February 25, 2025 — Vineyard Offshore’s Rick Musiol cut right to the chase when he and a colleague stepped before the microphone Thursday afternoon to bring Westporters up to speed on a project that many fear could see high-current electric cables come ashore at Horseneck Beach, laid along the bottom of the Westport River, and finally trenched up Route 88 to points north:
“Our intent is to land our project in New London County, Connecticut,” said Musiol, the director of external affairs and community engagement for Vineyard Offshore, which is working to develop the Vineyard Wind II project off the coast of Nantucket.
His colleague, Carrie Hitt, was just as direct:
“We have no indication that we would go anywhere but New London at this point,” she said.
For more than a year, many Westporters have feared that Vineyard Offshore, which is currently building Vineyard Wind I off Martha’s Vineyard and is in the planning stages of Vineyard Wind II, would choose Westport as its preferred landing site for the 1.2 gigawatts of power the wind farm would eventually generate.
There has been good reason for that concern, as a Vineyard Offshore plan on file with the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) lists Westport alongside New London as a potential landing point for that power.