Falmouth Offshore Wind Drinking Water Gamble

Falmouth Massachusetts

In June of 2022, an offshore wind limited liability company proposed a 6-acre HVDC, high-voltage direct current converter station in the Town of Falmouth.

The converter station and buried cables could in the future handle up to 2400 megawatts of power up to 345,000 volts or over three times the output of the old Pilgrim nuclear power plant. The plant changes high-voltage direct current power from the offshore wind turbines to high-voltage alternating current to send power off Cape Cod.

Falmouth a vacation destination, boating, and retirement community will become a pioneer for one of the first HVDC converter stations in a residential community in the United States. The town in the past became a pioneer in megawatt wind turbines which were removed in 2022.

The impact that the Falmouth HVDC project may have on property values, humans, wildlife, vegetation, aquifer, soil, and lack of health studies has yet to be determined but may be ignored for the Beacon Hill political agenda.

In 1982 the US Environmental Protection Agency designated the Cape Cod aquifer as the sole source of drinking water for Cape Cod.

Brayton Point near Fall River is building an HVDC converter station on a contaminated Brownfield site while the Falmouth site is on the Cape Cod aquifer and a nearby reservoir in which the population depends on 100 percent of its drinking water.

A study is also being done for a proposed HVDC converter station in the Bronx New York where a one-quarter-mile setback is being requested by a nearby Museum.

Accidents do occur in these plants. In 2021 the British power plant in Sellindge in Kent, England had a fire accident at the 2000 megawatt HVDC converter station in which the building imploded.

Setbacks are required for noise, radio frequencies, and fires.

The issues are catastrophic accidents including lightning strikes at electric substations resulting in contamination of the water. Concrete containment walls in the event of a large fire don't always work. These electric station fires require using foam which hurts the environment.

The town took a financial gamble and lost on the two town-owned wind turbines causing health problems with the abutters and the removal of the turbines.

The town can't take a gamble and lose the only 100 percent source of drinking water.

#Note: there are alternatives to the Falmouth onshore cables: The offshore wind contractors should use the planned ocean grid approach by using submarine cables to large cities like Hartford, Boston, and the old Canal Power Plant

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