They’re in uncharted waters.
In a rare move, businesses and environmentalists have joined forces in court to furiously fight New York’s Empire Wind One offshore project, saying that it will devastate both the commercial fishing industry and marine life in local waters.
“A decade ago, we said it would affect fishermen, fisheries, and guess what? The state didn’t care,” said Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association.
“We are collateral damage — even though we feed people.”
The decade-long planned energy initiative, which began construction last April off the coasts of New York and New Jersey, faces a growing lawsuit from stakeholders in the tri-state area.
The Bronx’s massive Fulton Fish Market Cooperative, which employs around 1,200, and Nassau County’s Point Lookout Fishing Club, and the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association are some of the groups joining a legal action brought by environmentalists in the area.
Fulton’s CEO said that the project will “kill longstanding American port communities and economies” and grab “thousands of real jobs, a sustainable food source, and the heart of the NY restaurant and tourism industry” by the gills as well.
Ocean City, Maryland has also come out in opposition of another offshore wind project close to its coast as well.
Locally on LI, Brady explained that in Point Lookout and nearby Long Beach — a mere 14 miles from the Empire project in the New York Bight — boats must dramatically divert around the massive windmill poles to reach canyons for fishing.
“Think of cruising on the Long Island Expressway and suddenly there’s a bunch of telephone poles in the road.”
“They can’t go through these projects because, God forbid, they lose power. Then what? Then they’re just floating in the sea, so they can hit one of them,” she said, adding that fishing organizations in New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts are also in the lawsuit for similar reasons.
Beyond afflicting the industry, the intense, concussive noise and vibrations of the Empire Wind’s construction are deafening whales, advocates warn.
Environmental groups Protect Our Coast NJ and Clean Ocean Action are also driving the same legal action over the threat to local whales — including the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
“Some of them are going to be permanently deafened as a result of this project,” said Brady, who noted that three dead humpback whales were recently spotted off local shores.
“If you’re deaf and the sea is dark, and then you have to come up to the surface because you can’t hear or see what’s going on. Then you can be hit by a ship.”
Wailing on business
Billionaire John Catsimatidis has also been a staunch opponent of the project as well.
“Not only is it killing the fishing business on Long Island, they’re going to kill our whales, and they’re going to increase the price of electricity for homes,” he said.
“I talked to the President about it a few weeks ago…he hates windmills, but he wasn’t able to stop it because it was already put through before his term.”
Catsimatidis recently interviewed Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, who also is churning against the 180 foot tall windmills — ones which will cost New Yorkers about 2.5 times the market rate for electricity, per a recent analysis.
“If you’re not sure which way to go… you look at the map and you look at the economics, well, that should convince you against wind,” the Long Island based politician told Catsimatidis Sunday on WABC 770.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also expressed fears over increased sightings of dead whales around offshore wind sites.
“We’ve had 109 whale groundings in the last 22 months. And they’re all in the proximity of these new offshore wind farms,” Kennedy told Catsimatidis last month.
“In the 20 years before that, the average whale grounding was 2.6 per year.”
Kevin Halpin of the Point Lookout Fishing Club fears that the damage to marine life and the local ecosystem “could be irreversible.”
“All for a project which is dirty, dangerous to our safety, and completely inefficient,” he added.
Equinor, the company in charge of Empire Wind, did not immediately return a request for comment.
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