Saving Seafood

New film dives into issues, concerns with Deepwater Wind’s proposed wind farm

May 14, 2018 — The following was released by the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association:

Dell Cullum of East Hampton, NY, owner of Hampton Wildlife Removal and Rescue, is a master of many trades. In addition to rescuing wildlife, he also is a well-known local children’s book author, nature photographer, filmmaker, producer of the ImaginationNature.com television series, and an East Hampton Town Trustee. His roots also run deep to Montauk, New York’s largest commercial fishing port, through the Pitts and Burke families. So it seemed a natural fit for him to marry his love of nature with his concern for his roots when he decided to create the recently released two-part film, “Deepwater Dilemma.”

As a Trustee, Cullum is quite familiar with the South Fork Wind Farm being proposed by Deepwater Wind (DWW), the subject of his film. He said his impetus for doing it was born out of a desire to give voice to those who he felt were not being heard by DWW, the offshore wind energy company owned by hedgefund giant D.E. Shaw, in multiple public meetings over the last year with both the Town Board and the Town Trustees.

“After hearing the same old automated rebuttal, lacking fact and transparency, from Deepwater Wind’s representatives about real concerns from the East Hampton community, I felt it necessary to give those who oppose Deepwater’s method of operation a loud and clear opportunity to be heard, regarding environmental impact, industrializing our ocean, utility rate increases, wind power necessity, and the possible end, yet certainly danger to the local commercial fishing community and so much more,” Cullum said last week in an interview.

The resulting film in its entirety weighs in at slightly over an hour. Part one offers several perspectives from local concerned residents, including input from an energy consultant, an environmental planner, the former head of the Town of East Hampton’s Natural Resources division, an avid recreational fisherman who is also a Trustee, a former candidate for East Hampton Town Supervisor, and a former environmental liaison to a local citizens advisory committee.

Part two captures the voices of fishermen, both from Rhode Island where the first offshore wind mill was built in 2016, and from Montauk.

Cullum’s film can be watched in its entirety either by going to the Deepwater Dilemma Facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/OceanSave1/ or directly to his YouTube Page here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe-2-hk96kW4eM2v-ioPuLQ/videos

A joint public hearing of the East Hampton Town Board and East Hampton Town Trustees to discuss the community benefits package being offered by DWW if the Town allows them access through Beach Lane in Wainscott for the South Fork Wind Farm will be held this Thursday, May 17th, at 6:30 p.m. at LTV Studios, 75 Industrial Road, in East Hampton.

 

New York: Deepwater’s Public Benefits Package Hangs in the Balance

May 10, 2018 — A community benefits package hangs in the balance as the East Hampton Town Board and town trustees prepare to host a joint hearing next Thursday on Deepwater Wind’s plan to construct a 15-turbine wind farm approximately 36 miles east of Montauk.

Deepwater Wind plans to submit an application to construct the 90-megawatt South Fork Wind Farm to the State Public Service Commission next month, according to its vice president of development. It is seeking easements from the trustees to land the wind farm’s transmission cable beneath the ocean beach at the end of Beach Lane in Wainscott, and from the town board to bury the cable in the public road right of way on a path to a Long Island Power Authority substation in East Hampton.

The Rhode Island company has offered a package of community benefits in exchange for those rights, and will include that plan in its application to the Public Service Commission, provided the easements are granted. Should the real estate rights be denied, Deepwater Wind would proceed with a plan to land the cable on state-owned property at Hither Hills, Clint Plummer of Deepwater Wind confirmed yesterday, an option the company’s officials have previously implied. The community benefits package would be withdrawn, Mr. Plummer said.

Read the full story at the East Hampton Star

 

New York: Deepwater Wind Public Hearing Next Thursday

May 10, 2018 — Members of the East Hampton Town Board will be joined by the East Hampton Town Trustees next week for a public hearing on a request by Deepwater Wind to land a power cable for its proposed South Fork Wind Farm off Beach Lane in Wainscott.

The hearing will be held at LTV Studios in Wainscott at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 17.

The South Fork Wind Farm is proposed to include 12 to 15 wind turbines and be constructed 30 miles southeast of Montauk.  In December, Deepwater Wind officials said Beach Lane was the ideal location to land the cable, offering the best protection for it from erosion or damage during coastal storms. The landing site also offers the shortest route on the ground to a PSEG substation in East Hampton Village. While the two-year environmental review of the South Fork Wind Farm will be led by the New York Public Service Commission on the state level, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on the federal level, town officials must sign off on the landing of the cable before that process can begin.

