Falmouth Town Meeting Article 15 Ocean Wind

Most people live or move to Falmouth because it is a famous vacation destination and is mostly residential and a retirement community with a large boating community enjoying beach days, ocean swims, and sunset cruises.

Article 15 gives permission for offshore wind contractors to test sites in Falmouth. State officials will take any positive vote including amendments to Article 15 at Falmouth Town Meeting as an approval to go forward with the project.

The Falmouth ocean wind construction is being done rather than an expensive ocean submarine cable from the offshore wind site to a large city in Connecticut or Rhode Island. The plan calls for placing an industrial project in Falmouth so the state wind agenda can quickly meet and reduce transportation-related emissions by 18% by 2025. The state’s goal is to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and many Cape communities will be asked to sacrifice rather than place expensive ocean submarine cables.

The Falmouth proposed offshore wind high voltage direct current to high voltage alternating current electric substation is six acres or to put it in perspective over 4 football fields. This size substation is called a Grid substation or a substation you would find at the back of a commercial power plant in Boston.

The Pilgrim nuclear plant was operated at a maximum of 680 megawatts and when you approached the plant you could hear the transformers humming as they fed power into the grid. The offshore wind's first group of cables to the Falmouth substation is 800 megawatts.

Either of the two proposed locations place the electric plant in the Falmouth aquifer.

The Falmouth offshore substation will be built within federal EPA guidelines as would a large substation at an 800-megawatt nuclear plant.

Chronic oil leaks, fires, and lightning strikes are the single most significant problem for electric power substation infrastructure, primarily transformers. In the event of a fire, containment does not generally guarantee safety.

The noise levels of a large substation run around 80 decibels which the Falmouth bylaws require a maximum of 6 decibels. Fence mitigation will be required for residential homes in the area.

Beach construction could last up to three years as cable construction through town streets will only take place a few months of the year. The proposed cable route under ball fields and parks in the Falmouth Heights and Marivista neighborhoods is land given to the town for recreation and residential use.

The offshore wind company has asked the state to bypass all the Falmouth bylaws in particular the wind turbine zoning approved by Town Meeting.

The town has been behind closed-door (executive sessions) negotiations for a Host Community Agreement for three years with the offshore wind company. There has only been one public meeting on June 8, 2022. Past HCA agreements show around 20 million for twenty years with a small percentage added each year for a little over one million per year for 20 years. The yearly budget of Falmouth is 150 million. The wind company is offering less than one percent of the yearly budget.

A Host Community Agreement creates a partnership with the town absolving the wind company of any future litigation bypassing all Falmouth zoning and bylaws.

After three years the town has no risk-based assessment or studies of a large 6-acre grid electric conversion substation and associated buried 800-megawatt cables in relation to proximal residential locations.

Article 15 has no standing as by statute, all Town property is held by the Select Board.

The recommendation should be Indefinite Postponement and not allow any amendments to Article 15.