September 24, 2020 — Following months of negotiations with interested parties, skeptics and outright opponents of the South Fork Wind Farm, the project’s developers have submitted a new outline of their construction proposal that adds a number of new conditions that bow somewhat to the demands of fishermen, environmentalists and lawmakers.
The developers have agreed to a compensation plan for commercial fishermen who may suffer damaged or lost gear or lose fishing days because of some component of the wind farm’s construction and operation. They have also agreed to conduct monitoring of electromagnetic pulses from the power cable over the first five years of the wind farm’s operations and a mandated re-nourishment of the beach at Beach Lane if erosion from storms exposes the cable or significantly lessens the depth at which it is buried.
The new outline, called a “joint proposal,” also puts a finer point on the myriad details of how the construction will be conducted on land in Wainscott, with strict parameters for the timing of work, noise impacts, access to roads and beaches during construction and the extent to which the areas of work are restored at the conclusion of construction.