Read the full story at the Sag Harbor Express

 

Federal Agency To Study Effects Of Electric Pulses From Proposed Wind Farm On Fish

March 28, 2018 — Federal officials say they are looking at new studies of fish species that migrate off the coast of Long Island and their potential reactions to electric pulses from the transmission cables of the proposed South Fork Wind Farm, in response to concerns raised by fishermen and the East Hampton Town Trustees.

Concerns about how fish might react to the electric magnetic field, or EMF, given off by the wind farm’s foot-thick power cable when it comes ashore have become the main objection from the East Hampton Town Trustees and the South Fork’s commercial baymen.

Fishermen rely on the annual migrations of fish through the relatively shallow waters within a couple of miles of the shore on their way to summer haunts in the bays. They worry that even if the EMF pulses given off by the sort of cable that would connect to the wind farm were minor—as studies suggest—the subtle impulses could be enough to divert fish in their migrations and away from the near-shore areas.

In the earliest discussions of the issue over the last several months, representatives of Deepwater Wind have presented the results of studies conducted at the existing wind farm off Block Island and by scientists around the giant offshore wind farms in Europe, as well as laboratory tests that show the effects of EMF on migrating fish to be inconsequential.

But fishermen and their supporters have said those studies are of little reassurance to them, since they involve different scales, different types of sea floor or different species of fish than those that are of the utmost importance to local baymen.

“What they tested in Europe is not that relevant. What they tested at Block Island, with a cable one-quarter the size of this, is not that relevant,” said Gary Cobb, an East Hampton man who has been reviewing the work done thus far on EMF and other details of offshore wind development on behalf of fishermen. “And you need several years of data for any of it to be useful.”

Earlier this winter, the Town Trustees issued a call for more studies—along with an aggressive demand for financial support from Deepwater for fishermen who are impacted by the project—to examine the effects of EMF on fishes that migrate to Long Island in summer.

Read the full story at 27 East

 

NEW YORK: Fishermen Demand Answers on Wind Power Plan

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.

Read the full story at the East Hampton Star

Fishermen Fear Damage From Wind Farms Along The Eastern Seaboard

December 4, 2017 — Fishermen are worried about an offshore wind farm proposed 30 miles out in the Atlantic from Montauk, N.Y., the largest fishing port in the state. They say those wind turbines — and many others that have been proposed — will impact the livelihood of fishermen in New York and New England.

Scallop fisherman Chris Scola fishes in an area 14 miles off of Montauk. He and his two-man crew spend 2 ½ hours motoring there, then 10 more dredging the sea floor for scallops before heading back to port.

“We have this little patch that’s sustained by myself and a few other boats out of Montauk, and a couple of guys from Connecticut also fish down here,” Scola says.

Scola — like many fishermen — is concerned about state and federal regulations. But his big concern is the prospect of hundreds, and perhaps even thousands, of giant wind turbines spread out in the New York Bight, an area along the Atlantic Coast that extends from southern New Jersey to Montauk Point. It’s one of the most productive fishing grounds on the Eastern Seaboard.

“To me, building wind farms here, it’s like building them on the cornfields or the soy fields in the Midwest,” he says.

Scola belongs to the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, which is run by Bonnie Brady, the wife of a longtime Montauk fisherman. She’s an outspoken critic of the wind farms.

Read the full story at NPR

 

NEW YORK: Fishermen Skeptical as Wind Fans Rejoice

March 20, 2017 — More than 150 people crowded into Clinton Academy in East Hampton last Thursday for a look at the future of electricity generation, as representatives of Deepwater Wind, a Rhode Island company, presented its recently approved plan to construct a wind farm 30 miles offshore.

Those in attendance, including officials in East Hampton Town and Village government, were generally enthusiastic about the project. However, members of the commercial fishing industry, some of whom were at the meeting, continue to criticize the plan, fearing its impact on their livelihood and accusing both Deepwater Wind and local and state governments of ignoring their concerns.

Upon its anticipated completion in December 2022, the South Fork Wind Farm is expected to provide 90 megawatts of electricity to the South Fork, where demand is projected to continue to increase sharply. The installation, up to 15 turbines placed in federally leased waters, is expected to produce energy sufficient to power more than 50,000 residences.

