New York’s monstrous new wind farm threatens environmental disaster

Some local residents have always opposed the Empire Wind project. Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, condemned it as “the industrialisation of our ocean, rubber-stamped by federal agencies and delivered by a foreign-owned corporation under the guise of climate action”.

She warned that the project involves dumping 3.2 billion pounds of rock into the ocean and pile-driving 180-foot monopoles into the seafloor – activities that she said could destroy marine habitats and threaten the fishing industry. Endangered species like the North Atlantic right whale could also be harmed, she added.

Opposition to Empire Wind is not an isolated case. In Massachusetts, the Vineyard Wind 1 project – a 62-turbine wind energy plant off Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard – recently survived a Supreme Court challenge. Approved in 2021, it was the first large-scale offshore wind project in the US and is expected to deliver 800 megawatts of capacity. Construction began in 2022 with cable installation and continued in 2023 with turbine installation. It is on track to be completed this year but has faced a substantial backlash.

The Nantucket-based ACK for Whales group has criticised the “environmental damage caused by offshore wind projects like Vineyard Wind”. It added: “for way too long the ‘all of government approach’ advancing offshore wind has been reckless”.