Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind Would Be 'Destructive,' Opponents Say

LONG BEACH ISLAND, NJ — A local organization is vowing to continue the fight against offshore wind at the shore following the recent federal approval of the Atlantic Shores South project.

The Atlantic Shores South wind project, consisting of Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind Project 1 and 2, would put up to 195 turbines off the coast between Atlantic City and Long Beach Island, according to authorities. It would be about 8.7 miles off the shore at its closest point. Last week, it received approvals from President Joe Biden's administration. Read more: Wind Farm Approved Off Atlantic County Coast: Biden Administration

Save Long Beach Island, a local grassroots organization dedicated to fighting offshore wind, has denounced the project and called its approval misguided.

Bob Stern, president and founder of Save LBI, said the farm was "an aberration."

"The project violates a number of statutes and must be stopped, which is why we are challenging it in court. We have one lawsuit pending and will be pursuing at least seven other avenues of legal intervention," Stern said in a statement.

According to Save LBI, Atlantic Shores South "will be destructive on numerous levels."

Impacts, according to Save LBI, include "irrevocably" destroying the shore experience visually, harming tourism, getting in the way of commercial, military, and fishing vessel traffic and potential harm to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, which migrate along a corridor within and adjacent to the farm.

However, the Bureau of Ocean Management (BOEM) said that these factors would be further damaged by climate change without offshore wind.

While many offshore wind opponents have been concerned about the impact on whales, experts have frequently refuted this, saying there is no correlation between wind and whale deaths. Though wind development could produce noises that disturb marine mammals, it is not as severe compared to seismic airguns used in oil and gas surveys or tactical military sonar, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

"They [sounds from wind geophysical surveys] produce much smaller impact zones because, in general, they have lower noise, higher frequency, and narrower beam-width. The area within which these sounds might disturb a marine mammal's behavior is orders of magnitude smaller than the impact areas for seismic airguns or military sonar," NOAA said. "Any marine mammal exposure to sound from these surveys would be at significantly lower levels and shorter duration, which is associated with less severe impacts to marine mammals."

Humpback whales in particular have been experiencing what NOAA calls an "Unusual Mortality Event" along the Atlantic coast since 2016, which predates offshore wind activities in New Jersey.

"Vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear are the greatest human threats to large whales," NOAA said. Climate change is also an ongoing risk to nearly all marine mammals, according to authorities.

"This is a project in search of a purpose. The Atlantic Shores South project is sheer folly, predicated only on clean and green slogans," Stern said. "The agency has never seriously considered any alternative to it, but fortunately we do have laws that discourage such arbitrary agency action."

The Atlantic Shores South project is expected to generate up to 2,800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power close to one million homes, according to BOEM.