Viewpoint
By Seth Grossman
“The tide is turning. Our efforts are bearing fruit. However, we need to keep reaching more out-of-town visitors during the next few weeks.”
Eustace Mita gave that message at what began as a typical fundraiser for Republican Congressman Jeff Van Drew at his Icona Resort Hotel in Avalon. However, Mita used it to mobilize and organize opposition to 198 giant ocean wind turbines just off our beaches by Orsted, a Danish company.
Van Drew, Cape May County attorney Michael Donohue and Princeton attorney Bruce Afran also spoke. They all presented arguments against turbines as follows:
Wind turbines offer no positive benefits. The electricity they produce is too weak, diffuse, and intermittent to power a grid. They are wasteful and expensive. They don’t save fossil fuel or prevent climate change. They kill whales and other marine wildlife. They need constant maintenance and need to be replaced every 20 years. They are failing in Europe.
Van Drew said that ocean wind turbines do not offer a single positive benefit. All the corporations, politicians and community groups pushing for them are doing it for one simple reason –massive amounts of government money. Last August, President Biden and Democrats in Congress enacted the “Inflation Reduction Act”. Ironically, that law borrows $370 billion, cheapens the dollar and is causing inflation, Van Drew posited.
The “Inflation Reduction Act” mandates that this $370 billion of borrowed money be spent on “clean energy projects” around the country. They include building 198 giant ocean wind turbines off the Long Beach Island, Brigantine, and Ocean City beaches. These projects are not “clean”. They do not produce useful energy.
These companies plan to make huge profits from this government money and big electric rate increases. They are paying lots of money to contractors, unions, and environmental and community groups for political support.
“The quickest way to make companies like Orsted go away is to dry up the money” according to the congressman.
Van Drew said he and Republican Chris Smith (Monmouth, Middlesex, Burlington/Ocean County) have made progress in persuading fellow members of the House of Representatives to oppose funding for ocean wind turbines. With the help of committees chaired by Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, Orsted must now get approval from the GAO (General Accounting Office) and appear before another congressional hearing before getting federal approval and funding.
Eustice Mita, who organized the event, owns Achristavest Luxury Home Builders as well as Icona Resort hotels. He is also the first non-clergy president of the worldwide Papal Foundation created by Cardinal Krol in Philadelphia in 1988.
Mita said our most important job is to inform everyone we know and get them to pay attention. “I know people with $15 million homes on the beach who know nothing about the proposed wind turbines, or how they will destroy the value of their properties. We need to reach them!
“The three biggest industries in New Jersey are tourism, pharmaceuticals, and fishing these 198 giant wind turbines will cripple tourism and fishing.
“These wind turbines will be taller than the Ocean One Casino and just as visible from miles away. The ocean will look like an industrial park, day and night. The massive foundations needed to support them will completely change the ocean floor.”
Mita described a recent conversation he had with a well known state legislator. Here is what the legislator said, and how Mita responded:
1. “Ocean Wind off New Jersey beaches is a done deal. There is nothing we can do to stop President Biden, Governor Murphy, and the $370 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act”. Mita explained that Ocean Wind turbines are NOT a “done deal’: Congressman Van Drew described how we are pushing back in Congress. Our lawyers will explain how we are stopping the federal government in court.
2. “ Wind turbines will cause less fossil fuel to be burned, and will reverse climate change”. Mita cited received government sponsored studies that found that even if the federal government builds and installs all 1,500 wind turbines now planned for ocean waters off New Jersey, they will not affect global temperatures by a single degree.
3. “Ocean wind turbines will create 1,500 good paying union jobs”. Mita explained how 198 giant wind turbines will destroy far more than 1,500 good jobs by hurting hotel/motel tourism and fishing industries.
4. “198 Orsted wind turbines will ‘power’ 400,000 homes with electricity.” Mita pointed out this is true only if the wind blows at 26 miles per hour, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. However, it never does. On many days, there is less wind or no wind at all. Fossil fuels must be burned when there is not enough wind, and also to be ready for when there is not enough wind. During one recent “wind lull” in England, the English used their dirtiest coal to keep their grid running.
Many Democrats are also turning against ocean wind turbines. Democratic legislators in Washington State, Oregon, and Maine recently joined Republicans in urging the Biden Administration to “slow down” approvals of ocean wind turbine projects.
Mita also said they are reaching out to voters and taxpayers in Denmark warning them that the Orsted project is migration paths of endangered whales and is at risk of losing billions of dollars. The government of Denmark owns 51 percent of the stock of ocean wind developer Orsted.
A Spanish company (a unit of Iberdrola) just canceled a wind project in Massachusetts. Rhode Island rejected a bid by Orsted to build wind turbines there. England just canceled an ocean wind turbine project by the Swedish company Vattenfall AB.
Michael Donohue is a Cape May County lawyer, former judge, and the Republican County Chairman for Cape May County. He now represents Cape May County government in two lawsuits opposing ocean wind turbines. One seeks to deny Orsted permission to dig up county owned streets and use other county properties to install electric cables. The other seeks to set aside a recent New Jersey law that seeks to give Orsted millions of dollars of federal tax credits that are supposed to lower electric bills for consumers.
Bruce Afran is a lawyer from Princeton. He was retained by three groups fighting the Orsted ocean wind turbines. They are Save Long Beach Island, Defend Brigantine Beach, and Protect our Coast NJ.
Afran is an unlikely ally. For 37 years, Afran represented clients in high profile civil rights and constitutional law cases for mostly “woke” causes.
In 2017, Afran brought lawsuits that delayed and then stopped natural gas pipelines in North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Connecticut.
Afran said is looking for a legal “monkey wrench” to stop the Orsted wind turbine project the same way.
His first lawsuit claims that the New Jersey DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) failed to follow New Jersey law when it gave control of our ocean floor to the federal government. The DEP was required to determine that the Orsted wind turbines “will not injure New Jersey’s coastal zone”.
According to Afran, the DEP could not do that because previous, undisputed studies admitted that:
“The wind turbines will destroy marine habitat, compress the seafloor, severely damage marine communities, compromise migration corridors for endangered marine mammals, cause commercial fishing stocks to decline, and injure the beach economy.”
Afran also described other lawsuits being brought.
One would allow local town and county government to deny Orsted and other wind turbine developers permits to dig up streets and use public land for their electric cables.
Another would void the recent state law giving millions of dollars of federal tax credits to Orsted. Those tax credits were intended to reduce electric bills for consumers.
Afran said that these lawsuits will probably cost roughly $400,000.
However, he said the effect of these lawsuits would be to “make Orsted and other wind turbine companies go away. These lawsuits will convince them that they will lose billions of dollars if they continue to sink money into this project”.
Afran said, the billion dollar tourism and fishing industries should find it worthwhile to come up with that $400,000.
