The Biden administration on Wednesday approved the Orsted A/S’s Ocean Wind 1 project, setting the stage for installation of a massive wind farm in the waters off New Jersey while ignoring the protests of locals who will be forced to share their environment with as many as 98 turbines.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland boasted the authorization was “another milestone in our efforts to create good-paying union jobs while combating climate change and powering our nation.”
Bloomberg reports the approval represents the third commercial-scale project of its kind in federal waters to win U.S. government backing — all under President Joe Biden.
Ocean Wind 1 joins two other projects, the Vineyard Wind project in Massachusetts and the South Fork Wind project in New York, both of which are now under construction.
File/Wind turbines generate electricity at the Block Island Wind Farm on July 07, 2022 near Rhode Island. The first commercial offshore wind farm in the U.S. is located 3.8 miles from Block Island, Rhode Island in the Atlantic Ocean. The five-turbine, 30 MW project was developed by Deepwater Wind and began operations in December, 2016 at a cost of nearly $300 million. (John Moore/Getty)
These are all part of the Biden administration’s aggressive strategy to develop offshore wind farms across millions of acres of federal waters, mostly along the East Coast.
The current New Jersey plan calls for tall structures that will support wind turbines, called monopiles, to be installed in 2024 and to begin commercial operations in 2025.
But offshore wind has become a source of controversy, pitting politicians against one another down party lines while potential marine impacts are still being examined, as Breitbart News reported.
Republican lawmakers and experts are calling on the Biden administration to put an “immediate moratorium” on offshore wind development until its effects on U.S. military operations, navigation and radar systems are studied, according to a report. https://t.co/GSfh4tetaO
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) June 28, 2023
Just last month Republican lawmakers and experts demanded the Biden administration to put an “immediate moratorium” on offshore wind development until its effects on U.S. military operations, navigation, and radar systems are studied.
Meanwhile community groups blame site preparation work for a spate of whale deaths of New Jersey since December.
At least 60 whales have died on the U.S. East Coast since then. But three federal and one state agency all say there is no evidence linking the deaths with offshore wind preparations, despite the angry protestations of local residents along the Jersey shore.
File/Elizabeth, NJ – October 1, 2013: A tugboat drives by wind turbine is placed off the coast in Newark Bay in Elizabeth, New Jersey, (Ramin Talaie/Corbis via Getty Images)
As Breitbart News reported, in March a panel of experts testified to members of Congress at an in-district hearing in Wildwood, New Jersey, that offshore wind projects actively promoted and subsidized by state and national Democrats could greatly interfere with radar and navigation in the Atlantic Ocean, creating a national security threat.
Their fears echoed those heard elsewhere by locals who suffer diminished quality of life issues due to the imposition of wind farms – offshore and onshore.
Germany to Offer ‘Hush Money’ to People Forced to Live by Wind Farms https://t.co/psYmBKqc9K
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 7, 2020
Cindy Zipf, the executive director of the environmental group Clean Ocean Action, suggested another national security concern regarding navigation: the potential for a ship carrying hazardous materials, its radar impaired, could crash.
“We have the number one port on the East Coast where we are moving a lot of cargo, but included in that cargo are oil tankers and chemical tankers,” Zipf noted, “and if one of those ships were to have a collision with a ship or with a monopole or with the transition facilities, it would be catastrophic to our coast.”
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