Offshore wind farms have run into stiff head winds in a Coast Guard study of the effect they could have on navigational safety in Atlantic waters from Maine to Florida. The wind farms “will confuse airborne radars and also will confuse seaborne radars and create a wall of clutter,” says sailor Benjamin C. Riggs of Newport, R.I.
A retired Navy captain, offshore racer and sailing instructor at the Navy War College and Naval Academy Preparatory School, Riggs was one of more than 30 people and organizations who answered a Dec. 9 Coast Guard request for information about how wind farms might affect existing shipping routes and waterway uses. The Coast Guard says it wants the information to help ensure that wind farms don’t jeopardize safe navigation.
In an interview, Riggs — a vocal critic of the 130-turbine Cape Wind project approved for Horseshoe Shoals on Nantucket Sound off Massachusetts — says mariners can’t see through or around the wall of clutter that marks a wind farm on the radar. This creates a navigational hazard — at night and in fog, especially — and prevents skippers from using radar to “pick their way through” the maze of turbines.
Read the complete story from Cruz Bay Publishing Inc.