Will Atlantic City Survive Offshore Wind?
Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind plans to make landfall with high-voltage cables next to one of the last historic structures from the golden era of Atlantic City. That, however, is just the beginning.
Atlantic City is on the verge of being undermined — in both senses of the word.
Like an underground Pac-Man, Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind is planning to plow through subterranean sections of the legendary seaside resort for the purpose of installing large “extra” high-voltage cables.
The tunneling will power underneath “protected” Green Acres areas (including sections of the beach and famous boardwalk). It will create ongoing noise, vibration, and debris affecting apartment buildings, historic structures, private homes, casino hotels such as the Tropicana, and schools.
If all goes well during installation, Atlantic City will be left with a network of underground cables emitting high-intensity magnetic fields for decades with unknown health consequences to residents.
And if things don’t go well -- let’s just say the results could be disastrous.
Landing at the Ritz
Built in 1921 and originally known as the Ritz Carlton, this posh boardwalk hotel hosted the rich, the famous, and the infamous. Now a condominium with over 300 residences, the Ritz is one of the few remaining grand buildings from the era when Atlantic City was known as the “World’s Playground.”
It sits adjacent to what’s now called the “Atlantic landfall site,” meaning the Ritz will practically be at ground zero where high-voltage export cables reach land, bringing power from offshore substations generated by over 100 gigantic offshore wind turbines.
The company said that location was chosen in part to “landfall on Atlantic Shores-owned property,” referring to several small lots purchased for over $28 million in June 2022, according to tax records. The location is currently a parking area right off the boardwalk next to the Ritz and behind a restaurant.
As for putting the structural integrity of the Ritz, a 104-year-old historic building, in jeopardy, that was apparently not considered.
Atlantic Shores (a joint venture between French corporation EDF Renewables and Shell New Energies) printouts meant for distribution to the public describe the method of tunneling cables underground as horizontal directional drilling (HDD) -- a “minimally invasive, trenchless installation technique…used globally.”
What they don’t talk about is that HDD – a complex way to install underground cables and conduits using a “steerable drilling rig” -- comes with numerous challenges and potential perils, especially true in areas with ancient infrastructure and sandy soils, such as Atlantic City.
In October of 2021, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Science Advisory Board was asked if HDD poses a threat to the groundwaters of the state.
The experts found that: “Based on this review, HDD represents a potential risk to groundwater as well as to surface water and sensitive ecological receptors. The current science regarding impacts from HDD indicates fugitive drilling mud and fluids, referred to as “Inadvertent Returns” (IR) can include contaminants or otherwise become a source of pollution in groundwater, surface water/sediments, and/or ecologically sensitive areas.”
And while vertical well drilling is subject to state regulations, there are “no regulatory requirements pertaining to oversight of HDD,” the report states.
Inadvertent returns (IR), as mentioned above, happen when the drilling slurry (typically bentonite and water), used to “stabilize the walls of the borehole” and remove drill cuttings, “seeps up through fractures and other conduits in overlying soils or rock.” These bentonite slurries can cause environmental impacts that are “difficult to mitigate effectively,” according to the NJDEP report.
Loose, sandy soils are more prone to increase the likelihood of IR. Sandy soil also tends to “collapse and erode when subjected to the force of drilling fluids,” according to an industry website.
An example of such a collapse was the attempt by New Jersey Natural Gas (NJNG) to lay a new gas line in Ocean County from the end of Dock Road in West Creek to Long Beach Island using HDD.
As reported by the SandPaper of Long Beach Island in March 2019, during installation “the drill head sank into the ground and dropped below the borehole.”
Asking NJNG if anything is still stuck at that location, a spokesman said, “In 2022, New Jersey Natural Gas ceased work on the LBI project and demobilized all construction activities at the site, including the removal of the drill head.”
Additional questions about any equipment that might remain trapped and if the project was ever completed were answered with, “There are no further updates at this time.”
