is currently operating, generating 30 MW.
Despite the states’ support, operators like Ørsted are investing billions of dollars in the industry, and so want to start getting revenue by producing power as soon as possible, said Willett Kempton, a UD professor who oversaw the study.
‘A race to turn on the power’
“They’ve all got tens of billions of dollars in each of these projects, and that’s just burning a hole in your payments every month,” Kempton said. “Until you’ve got all the paperwork and the engineering done and you throw the switch and you are online, you’ve just got money going down the toilet. So they are all in a race to turn on the power.”
He argued that the rush to recoup investment is leading operators to take a chance with new technology like the Haliade-X rather than waiting to see if it is commercially and technically successful over a long period, as the industry has done in the past.
“If you talk to people who have been building wind farms for 20 years, they will say, ‘Don’t use a new turbine; you want a turbine that has been in another 20 wind farms already because that one is not going to have any problems,’” Kempton said.
Kempton, an advocate for offshore wind, said it’s not clear that the operators using the giant turbines are confident in the technology’s success but are pushing ahead anyway for commercial reasons.
“I don’t think they are confident,” he said. “They would be going against 20 years of experience but it is so much lower cost that they are willing to take that risk.”
New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm will also be among the first in the world to be powered by the biggest and most powerful turbines ever built, the project’s developer said.
Ocean Wind, a planned farm about 15 miles off Atlantic City, is due to start operating in 2024, using as many as 99 Haliade-X turbines — giant machines that will tower 853 feet (260 meters) above the ocean’s surface, using blades that are 351 feet (107 meters) long, and can each generate enough electricity to power 16,000 homes.
The technology, built by GE, has a working prototype near the Port of Rotterdam in The Netherlands, but it hasn’t yet been commercially deployed. The turbines are also scheduled to be used for the planned Skipjack wind farm — much smaller than the New Jersey project — off the coast of Maryland, that is expected to start operating by the end of 2023.
GE says each of the turbines, each with a 12-megawatt (MW) capacity, can generate emissions-free electricity that equates to taking 10,000 cars off the road annually.
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Holtec International last month received $147.5 million — $116 million of which will come from the U.S. Department of Energy — to complete research and development work on a modern nuclear reactor that could be built at the site of the former Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in the Forked River section of Lacey Township, New Jersey.
Holtec owns that facility and oversaw its shutdown in 2018.
The Camden company’s interest in building an SMR-160 reactor, which would be a nationwide demonstration project, was first reported Friday by an engineering industry website.
“As part of our application to the Department of Energy for its advanced reactor demonstration program, we expressed interest in possibly locating an SMR-160 small modular reactor at the Oyster Creek decommissioning site in the future,” company spokesperson Joe Delmar said in an email Tuesday. “This concept is only preliminary and something we would likely discuss with Lacey Township and the community if plans to locate (the reactor) at Oyster Creek evolve.”
Delmar said Holtec is “actively engaged with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission” about the project, but has not yet formally applied to build the reactor.
Holtec calls the SMR-160 “a versatile, safe, and economical small modular reactor,” one in which all key components, including cooling water, are sealed within containment facilities, and that can quickly be shut down during an emergency. It uses no pumps or valves.
The proposed reactor would power about 160,000 homes, compared to the 600,000 that were powered by Oyster Creek.
Lacey officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday, but they have in the past strongly supported the Oyster Creek plant and the jobs and economic activity it generated in town.
New nuclear plant in N.J. could be built at site of one that’s being shut downJeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club and a longtime opponent of the Oyster Creek plant, called the proposal “a threat to health and safety.”
“Things are going from bad to worse,” he said. “What was supposed to be the cleanup and ending of the Oyster Creek nuclear plant is now being looked at for another nuclear power plant. The whole point of closing and decommissioning this site was to get rid of the oldest and probably most dangerous nuclear plant. Putting all of that nuclear material in one area that is vulnerable to climate impacts like sea-level rise is a disaster waiting to happen.”
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Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who once promised President Donald Trump his “undying support,” voted Wednesday night and Thursday morning to overturn the election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania in an attempt to prevent Joe Biden from becoming president.
