November 28, 2023 — A month ago, after Cape May County, New Jersey, filed a federal lawsuit to stop two immense Ørsted wind farms, the company responded by announcing they were canceling their plans, leaving unfinished construction, citing their inability to predict financial pressures on the project, not widespread community opposition. Two senior staff have left the company, and management is being shifted as one project after another face an insecure future.
Yesterday, Rhode Island took a double-barreled action with federal appeals being filed for both Block Island and Newport to stop two massive offshore wind farms by Ørsted, saying they would “despoil the viewsheds for at least the next 30 years”.
Without intervention, Block Island’s “quaint” set of five wind turbines, the first offshore windfarm in America, could grow to as many as 599 turbines, and of massively increased height – 800 feet tall – taller than an 80-story skyscraper.
In Newport, the group of massive turbines could be built as close as 12 miles from Newport’s coast, visible from the shore.
The Rhode Island actions are being managed by Cultural Heritage Partners, a law firm specializing in historic preservation and cultural heritage law.
Block Island Historic Presesrvation Group’s actions
The Southeast Lighthouse Foundation (SELF), which owns and manages Block Island’s most iconic historic structure and New England’s highest lighthouse, appealed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM)’s permitting decisions for two of the massive offshore wind farms planned by Danish-owned energy behemoth Ørsted on November 22, 2023.
Block Island is awakening to the reality that the number of visible turbines off its coast will soon grow from five to as many as 599 and despoil the Island’s treasured views for the next thirty years. The historic Southeast Lighthouse is a National Historic Landmark–honored by the Nation’s highest designation of historic importance reserved for the likes of the Lincoln Memorial and the Golden Gate Bridge. A world-renowned symbol of Block Island’s rich cultural heritage, the Southeast Light is among numerous historic resources that the government has failed to protect from what BOEM itself concedes are significant negative impacts of the industrialization of the seascape.
Read the full article at