In-depth: ‘It would be devastating’: Local officials warn of wind turbine development’s impact to Jersey Shore’s tourism industry 

Serene beachside views that bring in a lucrative tourism industry could be cut to ribbons if wind companies succeed in constructing fleets of monopole turbines along the east coast.

Orsted, a wind energy company 51 percent owned by the Danish government, has plans to install 200 turbines throughout 161,000 acres of ocean nine miles off the coast southernmost tip of New Jersey in Cape May County.

Diane Wieland, the county’s tourism director, told The Epoch Times that in 2022 the vacation resort had 11.3 million visitors, which generated $7.4 billion in direct tourism spending, an increase of 11.9 percent over 2021.

Orsted’s own projection is that 85 percent of tourists would return to the county’s beaches after the turbines are raised, Wieland said, but that 15 percent loss would set Cape May back six years beyond what it had gained prior to COVID with a loss of $1.11 billion.

“Even at 10 of 5 percent, it would be devastating,” Wieland said. “We’re just climbing back from the impact of COVID, and now we’re looking at this possibility?”

Revenue generated from state and local taxes derived from the tourism industry was $642.3 million dollars, Wieland said.

A 15 percent loss of tourism would subtract 5,915 from Cape May County’s 39,430 tourism jobs.

Sixty percent of the jobs in Cape May County are supported by visitors, Wieland added.

There will be a $250 million loss to food and beverage, a $115 million loss to recreation, and a $210 million loss to retail at 15 percent, she said.

“Most of our businesses don’t even operate on a 15 percent margin, so this is going to close businesses down,” Wieland said.

It’s not a loss to be dismissed casually, as if it’s not that big of a deal, which is how she said it’s being spun by Orsted.

“We don’t have corporate businesses here that can just pack up and go somewhere else,” Wieland said. “These are generations of families who will lose their livelihood.”

‘Not Without a Fight’

Cape May County Commissioners passed a resolution in May opposing the Orsted wind installations, stating that the partnership between the federal and state government and foreign-owned companies have cast aside the concerns of the local community.

Despite attempts to work with Orsted in mitigating impacts, Cape May County Board of Commissioners Director Lend Desiderio said in the press release that Orsted showed no interest in compromising.

“It is clear to us now that the approach among this foreign corporation and their partners in the state and federal governments is to build these things as fast as they can despite the potential for devastating environmental and economic impacts,” Desiderio said. “On behalf of the people of Cape May County, we will not let that happen without a fight.”

The county said it has initiated legal recourse, turning to two law firms and the county’s former administrator and former state Superior Court Judge Michael Donohue to coordinate the effort, which includes “an aggressive public education campaign.”

“It’s David vs. Goliath, really,” Donohue told The Epoch Times. “We’ve known this will be an uphill climb because of the extraordinary partnership that has developed between the state and federal government. We saw that on display in the New Jersey legislature when it approved hundreds of millions, if not $2 billion dollars, to go to Orsted that was supposed to go to electricity customers so that Orsted could keep this project as profitable as possible.”

On June 27, the New Jersey legislature passed a bill that would allow Orsted to keep tax credits that it otherwise would have had to otherwise return to state ratepayers had the bill not passed.

The legislation was written to reduce the negative impact the COVID-19 pandemic and inflation had on developers, according to lawmakers.

According to the county resolution, on June 21, 2021, the state legislature passed a bill to remove authority from county and city officials and transferred that power over to five unelected members of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJBPU).

‘Neglible Impacts On Climate Change’

Tax incentives found in the Inflation Reduction Act have triggered a rush of surveying and development along the east coast to cash in on the Biden administration’s stated goal of attaining a carbon-neutral energy grid by 2030.

In total, what’s proposed along the east coast are 3,500 turbines across 2.2 million acres of ocean.

Despite this rush, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) wrote on page A-66 Volume 2 of its Final Environmental Impact Statement (pdf) on the Vineyard Wind offshore wind project in Rhode Island that wind turbine construction “would have negligible impacts on climate change during these activities and an overall minor beneficial impact on Green House Gas emissions compared to the generation of the same amount of energy by existing grids.”

‘Barely Visible’

Seventy-four miles up the coast north of Cape May County sits Long Beach Island, New Jersey, which faces one of 28 projects on the east coast called the Atlantic Shore Offshore Wind project, a joint venture between Shell New Energies US, LLC. and EDF-RE Offshore Development, LLC., itself a subsidiary of EDF Renewables North America.

Atlantic Shores has more than 400 acres of three offshore wind areas under development located off the coast of southern New Jersey between Atlantic City and Barnegat Light, with a third offshore lease area in the New York Bight.

The ASOW projects, located 8.7 miles off the coast of New Jersey, will have 200 wind turbines throughout 102,124 acres of ocean, four offshore and two onshore substations, and 1,025 miles of high voltage cables.

Dr. Bob Stern, a retired engineer who worked in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) managing a department that oversaw the protection of the environment related to energy projects, leads Save LBI (Long Beach Island), a non-partisan, grassroots organization whose stated mission is to bring more attention to the impacts of the ASOW projects.

“I have a lot of experience with environmental impact statements and laws,” Stern told The Epoch Times. “When I saw how this wind project was being rolled out to the public—well, it offended me because the information being provided, to put it generously, is misleading.”