“Failed and abandoned HDD projects,” the NJDEP notes, “present a greater risk for contaminant transport, since there are currently no requirements in New Jersey for proper decommissioning of abandoned HDD boreholes.”
The agency also warns that “the non-aqueous components of drilling muds left in abandoned boreholes will tend to separate over time, resulting in a decrease in the sealing properties of the mud, thereby increasing the ability of the abandoned borehole to provide a conduit for contaminant transport between different, previously separated geologic units.”
The potentially catastrophic cross-bore
As described by GPRS, a company that specializes in underground “utility locating,” a cross-bore is “an accidental intersection of an existing underground utility line by a second pipeline installed through trenchless technology” (such as horizontal directional drilling where the operator does not visibly see where the lines or cables are being installed but uses other types of “guidance systems”).
Unless you’re in the utility or construction business the term cross-bore may not be something familiar, despite the fact there are estimated to be over one million of these undetected “potential disasters” in the U.S. according to GPRS quoting from the Cross Bore Safety Association.
Cross bores in gas and sewer lines have been responsible for multiple home explosions, two examples being these in Carrollton, Texas, and Middletown, Ohio.
Plowing underground in Atlantic City could be an iffy proposition at best considering the age and unknowns of its infrastructure. According to registered architect Brooks Garrison in a report he prepared outlining his concerns with the proposed cable route, “The city was incorporated in 1854, and below-ground infrastructure dating back to the 1890s is still in use today.
“The streets are so congested under the surface by ancient infrastructure that old trolley and rail lines still run below the pavement along Fairmount and Atlantic Avenues,” Garrison stated, noting that Atlantic City’s residential electric service is all above ground.
“Extra” high voltage
Once installed the plan is for the cables (up to six, including “underground transition vaults,” according to Atlantic Shores documentation) to run through parts of Atlantic City’s fourth and fifth wards, and encroach on three more “Green Acres” areas, the first being the beach (Green Acres is a program created in 1961 to “preserve” and “protect” open space). The Green Acres areas were appropriated via a “diversion” request approved by the city and state, which offered up some marshland areas as a swap.
The cables will ultimately land at the Cardiff substation in Egg Harbor Township, a route of approximately 14 miles.
Despite the disruption and damage that the cable installation may cause, many Atlantic City residents are more concerned about potential health effects from ongoing exposure to magnetic fields.
“(Atlantic Shores) propose(s) running over a dozen extra-high voltage cables handling tens of thousands of amperes under three schools, several ballfields and playgrounds, and 2000+ residences,” Garrison said in his report. “This massive amount of electrical current running under (the) Chelsea (neighborhood) will be three times the annual output of the now-shuttered Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station,” he stated.
Garrison calls the situation a “30-year experiment on humans of low frequency, high-intensity magnetic field exposure.”
How the incoming Trump administration and the next four years will impact the future of offshore wind remains to be seen. As of now, Atlantic Shores has completed its lengthy permitting process overseen by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Whether a “day one” executive order has the power to stop it is unknown.
On December 18, at a capacity crowd Atlantic City Council meeting, Atlantic Shores was given the okay to “move electricity across the city via underground cables” in a vote of 5-4 as reported in The Press of Atlantic City.
With the exception of four council members, “city officials seem unconcerned about the estimated 10,000 residents, businesses, schools, and religious institutions affected by these extra-high-voltage cables,” commented realtor Sherri Lilienfeld, a resident of a nearby shore community, and communications director for Defend Our Beaches New Jersey.
“This route is a terrible idea,” Lilienfeld said, “with irreversible consequences for infrastructure and human life."
Excellent article. Atlantic City Council needs to answer why they are in favor of raising electricity rates further for their residents.
You did a fantastic job in covering these details. WAKE UP ATLANTIC CITY!! You need to fight this on every front. Every other shore community is fighting this except Atlantic City because utility costs will skyrocket and will create so much harm to our oceans and environment. There is nothing green about these projects except the money the developers are making. We ALL will pay for this, not just the residents of the shore communities.