![]() Orsted’s project has been in the works since 2019, and in the early days, there was little public furor, and almost all of the complaints concerned the view. Initially, that might not have been an inaccurate description. If view concerns were the only factor, it might be easy to dismiss the dissenters as a group of wealthy, self-interested, shortsighted Shore homeowners concerned only with their property values and being able to sit on their balconies and see nothing but the clear, encroaching ocean. The local Ocean City government has followed suit, placing signs along the boardwalk with a more realistic simulated view of the turbines from the beach and posing the question: “At What Cost?” Anti-wind groups have taken this and run with it, putting up billboards with the message STOP OFFSHORE WIND and an image of gigantic, not-to-scale turbines splayed across the sky. Maddy Urbish, Orsted’s head of government affairs, says they’ll be “very faintly visible on the clearest of days.” Orsted has submitted visual simulations, though, and in those images, the turbines look more than a little visible, appearing like rows of birthday candles on the glistening horizon. As sign after sign along the beach pointed out, Orsted’s turbines will be quite large: at 906 feet, taller than the Washington Monument, or, a little closer to home, Ocean Casino. By the time of its expected completion in 2026, Ocean Wind’s 98 turbines 15 miles offshore will power an estimated 500,000 homes and, at 1,100 megawatts, constitute the largest offshore wind development in the country. In Ocean City, the community angst concerns Ocean Wind 1, a project to be built by the Danish corporation Orsted. ![]() For most of the past two decades, wind power hasn’t been a particularly contentious issue. A poll taken near the end of his term in 2017 found that 75 percent of New Jersey residents supported offshore wind development along the coast. His predecessor, Republican governor Chris Christie, was an early offshore wind supporter. Democratic Governor Phil Murphy has pledged to produce 11,000 megawatts of wind energy by 2040 - one of the most ambitious targets in the country. In this context, offshore wind might not sound like such a bad idea. More than 20,000 homes, worth a combined $13 billion, have become newly at risk of frequent flooding since the 1980s - figures that are only projected to rise. Sunny-day floods in Atlantic City, for instance, have swelled from less than once a year on average in the 1950s to eight times a year this century. Even if you don’t believe in “climate change,” as one sign on the beach pointedly scare-quoted it, it’s increasingly difficult to argue with the reality on the ground. The devastation of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 isn’t a distant memory. According to a Rutgers University report, sea level there has risen 18 inches over the past century - more than double the global average. By all scientific accounts, the Jersey Shore has already been highly affected by climate change and sea-level rise. ![]() If you haven’t been tuned into the minutiae of Shore politics, this scene could seem a little confounding. Many protesters wore white t-shirts reading STOP THE WINDFARMS - a message from Protect Our Coast, a small nonprofit that cropped up in the past year and a half to oppose the construction of giant offshore wind turbines, which, the protesters claimed, would destroy the Jersey Shore, both for the humans who enjoy going to the beach there and for the wildlife living in the ocean. He was a local real estate agent named Rich Baehrle, and he was shouting about a matter of great importance: “Stop the windmills!”īaehrle was among the more dedicated protesters on the beach, but there were hundreds in all, stretching from a wooden pier to a rusted drainpipe. Technically speaking, the creature wasn’t a whale it was a human dressed as one, wearing a full body costume. At the shoreline, people stood together in a row, watching the creature before them. It was a warm summer day in July, and the beach was packed as tight as a mosh pit. Black and white, of average height and stocky build its mouth was agape, revealing a set of pointy white teeth. There was a whale on the beach of Ocean City. ![]() ![]() Anti-wind-power signs at the Ocean City beach in July / Photograph by Rachel Wisniewski/The Washington Post/Getty Images ![]()
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