RI Fishermen Worried: Deepwater Expansion Poses New Threats
Friday, May 13, 2011
Rhode Island’s fishermen are feeling betrayed over the continuing expansion of Deepwater Wind’s proposed 200-wind turbine offshore renewable energy project off the coast of Rhode Island.
It has nothing to do with court cases and bargaining over the price per kilowatt hour that is currently drawing media attention.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTRather, the recent announcement that Deepwater hopes to be able to sell the electricity the wind turbines generate to the Long Island Power Authority adds even more to the fishing industry’s concerns that prime fishing areas off the coast will be either made inaccessible or harmfully disrupted.
“We are going to be a dumping ground for other state’s garbage,” said Rick Bellavance, president of the RI Party and Charter Boat Association. Bellavance was referring to the turbines and necessary transmission cables that will eventually carry electricity to shore through prime fishing areas. Not just to serve Rhode Island, as first thought, but conceivably exported to Massachusetts and Long Island landfalls.
“The Rhode island fishing community will pay the price,” said Lanny Dellinger, president of the RI Lobsterman’s Association. “It just ain’t fair.”
Fishermen Wanted To Do the Right Thing For Rhode Island
Many representatives of the commercial and recreational fishing organizations, such as Bellavance and Dellinger, spent nearly two years helping the state develop its RI Ocean Special Area Management Plan (Ocean SAMP). This cutting-edge project did extensive research, supported by primarily University of Rhode Island experts, and mapped an area of 1,500 square miles - roughly the size of the state - to determine best and priority uses of the area for the future. That included siting of any possible renewable wind energy farms.
During that process, many fishing areas valued by the fishing community came under scrutiny for possible use as an offshore renewable wind energy site. It was a give and take process, with the commercial and recreational fishermen weighing in during lengthy meetings to decide which areas the Ocean SAMP would rule completely out of the question for wind farm development, and regions for which there might be concessions made.
To the fishermen’s eyes, the entire region was prime fishing area and, at the start of the process, in danger.
“We helped to identify suitable sites,” said Dellinger. “We bent over backwards to help. Now, we’re not feeling very good about it.”
The fishermen also met in a separate sub-group to address concerns particular to the commercial and recreational fishing groups. One sentiment expressed at the time was that the fishermen were willing to make some concessions based upon the fact that it was good for their state.
The idea that using wind energy to set off – or mitigate, as it is known – the impacts of burning fossil fuels, which has been said to contribute to climate change and acid rain, was a major thrust of the project, and one the fishermen and others in their “stakeholder” advisory group bought into. But many of the organizations came to the table with the fear that a massive offshore wind farm would cause harm to their livelihoods.
With perhaps the most to be leery about, the fishermen nonetheless threw themselves into making sure the process fairly recognized the concerns of where they did their work and earned their money – on the waters off of Rhode Island.
“The fishermen made a real effort to help,” said Tiffany Smythe, part of the Ocean SAMP team, and one of the people who helped facilitate meetings of the fishing community. “They were part of the dialogue, and tried to make it all work out.”
Changes in the Project
Deepwater Wind, an offshore wind developer with offices in Providence, on Block Island and in Hoboken, NJ, had won a bidding competition to gain the rights from the state to develop a commercial scale offshore wind farm project and then sell RI the electricity generated, also took part in most of the stakeholder meetings.
The passage of the Ocean SAMP plan in October 2010 by the state Coastal Resources Management Council, which led the entire project, made it the first state-approved “marine spatial planning” document in the U.S. (federal approval is imminent this month). But since then, the project has changed.
Deepwater has upped the total of wind turbines they want to build from 100 to 200, enough to generate 1,000 megawatts of electricity. (There is also a pilot project of six to eight turbines being developed by Deepwater off the southeast corner of Block Island.)
The increased size of the project area now brings it over part of one of the region’s most valued fishing areas, Cox Ledge. This has upset the fishermen, who fought to keep wind turbines from ousting them from their most prized spots.
“From our point of view, since the expansion in December, we have done an about-face,” said Bellavance. “After that occurred, that changed our opinion of the project.”
With the expanded project now including what are called “areas of mutual interest” between RI and Massachusetts in federal waters where the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement has jurisdiction, encroachment on the fishing grounds became a problem to the fishermen.
