September 13, 2018 — The plan to turn ocean wind into energy calls for anchoring 15 wind turbines, each one a little taller than the Washington Monument, into the sea floor more than 30 miles off the coast of Montauk, Long Island.
They’ll be far enough out in the Atlantic that they won’t be seen from Long Island’s beaches, so far in fact, that it will require miles and miles of cable to deliver their 90 megawatts of energy – enough to power 50,000 homes – from ocean to land.
And that’s right smack in the middle of where Chris Scola makes his living.
Several days a week, Scola motors his rusting trawler – the Rock-n-Roll III — into the waters off Montauk’s coast, drops a dredging net onto the ocean floor and scoops up hundreds of pounds of scallops.
Once those cables go in, Scola fears his nets will get entangled, making dredging so difficult he’ll need to find a place to fish further offshore with a larger boat, sending himself deeper into debt.
“This isn’t just about fishermen,” said Bonnie Brady, the executive director of the Montauk-based Long Island Commercial Fishing Association. “This is about the environment. You’re industrializing the ocean floor.”
Brady said developers have failed to properly account for the impact that two processes essential to the Montauk wind farm project will have on fishing habitats. One is the pile driving required to anchor 590-foot tall turbines in the ocean floor and the other is jet plowing, which liquidizes sediment so cable can be dug four to six feet into the ocean floor.
The project’s developer, Deepwater Wind, says the processes might have an initial impact on fishing habitats but over time things will return to normal.