NJ.com reported recently that plans to bury power cables from an offshore wind project under the town of Ocean City along the South Jersey shore are set to move forward despite objections from the local government and residents.
Writer Bill Duhart writes that Ørsted, the Danish firm developing the offshore wind project, is seeking an easement from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (N.J. BPU) to put cables under land owned by Ocean City that includes a beachfront with luxury homes, some valued in the millions of dollars. Ocean City officials however said they oppose a 2021 New Jersey law that gives wind energy projects approved by the state public utilities board the authority to locate, build, use and maintain wires and associated land-based infrastructure.
“Ocean City Mayor Jay Gillian and City Council object to Ocean Wind’s application to the N.J. BPU and reserve the right to challenge any approval granted,” according to a statement provided to NJ Advance Media. “It’s still early in the review of Ocean Wind’s operations plan and its environmental impact, and regardless of whether a town ultimately supports or opposes the project, this is not a good precedent.”
N.J. BPU has not yet granted the request for easements, and NJ.com reports that Ørsted must also still submit environment impact statements to federal and state regulators for approval of the entire project. The project by Danish wind giant Ørsted includes the construction of up to 98, 900-foot-tall wind turbines 15 miles off the coast. The power cables will come ashore under the beach and streets of Ocean City to the shuttered B.L. England Generating Station located in Upper Township.
“It seems like this is almost a done deal,” noted area resident Tim Flynn in NJ.com who spoke during a recent virtual hearing held by Ørsted. “It seems like this is being pushed on Ocean City. I’m very much opposed to this whole project. I think this is not going to be the end of people protesting this project.”
Ørsted is developing the project in conjunction with PSEG which requires the burying of power lines from the turbines below the beach and streets of Ocean City. Last summer as the City Council of Ocean City in reviewing the plans pushed back on those efforts, which prompted then Senator Stephen Sweeney and Assemblyman John Burzichelli to draft new legislation in Trenton which effectively took away Home Rule authority in New Jersey, a constitutional protection in place for over 100 years that would allow individual towns and municipalities to have final say in such projects.
“(It) would severely affect the ability of local governments to exercise home rule pertaining to the offshore wind farm project through the elimination of good faith negotiations, which clearly positions Ørsted, a foreign entity, in an advantageous negotiating position at the expense of the coastal municipalities,” Ocean City Council stated in a resolution passed last year, a moot point now since Governor Phil Murphy signed the Sweeney/Burzichelli law into place.
Perhaps not too coincidentally, both Sweeney and Burzichelli lost their reelection bids last November.
