Offshore wind impacts: Still hazy after all these years
New Jersey’s ‘Blue Ribbon Panel’ may be long gone, but its concerns linger on
Originally published in the SandPaper 10/11/23.
Back in the now seemingly distant but not-so-long-ago early 2000s, federal waters off New Jersey between Sandy Hook and Cape May were being eyed for the first time by private developers for the construction of “utility-scale” offshore turbines.
But what did we know about the impact such industrialization of the ocean would have on our coastal communities and treasured environmental resources? Not much, according to the Blue Ribbon Panel on Development of Wind Turbine Facilities in Coastal Waters convened in 2004 by then-Acting Governor Richard Codey.
The Garden State, the six-member panel of experts said in its final report, must recognize “the risks inherent in developing an untested technology. New Jersey can and must take precautions to ensure such development will not create unacceptable and irreversible harm to the state’s economic interests or wildlife and natural resources.”
At that time, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) documented its concerns as well, issuing a “briefing paper” listing the “potential conflicts” between offshore wind and various categories of “ocean uses and resources.” These included commercial fishing interests, “safe navigation,” naval and Coast Guard installations, aviation, Department of Defense concerns, tourism, the safety of birds and bats, “viewshed” (as in “the ocean represents one of the only remaining New Jersey viewsheds with few manmade structures”), and the protection of marine mammals, turtles, and other forms of aquatic life.
The Blue Ribbon Panel’s final report was issued in April of 2006. After 15 months of research and six public hearings it announced that offshore wind should be “explored” as “part of the solution” to both the energy crisis and global climate change; however, “too much remains unknown” to simply forge ahead.
Some of the answers, the panel decided, may be found through a “carefully monitored and tightly controlled (offshore wind) test project.”
Of course, things have changed since 2006. The turbines have more than doubled in size, and the number of acres leased out for the construction of hundreds of these mammoth structures along the Jersey shore has ballooned as well.
While the Blue Ribbon Panel has long since been disbanded (with even its official domain name discarded and put up for sale at $1.99), its trepidations remain outstanding.
Asking the NJDEP to comment on its own 2005 “briefing paper,” the agency replied with a variety of studies done since the Blue Ribbon Panel days. One, Ocean/Wind Power Ecological Baseline Studies, was conducted specifically to comply with the panel’s recommendations to fill data gaps regarding avian, marine life, and natural resources in the proposed project areas.
That resulting report, a robust series of documents reflecting 18 months of study utilizing dozens of researchers who made observations from land, sea, and air, and published in 2010 by the NJDEP, reads more like a chronicle of how offshore wind will create an environmental disaster.
From bats to birds that can be “disoriented and entrapped by lights at night,” (turbine lights are required by the FAA ), to operational noise and vibrations that “might have disruptive effects on the marine environment,” including fish and marine mammals, to the dangers of underwater noise from construction and the ultimate decommissioning of the projects to aquatic creatures, it’s clear the impacts, both short- and long-term, to our diverse biological resources will be substantial.
Perhaps some of the most disturbing findings in that report relate to several large whale species, including the North Atlantic right whale, which is fast approaching the tipping point of extinction. The researchers discovered that “the nearshore waters off New Jersey may provide important feeding and nursery habitat for these endangered species.”
The NJDEP also sent a summary of studies put out by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which were equally alarming. One paper, for example, covered “climatic events” called “microclimates” showing photos of areas of dense fog that have occurred at offshore wind farms in the North Sea. But not to worry, says BOEM, only “small-scale climatic shifts could occur offshore” in these parts -- perhaps some “localized changes in surface temperature, humidity, and windspeed downwind from active turbines,” as well as “localized redistribution of air masses.”
The general theme of every aspect of offshore wind development is to start building hundreds of turbines now, while scheduling scores of white papers assessing “potential impacts” later.
At this point, however, the Garden State doesn’t need another blue-ribbon panel. New Jerseyans are more than willing to take matters into their own hands.
From lawsuits filed by grass-roots groups to protests on beaches to outcries from commercial fishermen, it’s abundantly clear that offshore wind is not welcome here.
“Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson comes to mind. Big Corporations have no morals.
Linda Bonvie is covering wind power development better than any journalist in America. This is an issue that needs to be carefully considered. Instead, as she writes, the theme is to build now, study later. That approach rarely works. Thanks, Linda.