By Sunayana Prabhu
MIDDLETOWN – With neighboring Keansburg and Sandy Hook beaches reporting marine animal deaths recently, the governing body of Middletown Township has now joined several elected officials and activists across the state to ask for an immediate pause on federally authorized wind energy projects off the Jersey Shore.
The township committee unanimously passed a resolution supporting a federal and state moratorium on offshore wind energy projects along the New Jersey coastline at its March 6 meeting.
“In addition to protecting our local marine life and commercial fishing industry, the Township Committee and I want to ensure that the Bayshore and Gateway National Recreation Area at Sandy Hook are not impacted by the potential effects and visibility of these wind turbines,” Mayor Tony Perry said in a release dated March 7.
On Dec. 5, a dead infant whale washed up on a Keansburg beach; Feb. 18 three dolphins were found dead in the shallow waters of the bay off Sandy Hook.
Within a few weeks in February, the Marine Mammal Stranding Center (MMSC) reported two additional whale deaths on the region’s coastline – a humpback whale in Manasquan and a minke whale in Rockaway Beach, New York. That follows the deaths of seven other whales from South Jersey to New York in the last few months.
In the release, the Republican leadership in Middletown attributed the recent rise in whale deaths to an increase in offshore wind energy projects greenlit by President Joe Biden’s administration, a sentiment echoed by several area politicians.
U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-4), Assembly members Gerry Scharfenberger (R- 13) and Victoria Flynn (R- 13) and several mayors of adjoining Shore towns are among the New Jersey legislators demanding an immediate suspension of all offshore wind development activities until an investigation into the whale deaths is conducted.
State Democrats appear not to be calling for a halt to the offshore wind projects yet. Gov. Phil Murphy, on several occasions, has said pausing seafloor preparations was not necessary at this time.
Murphy cited a study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in a Jan. 13 statement to the Associated Press, which said NOAA could not attribute any of the whale deaths to offshore wind industrialization activities.
“(NOAA) have said (these types of whale deaths have) been happening at an increased rate since 2016, and that was long before there was any offshore wind activity,” said Murphy, who wants the state to achieve 100% clean energy by 2050.
He did note that it looked as if “some of these whales have been hit by vessels,” he said.
Marine scientists and NOAA authorities have categorized the whale deaths as an ongoing “unusual mortality event.” In a media teleconference Jan. 18, NOAA’s Benjamin Laws, deputy chief for the permits and conservation division, NOAA Fisheries Office of Protected Resources, told reporters that no whale deaths have been documented as a result of the equipment used to survey sea floors or because of noise from off-shore wind development.
Lauren Gaches, public affairs director for NOAA Fisheries, said the high whale death rates predate offshore wind developments.
Gaches noted that since January 2016, NOAA Fisheries has been monitoring an “unusual mortality event” for humpback whales with elevated strandings along the entire East Coast. There are currently 178 humpback whales included in the unusual mortality event. Partial or full necropsy examinations were conducted on approximately half of the whales. Of the whales examined, about 40% had evidence of human interaction, either by ship strike or entanglement.
But the nonprofit Clean Ocean Action (COA) is calling for a comprehensive, scientific, independent, peer-reviewed pilot study to understand the potential impacts of these projects in order to ensure the protection of marine life and the ocean at large. “The scale, scope, magnitude, and speed of the proposed 31 offshore wind power plants proposed in the region are unprecedented and reckless,” said Cindy Zipf, executive director of COA, in a release dated March 7.
During an interview Feb. 21 with The Two River Times about a Save the Whales rally, Zipf said COA has been working for over 40 years to protect the ocean and “has always been bipartisan. In fact, we work very hard to make it nonpartisan” when addressing issues concerning the ocean.
Zipf noted it is important to everyone that we have a healthy, vibrant ocean and “there hasn’t been enough information available from the government about what the real benefits of these wind power plants will be and what the costs are.”
There are currently nine offshore wind projects in development off the coast of New Jersey, including Orsted Offshore North America’s two projects – Ocean 1 and 2, around 13 miles off the coast of Atlantic City, in development since April 2022 – and the Empire Wind Project awarded by the state of New York Feb. 17, approximately 18 miles from the Gateway National Recreation Area at Sandy Hook.
Six additional companies with projects covering 488,000 marine acres in the waters of the New York Bight were auctioned for a total of $4.37 billion by the Bureau Of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). The six leased areas in the NY Bight could generate up to 7 gigawatts of offshore wind energy annually, enough to power nearly 2 million homes.
According to Middletown’s release, wind farms could also have a negative impact on the commercial fishing industry’s offshore fishing grounds, as well as New Jersey’s multibillion-dollar tourism industry. The wind turbines require connections to the power grid using high-voltage electrical mainline connections, which have the potential to negatively impact the Sandy Hook Bay environment. “Our concerns need to be fully addressed before future construction of offshore wind farms takes place,” said Perry.
The release also mentions concerns from residents and business owners over “visual pollution” that may impact tourism and local property values since some of the turbines will be visible from the coastline.
Under Biden’s administration, the goal is to create “30 gigawatts of offshore wind in the United States by 2030, while protecting biodiversity and promoting ocean co-use,” according to a release from the White House.
Murphy signed an executive order in September increasing the offshore wind goal to 11 gigawatts annually by 2040, which could power 3.2 million homes with renewable energy.
The article originally appeared in the March 16 – 22, 2023 print edition of The Two River Times.