Van Drew, R-2nd Dist., was one of 121 House Republicans challenging the results in a state that Biden won Nov. 3, the first Democrat to carry Arizona since 1996. The challenge was rejected, 303-121, after the Senate dismissed it by 93-6.
He also was one of 138 Republicans who supported the Pennsylvania challenge, even as the state’s GOP senator, Patrick Toomey, opposed it. That challenge, too, was rejected, 92-7, in the Senate, and 282-138 in the House.
Van Drew did not respond to requests for comment. He did not speak during either floor debate.
He told Fox News last month that the states acted unlawfully in changing election rules.
“Constitutionally, when you change the system and the way you are voting, you are supposed to have a meeting of the legislature,” Van Drew said at the time.
New Jersey’s other Republican House member, Chris Smith, voted against both challenges.
“Nullifying the electors of any state requires proof that electors were not ‘lawfully certified’ according to state laws,” said Smith, R-4th Dist., citing then-Attorney General William Barr’s comments that last month that “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
The votes were delayed to late in the evening and overnight as the Capitol was locked down and the Senate and House recessed when a mob of pro-Trump protesters stormed the building. They had come from a rally where the president first continued to claim without evidence that he had been re-elected and the election was stolen from him.
A majority of House Republicans, led by GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, continued to back the president. But most Republican senators did not.
“We witnessed today the damage that can result when men in power and responsibility refuse to acknowledge the truth,” Toomey said on the Senate floor. “We saw bloodshed because the demagogue chose to spread falsehoods and sow distrust of his own fellow Americans. Let’s not abet such deception.”
Van Drew also was one of the House Republicans who signed onto a lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the election and re-elect Trump. The court dismissed the effort.
In what could be interpreted as an attempt to stoke the flames of a Capitol mob which has begun to disperse, President Trump sent a tweet at around 6 p.m. in which he reiterated the false claim that the election was stolen and encouraged his supporters to “remember this day” going forward.
“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long,” he tweeted. “Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”
Police officers in riot gear line up in front of the Capitol after it was overrun by a violent mob.Credit…Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
A woman who was shot inside the Capitol building after it was overrun by a pro-Trump mob has died, Washington D.C. police officials said on Wednesday.
The woman has not been identified and no information has been released about who may have shot her. Chief Robert J. Contee of the Metropolitan Police Department said earlier that she was a “civilian” and that his officers were leading the investigation.
The woman was pronounced dead at a local hospital, Dustin Sternbeck, a spokesman for the police department, said in an email. Mr. Sternbeck said he did not yet know who shot her or have any other details.
A video posted to Twitter earlier on Wednesday appeared to show a shooting in the Capitol.
The woman in the video seemed to climb onto a small ledge next to a doorway inside the building immediately before a single loud bang is heard. The woman, draped in a flag, fell to the ground at the top of a stairwell. A man with a helmet and a military-style rifle stood next to her after she fell, and shouts of “police” could be heard as a man in a suit approached the woman and crouched next to her.
“Where’s she hit?” people yelled as blood streamed around her mouth.
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U.S. Capitol Police hold protesters at gun-point near the House Chamber inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
By Tom Davis, Patch staff
NEW JERSEY – As protesters supporting President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday afternoon, several members of the New Jersey’s congressional delegation were among those sending out messages confirming their safety from the shelter of undisclosed locations around the Hill.
Joined by ex-Gov. Chris Christie and current Gov. Phil Murphy, they also decried the violence and rioting that took place at the Capitol and forced congressional members to seek safety as they were confirming the electoral count for President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
Here are the reactions of congressional representatives:
Congressman Tom Malinowski is safe and locked down inside Capital Hill as protestors forced their way into the chambers of Congress, according to his spokeswoman Amanda Osborne.
“No one has the right to commit acts of violence just because they disagree with the outcome of an election,” said Rep. Frank Pallone from the Capitol.
Gottheimer said he went to the Capitol today to certify the results of the election. “We will finish what we came here to do,” he said.
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