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Long Island Power Authority Chairman Kevin Law Wednesday said he will "terminate" a controversial project to install 40 wind turbines off the coast of Jones Beach, dealing a fatal blow to a plan alternately portrayed as an environmental necessity and an economic boondoggle. The decision follows Law's review of a recently completed independent report on the economics of the $700 million project that he said showed its costs to be "significantly" higher than traditional forms of energy generation or even a new energy-efficient plant. Legislators and citizens groups have criticized the plan since it was proposed in 2003, but a small cadre of environmental groups, some with financial ties to LIPA, had been among its most ardent supporters. Recently, even some of those proponents have expressed surprise at the soaring cost of the project. Law emphasized that the decision, which he will discuss with trustees at a Sept. 22 LIPA board meeting, doesn't mean an end to wind power proposals for Long Island. He will continue to pursue that source of alternative energy, he said, including possibly land-based windmills, at other locations. The Jones Beach location, he said, is off the table. "While I'm a supporter of renewable energy, I've decided this project doesn't make any economic sense, and I will recommend to LIPA trustees that we terminate it," Law said in an interview with Newsday. He said he'll work with local wind-energy advocates, including Gordian Raacke of Renewable Energy Long Island and Neal Lewis of the Neighborhood Network, to research possible wind proposals that "make economic sense." Law said he has already met with the groups to inform them of his plan. Lewis Wednesday said he looks forward to going back to the drawing board on a wind-energy plan, agreeing the economics should have been discussed long ago. "I think a number of things went wrong with the whole process," he said. "We indicated years ago that cost issues should have been brought out in a more forthright way." Environmental activist Richard Schary, who has long criticized the deal's unknown finances, said his concern had always been that the project "was not about the environment." Rather, he said, "it was about the money." Other long-time critics hailed Law's decision. "This is a victory for common sense," said Babylon Supervisor Steve Bellone, who Wednesday announced an effort to block placement of a planned transmission cable from the farm through beaches in his district. "It's a victory for the ratepayers of Long Island who ultimately would have borne the overwhelming burden of this costly, symbol project that ultimately would have delivered very little energy," Bellone said. When LIPA first announced the plan, it estimated the cost to be between $150 million and $200 million. But LIPA did not disclose actual costs until Newsday filed a Freedom of Information Law request last year. Initially, LIPA denied the request, but on appeal it provided limited and outdated information disclosing that from FPL Energy's winning bid for the project in 2003 was $356 million. Newsday later reported that the cost had ballooned to $650 million by last October. LIPA, at Law's request this summer, disclosed the December 2006 cost to be just shy of $700 million. In an April 2002 assessment, LIPA consultant AWS Scientific estimated energy from the wind farm would cost between 6 and 9 cents per kilowatt hour, then well above the 4.5-cent average LIPA paid. At the time, LIPA said advances in wind-power technology were continuously lowering the cost, so that electricity from the wind farm would be competitive with electricity from traditional sources. But analysis since then by Dowling College's Long Island Economic and Social Policy Institute showed the cost would be more than six times that of standard power in the latter years of the contract. Babylon supervisor Bellone by then had been banging the cost drum for more than a year, in August of 2006 calling the developer "the Halliburton of Wind Power." A spokesman for FPL Energy declined to comment, noting, "We
have not heard from LIPA relative to their intentions on the offshore
project."
