The Danish company Ørsted is scheduled to begin construction of its controversial Ocean Wind 1 offshore power complex next week at Island Beach State Park, one of New Jersey’s most popular family beach destinations, as surveys show a dramatic decline in support for “green” offshore wind projects statewide.
A poll published this week by Stockton University found that about half of New Jersey residents support offshore wind development. In 2019, that number was 80 percent. Active opposition to offshore wind development more than doubled from 15 percent in 2019 to 33 percent.
Along the Shore, support has dwindled further: from 77 percent in 2019 to 33 percent this week.
The local radio station NJ 101.5, which reported on the Stockton poll, noted that a similar survey published in August by Monmouth University found that statewide support for offshore wind development fell from 76 percent to 54 percent between 2019 and 2023.
The administration of radical leftist Governor Phil Murphy has disregarded concerns about the potential environmental and economic consequences of the Ocean Wind projects. Ørsted reportedly began preparatory construction work on land on October 2 for the Ocean Wind 1 project. This week, more onshore construction began on Monday and will move into Island Beach State Park next week.
“The Oct. 10 construction includes work to ultimately install copper and aluminum cables meant to connect with the electric grid at substations located at former power plants in Ocean and Cape May Counties,” NJ Advance Media reported. “Work at the state park will run from this month to May 2024 before resuming next September so as to not disturb summer tourism, according to officials with Danish energy developer, Ørsted.”
Ocean Wind 1 is planned to be a massive industrial complex featuring 98 wind turbines about 15 miles off of Ocean City, New Jersey, a family boardwalk destination. The Island Beach State Park will reportedly host underground cables going out to the turbines.
Construction on the turbines, Ørsted announced this week, is expected to begin in April if the administration of leftist President Joe Biden – which promoted the passage of a windfall of subsidies for “green” corporations under the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” – greenlights the construction.
The decline in support is especially steep in coastal New Jersey communities, where a growing number of incidents of dead whales washing ashore has raised alarm. As of mid-September, 62 dead whales have washed ashore on the Atlantic Coast this year, 13 of them in New Jersey – the highest number since 2002. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) has insisted that “there is no scientific evidence that noise resulting from offshore wind site characterization surveys could potentially cause mortality of whales.” Yet environmental activists have questioned this conclusion, positing that the use of sonar to map the ocean floor – to figure out where best to construct wind turbines – may interfere with echolocation, used by whales to navigate, and result in the whales crashing into ships at unusually high rates.
Workers walk near a dead whale that washed ashore in Seaside Park N.J. on March 2, 2023. (AP Photo/Wayne Parry)
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) insistence that studies do not suggest a relationship between the whale deaths and preparatory work for offshore wind industrialization came further into question following the publication of a report by Bloomberg News in November revealing that NOAA protected species expert Sean Hayes warned in a report that the wind projects “will likely cause added stress that could result in additional population consequences to a species that is already experiencing rapid decline.”
Recreational and commercial fishing veterans along the Jersey Shore have also reported unprecedented activity in the ocean, including discoveries of apparent whale carcasses that, unconfirmed, do not make it into official statistics. They fear not just the destruction of whale populations, but of their entire way of life, as populations of sport and eating fish may decline as the massive turbines are erected in their traditional habitats.
“The commercial fishing is extremely upset with the visual observations of dead whales floating at sea,” Brick Wenzel, Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey’s, fishing liaison and a longtime commercial fisherman, told Breitbart News in March. “One vessel said they had seen 3 different whales in one trip. Another had parts of a whale come up in their net. Most of the captains are generational fishers and are in their 60s — no one has heard of or [has] seen anything like the carnage being witnessed.”
The body of a humpack whale lies on a beach in Brigantine N.J., after it washed ashore on Friday, Jan. 13, 2023. It was the seventh dead whale to wash ashore in New Jersey and New York in little over a month. (AP Photo/Wayne Parry)
Other concerns raised include the potential that the wind turbines pose a national security threat, as they may interfere with military radar; unanswered questions regarding the turbines’ ability to withstand major hurricanes or other storms; the concentration of control of a sizeable portion of the power grid in the hands of a foreign company; and how turbine parts will be disposed of without creating outsized waste after they are decommissioned.
Island Beach State Park, where construction will begin next week, is a sprawling, ten-mile area of sandy beach belonging to Seaside Park borough.
“Miles of sand dunes and white sandy beaches offer habitat to maritime plants and diverse wildlife that is almost the same as it was thousands of years ago,” New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection details on its page. “Island Beach State Park contains outstanding examples of plant communities such as primary dunes, thicket, freshwater wetlands, maritime forest and tidal marshes.”
The Park is among the state’s most popular and became a political lightning rod in 2017, when then-Governor Chris Christie was caught sunbathing in the state park after he had shut it down for the general public during a sunny June afternoon. Christie shut down all state parks during a peak summer weekend as a result of a state legislature budget battle.
“I didn’t get any sun today,” Christie had told reporters before the Star-Ledger published photos of him at Island Beach. At the time, Christie’s approval rating was at 15 percent, a record low for a governor of the state.
Christie is currently a candidate for the presidency of the United States.
The renewed threat to New Jersey families’ access to Island Beach State Park – and other iconic Jersey Shore locations – as a result of the Ørsted industrialization projects has triggered the organization of another protest against offshore wind development scheduled for Saturday. The Ocean County Federation of Republican Women is organizing a protest on the boardwalk of Point Pleasant Beach branded “Enough is Enough” on Saturday morning. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), who represents the area and has been among the most vocal critics of the offshore wind projects in Congress, is expected at the event.
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