Statements the company made about the turbines being barely, or rarely, visible from the shore didn’t add up, Stern said.

“When I’m out on a boat 15 miles out, I can see the tops of the water towers on LBI, and they’re only 150 feet high,” he said. “So, there’s no way you don’t see an object that is 1,000 feet high nine miles offshore. It’s just geometrically impossible. We can see the Atlantic City buildings from our shore, and they’re not even as high as the wind turbines and not as close.”

During his time with the DOE—before new energy developments were deployed—a pilot project was first initiated, then a commercial demonstration project.

If that was deemed safe, a larger deployment of a new facility would be approved.

“Here, those two steps are missing, and the administration is just proceeding to deploy over 3,000 very large wind turbines—the size of which has almost doubled over the last five years—along the east coast,” Stern said.

‘It’s A Dangerous Experiment’

Save LBI has filed three lawsuits against several federal agencies contending not only that the approval process has been flawed but also that the current surveying efforts are harming marine life.

“In our view, this has not been a serious process whereby federal agencies and the state really want to discuss the issues and look at potential alterations of the project that might be satisfactory,” Stern said. “Instead, they’re just forging ahead with the proposals that the company has made, so we were forced to go to the courts.”

There’s simply not enough information to support the speed by which these projects are moving forward, Stern said.

“There’s no such thing as clean energy,” Stern said. “It’s a nice phrase, but it doesn’t exist. When you change from one energy source to another, there’s going to be impacts. I think we’re putting a lot of things at risk—marine life, the fishing industry, tourism, navigation—and we really don’t know what the outcome will be. It’s a dangerous experiment.”

Not only is it dangerous, but it’s also expensive, Stern said, supported only by federal tax incentives.

“The market price of electricity from offshore wind turbines is considerably higher than the market price for natural gas or nuclear energy, or even for onshore solar and wind,” Stern said. “It’s a difficult and expensive undertaking from an engineering standpoint to build these structures into the seabed.”

No one would buy it in an open, competitive market, Stern said.

“The only way it can be sold and used is if the federal and state governments subsidize the energy costs of offshore wind,” Stern said.

‘Could Very Well Determine Their Extinction’

Save LBI has also found the project to be a threat to marine mammals that have been washing up on shore as a result of what the organization believes to be surveying using infrasound that disrupts the navigation of whales and dolphins.

“Our estimates show that the underwater noise from the wind project is going to extend out about 69 miles at levels the whales will avoid,” Stern said. “So, off the coast of New Jersey, you have a number of whales that try to migrate, including the North Atlantic Right Whale. We believe that this underwater noise is going to essentially block their migration and could very well determine their extinction.”

Aside from the environmental impact, the aesthetic of the ocean and what that provides for people is also not being considered.

“People come to see an unbroken view that is beautiful,” Stern said. “It’s almost a religious experience to have this opportunity to look at an untouched horizon and see it as it was hundreds of thousands of years ago.”

‘It’s An Outrage’

In the Borough of Seaside Park, New Jersey, 51 miles north of Long Beach Island, Mayor John Peterson shares Stern’s misgivings.

“This is the most egregious example I can ever imagine of groupthink and a kind of mindless investment from bureaucracies, individuals, and moneyed interests to move forward without any significant independent scientific research or thought process given to a true cost-benefit analysis,” Peterson told The Epoch Times.

Peterson sees the proposed wind turbine developments as not only a threat to the future of Seaside Park but also to the environment, marine life, and the commercial and recreational fishing industry.

Amid its tourism season and celebrating the town’s 125th anniversary with a series of events, Seaside Park saw one of the many whale deaths that have increased over the last few years.

“Everybody was just joined together in shock and sadness,” Peterson said. “I think the underlying feeling is this didn’t have to happen. Obviously, something has been introduced—something different—into the overall ocean ecosystem and the environment that made this particular season different than what had existed the prior season, and that’s the seismic testing of the bottom of the ocean.”

From Jan. 1 to June 21, 2023, there were 42 large whale strandings along the U.S. Atlantic coast, NOAA told The Epoch Times, a number that includes 26 humpback whales between Massachusetts and Virginia, two sperm whales in Florida and offshore North Carolina, two North Atlantic right whales in North Carolina and Virginia, one sei whale in North Carolina, 10 minke whales between Maine and New York, and one fin whale in Virginia.

Though the North Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and organizations like Greenpeace have argued that whale deaths are caused by vessel strikes, Peterson said this explanation avoids the real issue.

“What on earth would have happened to the whales’ intricate internal mechanism that has allowed them for decades—if not centuries—to avoid any and all such vessels,” Peterson said.

Overall, the call for an investigation into the concerns of the community has fallen on deaf ears, Peterson said, and the state legislature has passed bills that support its construction that allow for the companies to bypass local authority and fast-track the approval of cable installations that would gouge through once long preserved and protected ocean dunes.

“It’s an outrage,” Peterson said. “Take away the government subsidies being pumped into these companies, most of which are foreign, and there’s no possible way these proposals are cost-effective.”

‘Never To Exist Again’

Like Stern, Peterson also warned of a loss of a tranquil environment that offers a restorative experience to those who visit.

“If these massive, totally unnecessary industrial complexes are not halted, the sheer beauty of the Jersey shore and the view of the magnificent ocean will be forever changed and irreparably harmed, never to exist again,” Peterson said.