Are wind energy opponents creating fake threats and ignoring real ones?

Climate Action Rhode Island maintains they are, and they went to Portsmouth last night to present their case

At a public hearing in the Portsmouth High School auditorium, held by the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM), regarding SouthCoast Wind LLC’s application for a permit to bury a cable, dozens of people spoke both for and against the project. DEM is taking public comment ahead of their decision regarding:

• Installation, operation, and maintenance of two underwater power export cables and associated communications cabling, each approximately 20.4 miles long.

• Possible placement of fill (i.e., secondary cable protection) in state waters over the proposed underwater export cables to protect segments of the submarine export cables and existing utilities.

• Installation of the underwater export cables at the Project’s proposed landfall construction areas utilizing horizontal directional drilling with work including temporary excavation/dredging at eight offshore horizontal directional drilling pits at each of the two landfalls on either side of Aquidneck Island at Portsmouth, Rhode Island.

The proposed work notes DEM, involves dredging approximately 1,867 cubic yards of sediment from eight horizontal directional drilling pits for approximately 14,936 cubic yards of dredging. The excavated material will be backfilled into the horizontal directional drilling pits. Cable burial methods may include a jet plow or jet sled-type burial tool. Alternatively, the cable may be laid on the seabed and trenched post-lay or a trench may be pre-cut before cable installation.

“We showed up in force at the last public meeting in Portsmouth and it had a huge impact,” said Climate Action Rhode Island (CARI) in an email. At that meeting, held in January, the Portsmouth Town Council approved an agreement between the Town and SouthCoast Wind LLC.

There were no votes taken at last night’s meeting. Instead, at this meeting, overseen by DEM, people were invited to make comments and to ask questions. Those questions will be answered in a written document prepared by DEM at a later date. Like the town council meeting in January, Portsmouth residents opposed to the wind project were out in force, as were Portsmouth residents in favor of the project, alongside environmentalists from across the state.

“While the word ‘dredging’ may sound scary to some of us who are not engineers and scientists, the practice of burying cables for transmission of energy is well established and there are best practices established,” said Portsmouth resident Chris Gadbois. “I think our only concern should be that those best practices are followed.”

The project also has union support. “We are here tonight in support of this project. Mostly we appreciate the job creation,” said Speaker Dennis Lassige, the representative of the North Atlantic State Regional Council of Carpenters. “Right now it's 300 construction jobs in the Port of Providence [and] over a hundred jobs in Quonset Point because of offshore wind.”

There was also opposition. “If the Earth Earth was an apartment, we wouldn't be getting our security deposit back,” said Middletown resident Katie Hamilton. “Stop building the apartments, stop building the roads, stop building, turn your lights off, [and] do anything you can. Development will not save us.”

No decisions were made at the hearing. The NOTICE period for this application ends at 4:00 p.m. on March 7, 2024. Additional written comments should be addressed to Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management Office of Customer & Technical Assistance, Attention:  Ronald Gagnon, P.E., 235 Promenade Street, Providence, RI 02908

You can watch the hearing here:

CARI accuses opponents of the wind energy project of “creating fake threats and ignoring real ones.” CARI points out that:

1. Burying a power cable is a safe and well-established practice:

   1. Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard get their electricity from similarly buried underwater power lines

   2. “Dredging” is also often done to increase the depth of navigation channels. Sakonnet Harbor was created by dredging.

   3. Testing has been done in Mount Hope Bay which found nothing that exceeded safe thresholds.

   4. Submarine cables have been shown to have no adverse effects on marine life after burial.

2. Offshore wind energy is much cleaner than alternatives

   1. Wind energy is internationally considered the 2nd best clean energy source and it is the number one resource available in Rhode Island. The Bureau of Ocean Management predicts that the SouthCoast Wind Project will be 95% cleaner than the current Rhode Island energy grid and produce enough energy to power 350,000 homes. In comparison, the dangers of the fossil fuels we are using now are vast and widely documented-from the pollution from fracking for natural gas to the destruction of coral reefs due to climate change.

3. Burying a cable will [not] be dangerous to the water offshore Portsmouth

   1. In its Draft Environmental Impact Statement for this project, the federal government concluded that the project is “not likely to measurably affect plankton populations.” However, warming temperatures conclusively and seriously pose a threat to plankton populations across the world.

CARI maintains that Portsmouth needs offshore wind:

• Rhode Island's climate goals rely on offshore wind, and we currently have no plan to meet them without this project.

• Rhode Island is expected to see another 10 feet of sea level rise and a ten-fold increase in major storms by the end of the century, and it will be worse if we don't meet our climate targets.?

• This project will offset four million tons of carbon dioxide annually, equal to burning 90 billion pounds of coal over the life of the project. It will offset its lifetime carbon dioxide emissions in one year of operations.

• With the widest turbine spacing of any wind project in the world and only 1-3% of the offshore wind area containing physical turbine infrastructure, we will maintain our navigable, fishable waters while gaining a huge amount of renewable energy.

• Right now, Portsmouth relies on the rest of Rhode Island to bring in natural gas and turn it into electricity, forcing other communities to deal with the health and infrastructure challenges. With this project, Portsmouth can help!

• Burying an underwater cable is a safe, well-established practice similar to what has already been done in the area for many uses, such as electric power lines.