“They actually selected our best fishing waters for the project,” said Bellavance. "So we started to oppose the new development. But they were not as cooperative as we wanted. We faced a much larger project in the worst area to put it. If they had asked, we would have told them that.”
Noting that the fishing industry was still supporting the smaller Block Island demonstration project, the larger-scale project didn’t find favor with the fishing industry.
“We were OK with a smaller-scale project that would help Rhode Island,” Bellavance explained, in contrast to the expanded 200-turbine project. But he noted that now the project intrudes into waters where commercial and recreational fishers caught “codfish, Bluefin tuna, sharks and black sea bass – they’re important to all of us.”
Included in the new area, and cited by both Bellavance and CRMC executive director Grover Fugate, the project leader for the Ocean SAMP, are scallop grounds that are of major significance to the Pt. Judith and New Bedford fishing fleets.
Too Much Energy
A commercial scale offshore wind farm capable of generating 1,000 megawatts exceeds what RI needs or can handle, which is about 450 megawatts, according to CRMC's Fugate. This frees up electricity that can be sold elsewhere.
Deepwater’s announcement of plans to sell electricity to the Long Island Power Authority raised immediate questions of the rates at which it would be selling. But for Fugate and the fishermen, it brought up the issue of what impact the transmission cable needed to carry the power to a future landfall on Long island would do to the Ocean SAMP area.
Fugate has noted in conversations with GoLocalProv that there are questions about the electromagnetic fields created by transmission lines, as well as the fact that the sea floor areas that the lines would have to run through were major routes on lobsters’ annual inshore-offshore migration path. There has also not been a great deal of research done in that area regarding the use of transmission cables running through and under it.
As always with environmental impacts, not knowing what the consequences may be could be more frightening than what you already know. But disrupting a lobster industry that has already felt the negative impact of shell disease and other setbacks is not a step easily taken.
Deepwater Still at the Table
Paul Rich, Deepwater’s chief development officer for Rhode Island, was as close to an ever-present as you could find during the Ocean SAMP development process. He also wants people to know he and his company are still at the table in working with the fishing community.
Of the emerging “about-face” and opposition among the fishing community to the Deepwater expansion and extension, he said, ‘That’s a shame. I think they are missing the bigger picture. The affects of acid rain and fossil fuel generation will have more bad effects on their fishing stocks” than what Deepwater is proposing.
Rich dismisses concerns about the transmission cables that will run to landfall on Long Island if their deal goes through in New York, saying the direct current transmission that will be used has little or no electromagnetic field impacts, and is safely in use in Europe. Most of the electromagnetic problems that he knows about are potentially in alternating current lines, which Deepwater does not plan to employ.
He acknowledges the validity of fishermen’s worries about the intrusion onto Cox Ledge, and defers to the fishermen’s judgment on the prime grounds. But Rich says that Deepwater has also tried to avoid siting wind turbines directly on the Ledge, and through the use of larger 6 megawatt turbines, has been able to move the projected siting of the turbines to in some places nearly a mile apart, making transit in the area easier for boats.
Price-Point Considerations
Many of the decisions that have led to Deepwater’s increasing the size of the project boil down to “price-point” considerations for the energy being sold, and in purchasing the turbines from overseas manufacturers. “Simply, if you buy in bulk, you pay less,” he said, invoking the concept of economies of scale that are generated by larger developments. And by producing more renewable energy through wind, the company also can come down closer to the current, lower price-point of fossil fuels.
“We are trying to sort this out, “ said Rich. “Fifty to 75 turbines wouldn’t get us the (competitive) price point that 200 turbines will.”
Rich says Deepwater remains committed to working with the fishing industry as the project proceeds. “No one has shut the door on either side,” he said. ‘We are trying to accommodate everyone.
“We have a process (in the Ocean SAMP),” said Rich. “We’re not flailing our arms helplessly. We have a table to discuss it around.”
“We’ll reach a positive,” he said.
Which both sides agree will take a great deal more discussion.
Collateral Damage?
“We still have some unanswered questions about the project,” Bellavance said. “Will it work? Will it hold up? What will it cost?”
He added, “What of the unintended consequences? Are we becoming collateral damage?”
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