MARMORA – Some visitors to the Ocean Wind presentation held at the Marmora Fire Department said they would not have attended had they known what the format would be.
“We came from Bass River for what we thought would be a sit-down briefing with opportunities to come to a mic, ask a question, hear what others had on their minds and listen to what residents were asking and the answers from the company,” Bj (sic) Adams said.
Her companion, Carol Bitzberger, also from Bass River, said, “We were not expecting this type of set up and would not have come had we known.”
The presentation held Nov. 21 at the Marmora Fire Hall, was a room of tabletop displays staffed by employees ready to answer technical, permitting and general questions about its proposed substation site at Beasley’s Point. The sub-station will connect to a 1,100 megawatt offshore wind project 15 miles off the coast of Ocean City and is designed, per the consortium’s information, to provide “enough clean energy to power 500,000 New Jersey homes.”
The joint venture project, spearheaded by Orsted, a Danish company holding 75%, and Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) with 25%, has elicited supporters for its self-described green energy commitment and job creation potential while detractors have decried what they called its “overstated” benefits and “understated” environmental harms.
When asked how far along proposals shown in photos were to actual shovel-ready for construction, Tom Suthard, responsible for “stakeholder relations,” referred to a timeline of upcoming state and federal-level permitting and other regulatory requirements that will take about a year.
“The most immediate, upcoming, in-person hearing will be Dec. 15 in Hammonton with the state Department of Environmental Protection. There is also another such occasion with the federal Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management,” Suthard said.
He said at each stage there are significant opportunities for public engagement and comment. He said Ocean Wind anticipates it would be able to complete the project by 2025, with construction taking about 12 to 14 months. Other information provided by Ocean Wind describes anticipated spending of $695 million in New Jersey. They said the project would create about 1,000 construction jobs per year during the building phase of the project and 69 full-time jobs at its operations and maintenance hub in Atlantic City over the project’s lifespan of 25 to 30 years.
Doug Frohock, a Marmora resident whose property on Hollywood Lane is near the proposed sub-station’s footprint, viewed various aerial views of the site, and said he was satisfied with the answers to his questions about the amount of power to be generated and that all cables will be completely covered. “Everything has consequences, but we need to maintain our energy grid. Some don’t want anything done ever but we can’t stand still and not move forward with insuring energy supply and creating jobs,” he said.
Others, among the about 50 people who filled the fire department’s meeting room in the first hour of the event, said they still had concerns about the selected transmission route along busy Roosevelt Avenue to connect to the sub-station, the visual impact of the wind array on the horizon off Ocean City, and the overall impact of the project on the environment and marine animals and plants.
Roseanne Serowatka, who was distributing literature for the organization Protect our Coast NJ, said “We have options, such as continuing with fossil fuel or even nuclear, so there’s no reason to destroy the environment with this project.”
According to figures from Protect our Coast NJ, which Serowatka said are also available from Ocean Wind’s own information, the scope of the project will generate 500,000 acres of industrialized ocean and 612 wind turbine generators visible from the Ocean City Music Pier. As to the project’s environmental impact, Protect our Coast NJ says that there are authorized takes (negative results) related to construction that include 102 whales, 6,016 dolphins, 453 porpoises and 924 seals with bird fatalities numbering 1 million by 2030. Vessel trips will total over 9,000 trips each year for installation, operations and maintenance among other purposes. Serowatka said according to Protect our Coast NJ findings, the project will result in rate increases, that wind turbine generators function at only a 40 percent efficiency rate and that 75 percent of operational profits will revert to the foreign enterprise Orsted.