By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Ocean City is taking its legal battle against an offshore wind energy farm to the next level, even though the company that was supposed to develop the project no longer plans to build it.
During a meeting Wednesday, City Council agreed to hire a law firm to represent Ocean City in its appeal against the state Board of Public Utilities over the agency’s approval of a transmission line that would have connected the offshore wind turbines to the land-based electric grid.
City Business Administrator George Savastano said the appeal is part of Ocean City’s ongoing legal strategy to oppose the wind farm, despite the developer’s announcement on Oct. 31 that it is withdrawing from the project.
“If it’s still active in the courts, it’s the city’s position that we should see this through,” Savastano said in an interview after the Council meeting.
He also noted that the city will continue its legal fight because there is the possibility that another company could come in and try to revive the wind farm project.
“This particular developer has withdrawn. That’s not to say that another project will not happen,” he said.
Earlier this year, the BPU granted an easement and regulatory permits for the wind farm’s underground transmission line, which would have come ashore at the 35th Street beach in Ocean City and crossed through environmentally sensitive wetlands along the route.
The line would have followed 35th Street to Bay Avenue, then north on Bay Avenue to Roosevelt Boulevard, west across Peck Bay at the 34th Street Bridge and then continued on to Route 9 to property near the former B.L. England power plant in Upper Township. Ultimately, it would have connected to an electric substation at the old plant.
In its ongoing legal fight, Ocean City is challenging the BPU’s authority to grant approval for the transmission line. The city also has argued that an alternative route for the line was never properly considered.
City Council voted 7-0 Wednesday to hire the Atlantic City law firm of Cooper Levenson to represent Ocean City in the appeal against the BPU. The contract with Cooper Levenson is estimated at $40,000 annually, according to a Council resolution.
Orsted, a Danish energy company, had planned to build the wind farm 15 miles off the South Jersey coast. Altogether, 98 towering wind turbines would have stretched from Atlantic City to Stone Harbor, passing by Ocean City in the process. However, Orsted announced on Oct. 31 that it was withdrawing from the project.
The company blamed inflation, rising interest rates and supply-chain disruptions for its decision to scrap the wind farm as well as another one that had been in the planning stage off the South Jersey coast.
Orsted began preliminary work for the transmission line on 35th Street in September. Opponents tried blocking the work the day it began, resulting in six protesters being arrested.
In their opposition to the wind farm, elected officials representing Ocean City and Cape May County asserted that the project would have caused devastating economic and environmental damage to the tourism industry, commercial fishing, migratory birds and marine life such as whales and dolphins.
Ocean City is involved in another lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of state legislation, approved in 2021, that took away local control over transmission lines and other onshore infrastructure from municipalities and county government in an effort to fast-track wind farm projects in New Jersey.
The suit claims the legislation unfairly stripped Ocean City and other local communities of New Jersey’s longstanding tradition of “home rule.”
In other business at Wednesday’s meeting, Fourth Ward Councilman Dave Winslow was sworn into office following his uncontested win in the Nov. 7 election.
Winslow was appointed in August to fill a vacancy on Council created when former Fourth Ward Councilman Bob Barr resigned to take a seat on the Cape May County Board of Commissioners.
Winslow then ran in the Nov. 7 election to retain the seat for the remainder of Barr’s unexpired term through June 30, 2024.
All four of City Council’s ward seats will be up for election next May for a full, four-year term. Winslow confirmed that he plans to run in the May election for a four-year term.
“My job is to do the best that I can for the Fourth Ward. I absolutely love it,” Winslow said in an interview after he was sworn into office Wednesday by Mayor Jay Gillian.
Council normally holds its meetings on Thursdays, but shifted this meeting to Wednesday in advance of Thanksgiving.