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QUICK FACT: The
"Pencil" at Robert Moses State Park stands 200 feet tall. |
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Central Long Island Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation (SurfriderCLI): Resolution to Protect and Preserve our oceanfront state and national parks from LIP A and FPL ENERGY's Proposed Offshore Wind Turbine Facility
DOWNLOAD ABOVE RESOLUTION: (doc) |
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QUICK FACT: Storms do not mean "more
power." |
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Central Long Island Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation (SurfriderCLI): Resolution to Protect and Preserve our oceanfront state and national parks from LIP A and FPL ENERGY's Proposed Offshore Wind Turbine Facility
DOWNLOAD ABOVE RESOLUTION: (doc)
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| ARTICLES (MOST RECENT NEAR BOTTOM): 11.02.06 NEWSDAY: High-profile campaign for planting turbines off Jones Beach wasn’t just ... Blowing in the wind The high-profile campaign for a 40-turbine wind farm off Jones Beach may appear at times to be a spontaneous groundswell, but documents released to Newsday show a well-organized playbook behind the scenes... DOWNLOAD ENTIRE 11.02.06A ARTICLE: (pdf)
11.02.06 NEWSDAY: A powerful price Records show LIPA customers would be hard hit by higher energy costs if plans to build a wind farm off the South Shore get the go-ahead Energy from the proposed South Shore wind farm will cost Long Island ratepayers as much as double the wholesale cost of energy from other sources, according to previously confidential bidding documents obtained by Newsday... DOWNLOAD ENTIRE 11.02.06B ARTICLE: (pdf)
11.01.06 newsday: LIPA records reveal some wind-farm costs Energy from the proposed South Shore wind farm will cost Long Island ratepayers as much as double the wholesale cost of energy from other sources, according to previously confidential bidding documents obtained by Newsday... DOWNLOAD ENTIRE 11.01.06 ARTICLE: (pdf)
10.30.06 Newsday: Wind power’s payoff in Denmark It’s a global leader in the technology, and turbines are a common sight, but criticism and challenges persist NYSTED, Denmark - Well beyond the entrance to the
harbor in this remote village on the southeastern shores of Denmark, the
array of wind turbines looms like a band of synchronized swimmers, giant
arms spinning soundlessly as a gentle wind rakes the coast. A block away, at the Nysted Sail Club, Jorgen Elgaard uses a four-letter word to express his opinion of the 72 turbines erected four years ago. At night, the red blinking lights atop the windmills turn the waterscape beyond the harbor into a disco, he says - and the power comes at a premium he thinks is too steep - in Europe a few cents more a kilowatt-hour. “You’ll get mad looking at all those red flashing lights,” Elgaard says... (Long Article Explaining How in Denmark Turbines not what originally promised) DOWNLOAD ENTIRE 10.30.06A ARTICLE: (pdf)
10.30.06 Newsday: LI, Mass. projects would be 1st in U.S While large offshore wind farms have been spinning in Denmark for a half-dozen years, they have no U.S. counterparts - though that could change if proponents of two first-time projects off the coasts of Long Island and Massachusetts have their way... DOWNLOAD ENTIRE 10.30.06B ARTICLE: (pdf)
10.30.06 Newsday: LI, Mass. projects would be 1st in U.S While large offshore wind farms have been spinning in Denmark for a half-dozen years, they have no U.S. counterparts - though that could change if proponents of two first-time projects off the coasts of Long Island and Massachusetts have their way... DOWNLOAD ENTIRE 10.30.06C ARTICLE: (pdf)
10.25.06newsday: LIPA records reveal some wind-farm costs Energy from the proposed South Shore wind farm will cost Long Island ratepayers as much as double the wholesale cost of energy from other sources, according to previously confidential bidding documents obtained by Newsday... DOWNLOAD ENTIRE 10.25.06 ARTICLE: (pdf) 09.14.06 NEWSDAY: LIPA goes slow on turbine plan With companies lining up proposals to submerge tidal-power turbines in more than a hundred square miles of water off Long Island, the Long Island Power Authority is using its position as gatekeeper to the local electric grid to call for a measured approach to the largely untested technology... DOWNLOAD ENTIRE 09.14.06 ARTICLE: (pdf)
09.13.06 MASSAPEQUA POST: WINDFARM SCOPING PROPOSAL URGED Town of Babylon Supervisor Steven Bellone is calling on the Attorney General's Office and federal officials to investigate possible violations of federal environmental regulations concerning the public comment process overseen by the US Department of Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) DOWNLOAD ENTIRE 09.14.06 ARTICLE: (pdf)
08.31.06 NEWSDAY: BELLONE AIRS CONCERN OVER WINDMILL PROJECT The public comment period for the controversial plan
to put a wind farm in waters between Jones Beach and Robert Moses State
Park may have ended. But that hasn’t stopped Babylon Supervisor
Steve Bellone from publicly criticizing the company that wants to place
40 windmills off the shore of his town. DOWNLOAD ENTIRE 08.31.06 ARTICLE: (pdf)
