December 14, 2017 — An effort by Deepwater Wind, the Rhode Island company that plans to construct the South Fork Wind Farm approximately 30 miles east of Montauk, to alleviate the concerns of skeptical fishermen over disruption or destruction of their livelihood took an incremental step forward when the company’s president and vice president of development addressed a standing-room-only crowd at East Hampton Town Hall on Monday.
Concerns remain, however, with commercial fishermen demanding to see data that Deepwater Wind has promised but has yet to produce, along with assurances that they will be compensated for losses resulting from construction or operation of the wind farm.
The town trustees, who hosted the gathering at their last meeting of 2017, listened as Chris van Beek, Deepwater Wind’s president, and Clint Plummer, the vice president, insisted that the South Fork Wind Farm will be a benign installation, its turbines positioned so far from each other that fishing will not be impeded, and its transmission cable safely buried in the ocean floor.
Ongoing postconstruction surveys around the Block Island Wind Farm, the nation’s first offshore wind farm, which Deepwater Wind built and operates, demonstrate no negative impacts, they told the audience, conceding, however, that some fishermen were compensated for interruptions to their business during its construction.
“So far, it’s the conclusion that the fish habitat is as good as it was, or perhaps a little bit better,” Mr. van Beek said of the Block Island Wind Farm. “Especially fishing in the wind farm . . . is spectacular.” Recreational fishermen, he said, have migrated to waters around the turbines, which he said act as artificial reefs.