The Long Island Power Authority authorized its chief executive to sign a 20-year contract with Deepwater Wind to buy the energy generated by the wind farm in January. The agreement includes a five-year extension option.

On Thursday, Deepwater Wind officials including Jeffrey Grybowski, the chief executive officer, and Clint Plummer, its vice president of development, said that a cable connecting the wind farm to the Long Island Power Authority substation on Buell Lane in East Hampton would likely make land either at the defunct fish factory at Promised Land or the parking lot at Fresh Pond Beach, both on Gardiner’s Bay. The cable would be buried beneath existing roads to the substation, they said. Onshore surveys of the proposed route are to begin in the spring.

A power purchase agreement with LIPA will be finalized this year, the Deepwater officials said, and permit applications will be submitted to state and federal agencies in 2018.

Read the full story at the East Hampton Star

Commercial fishing representative discusses new South Fork Wind Farm with Richard Rose on CBS New York

January 31st, 2016 — On January 25th, the Long Island Power Authority approved the South Fork Wind Farm, a new wind development off the coast of Long Island. On January 30th, Bonnie Brady, the executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, sat down with Richard Rose on CBS New York to discuss the adverse impact the new project would have on local fish and fishermen.

Located 30 miles southeast of Montauk, New York, the South Fork Wind Farm will cost $740 million to construct the wind farm that will stretch over a 15 square mile area. In the interview Ms. Brady noted that the project would come at the expense of the many nearby fisheries, including the “most healthy stock of cod in the Northeast,” fluke, scallops, monkfish, and over 30 other different species of fish.  

Specifically, Ms. Brady cited the threat to local fish stocks from a construction process known as “pile driving,” which emits a loud sound that injures, and can kill, nearby fish and marine mammals. In addition, the process plows six feet beneath the ocean floor, dispersing sediment and killing larvae as a result of a large increase in pressure.

“Pile driving kills anything with a swim bladder within three-quarters of a mile. When you puncture a swim bladder, you don’t float, you sink,” Ms. Brady said. “If you’re at the bottom of the ocean because you’re a ground fish to begin with you’re not going to be coming up.”

Ms. Brady continued that these fishing areas would be very difficult for local fishermen to replace.

“Fishermen go to the areas where fish are, specifically based on temperature and bait. And as a result, during certain times of the year they move offshore and onshore,” Ms. Brady clarified in the interview.

Ms. Brady also took issue with the lack of consultation with the commercial fishing industry before approval of the wind farm. She explained that wind farm proponents failed to reach out to the commercial fishing industry to assess areas of economic importance or high environmental sensitivity that should be excluded from the wind farm area.

As fishing vessels often have difficulty navigating the wind turbine array, a return to the area can be problematic.

“The reality is we as fishermen depend upon the fish, not only for this generation but for generations in the future,” Brady said. “We, more than anyone else, know what goes on underneath the waterline because we are the ones who follow the fish and catch them in providing food for the nation.”

Watch the full interview at CBS New York

New York governor calls for approving 90-MW offshore wind farm

January 13, 2017 — New York’s Long Island Power Authority should approve the 90-megawatt South Fork Wind Farm energy project as an early step toward developing up to 2.4 gigawatts of offshore power for the state by 2030, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in his annual address to state lawmakers.

It would be the single biggest commitment by a coastal state, and the South Forks project 30 miles off Long Island’s East End proposed by Deepwater Wind LLC faces stiff opposition from commercial fishermen and other critics. But contract negotiations that dragged out last summer are now close to final the LIPA board could vote on it this month.

Cuomo said the authority can “ensure it is developed responsibly and cost-effectively for all stakeholders.”

“New York’s unparalleled commitment to offshore wind power will create new, high-paying jobs, reduce our carbon footprint, establish a new, reliable source of energy for millions of New Yorkers, and solidify New York’s status as a national clean energy leader,” Cuomo said. The state’s Offshore Wind Master Plan will be ready in 2017, and pave the way for the 2.4 billion-GW target, or enough electricity to power 1.25 million homes.

In that same time frame, the Cuomo administration has an ambitious target to a full 50% of New York state’s energy from renewable sources by 2030. Meanwhile, the potential closing of the aging Indian Point nuclear plant on the Hudson River in the early 2020s means the state’s biggest metro center will need power from other sources.

Read the full story at Work Boat