03.09.07 NEWSDAY: DATA PROBLEMS DELAY WIND FARM REVIEW The federal agency reviewing plans for a 40-turbine wind farm off the coast of Jones Beach Thursday said it would delay release of a much-anticipated report on environmental impacts of the controversial project. The first draft of the environmental impact statement for the proposal, which was scheduled to be released this month or next, has been postponed for months because of data collection delays, regulators said. "It is taking longer than anticipated to gather the raw data needed to conduct the [National Environmental Protection Act] analysis," for the draft environmental impact statement, said Nicolette Nye, a spokeswoman for the Minerals Management Service, in an e-mail. DOWNLOAD ENTIRE 03.09.07 ARTICLE: (pdf)
04.02.07 NEWSDAY: REPORT: LIPA WIND FARM COST TOO STEEP The proposal to build a 40-turbine wind farm off the South Shore would enrich its contractor with "extraordinary" returns while "saddling" Long Island ratepayers with a 20-year-plus contract for energy at "excessive" prices, a new study of the project's economics has found. Scheduled to be released this week, the study, by the Long Island Economic & Social Policy Institute at Dowling College, questions the initial $356-million construction cost of the project and suggests LIPA explore the alternative of funding and building the wind farm itself, which it says would be cheaper. "Wind energy makes sense for Long Island, but this contract does not," said the study's author, Mark Greer, a professor of economics at Dowling. DOWNLOAD ENTIRE 04.02.07 ARTICLE: (pdf)
04.18.07 NEWSDAY: WIND-FARM PROJECT COSTING OVER $600M The target cost to build a wind farm in the waters off Jones Beach ballooned well past $600 million as of last fall, according to a source briefed on the LIPA-backed project, who said the escalations have put the proposal "on life support." In addition, the updated fall proposal by contractor FPL Energy requested new contingencies that would require the Long Island Power Authority to bear some of the risk of the project beyond FPL's set costs. LIPA could benefit, however, if the project - FPL's first off-shore wind-farm - came in under budget, according to sources familiar with it. DOWNLOAD ENTIRE 04.18.07 ARTICLE: (pdf)
04.24.07 NEWSDAY: TOWN: GIVE US THE FULL PICTURE Study in Babylon shows LIPA wind farm project view is limited Photo simulations submitted for LIPA’s proposed offshore wind farm offer a limited, possibly undersized view of the 40-turbine array as it will appear in South Shore waters, a town supervisor charged yesterday. After a study it commissioned last fall by a third-party imaging firm, the Town of Babylon produced its own photo simulations of the wind farm and found that, by comparison, the turbines portrayed in the Long Island Power Authority’s submissions “look smaller,” according to a report expected to be released today.DOWNLOAD ENTIRE 04.24.07 ARTICLE: (pdf)
With a report from LIPA about the financial feasibility of its offshore wind-energy project due out in weeks, two state senators are calling on the authority to immediately scuttle the costly plans. DOWNLOAD ENTIRE 08.10.07 ARTICLE: (pdf)
08.09.07 NEWSDAY: Pols Call on LIPA to Dump Wind Farm At a news conference, experts / pols called on LIPA to instead spend the $700 million in projected construction costs for the 40-turbine [wind]farm on projects such as commercial sola installations, solar panels for ratepayers' homes or overhauling the regions antiqued fossil-fuel power plants. DOWNLOAD ENTIRE 08.09.07 ARTICLE: (pdf)
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QUICK FACT:
Count how many turbines you see above? (Answer:
20) |
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Action Alert Dear Supporters, Thank you Surfrider Central Long Island - - - -
DOWNLOAD ACTION ALERT: (doc) |
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QUICK FACT: The
"Pencil" you see at Robert Moses State Park is just over 9 miles
away when looking diagonally from Gilgo Beach, Babylon. |
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ARCHIVE NEWS: 07.11.06 MINERALS MANAGEMENTSERVICE PUBLIC HEARING MEETINGS A great presence was made at at Minerals Management
Service (MMS) scoping meetings held on July 10 in West Babylon and July
11 in Massapequa. Almost 1000 people showed up on Monday and nearly 500
on Tuesday to urge their concerns within 3 minute allotments to the a
panel of MMS representatives and their fellow community members. Despite
radical views both pro and con the project; the underlying notion was
to urge the committee to require a full Environmental Impact Statement
(EIS) to ensure environmental, migratory, aquatic, and electromagnetic
effects are taken as serious concerns. We urge you to contact your governing officials (see our local campaign> letter section for a script you can simply download, print, sign, and send) to share YOUR VIEWS on this proposed Windfarm project. Surfrider also needs ANYONE interested in protecting the parks to help out an hour or so every weekend down at the beaches educating the public about the project and gain support for keeping industrialization out of our state beaches. |
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