February 22, 2021 — The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which recently finished its draft environmental review of the South Fork Wind Farm, gave the public a chance to weigh in on the document at three virtual public hearings in mid-February, and is accepting further written public comment through midnight tonight.
While much of the focus on the wind farm locally over the past several years has been the local and New York State Public Service Commission review of the wind farm’s export cable, currently slated to come ashore at Beach Lane in Wainscott en route to a substation in East Hampton, the BOEM review focuses on the wind farm itself, 15 turbines slated to be placed in federal waters about 30 miles off the coast of Montauk.
At the series of virtual hearings on BOEM’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the wind farm, many labor union leaders spoke in favor of the wind farms, while many representatives of fishing communities in both Rhode Island and Montauk expressed concern not only about this wind farm, but about what the future development of the wind farm area surrounding the South Fork Wind Farm, which could be developed on a scale orders of magnitude greater than this wind farm.
Local environmentalists also weighed in on the project, expressing support both for the project and for robust environmental protections and review during the construction and operation of the wind farm.
Some commenters also weighed in with concerns about the reliability of wind turbines, especially in the wake of the disastrous blow that cold weather dealt to the Texas energy industry in mid-February, which some lawmakers blamed on frozen wind turbines, which played a small role in the energy grid shutdown there.