Local Maryland Don Quixotes Take on the Turbines…and Win

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Local Maryland Don Quixotes Take on the Turbines...and Win 1

While I’ve been tied up with elections here and abroad as well as covering the Biden administration pumping unspent Inflation Reduction Act bucks out the door to any random tramp that flashes a Green thong at them…

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…Yesterday, the Department of Energy’s Inspector General sent a letter to the Under Secretary of Energy for Infrastructure that basically laid a whuppin’ on the whole spend-a-palooza.

KNOCK IT OFF WITH THE HANDOUTS

The Federal Government prohibits conflicts of interest to safeguard the taxpayers against selfdealing, collusion, and fraud by Government officials and Government contractors.  In the private sector, each party has a “baked in” economic incentive to watch, track, and account for its own dollars.  That economic incentive does not exist in the public sector, where Federal dollars are more likely to be treated as “monopoly money.”  For this reason, implementing and overseeing robust conflict of interest protections is a critical role for Federal officials. 

The Department of Energy Loan Programs Office (LPO) is administering more than $385 billion in new loan authority without ensuring a regulatory and contractually compliant and effective system to manage organizational conflicts of interest. 0F 1  This poses a significant risk of fraud, waste, and abuse.  Congress issued this unprecedented volume of loan authority in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Inflation Reduction Act, and related legislation. 2  The projects funded with this authority, which involve innovations in clean energy, advanced transportation, and tribal energy are inherently risky in part because these projects may have struggled to secure funding from traditional sources such as commercial banks and private equity investors.  

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…my girlfriend, TurnMDRed, has kept me up to snuff on how their fight against Maryland Governor Wes Moore’s off-shore wind plans has been faring. 

Now, she’s an inveterate, ardent, and skilled letter writer who, besides keeping the campaign alive in the local press, has been working with the other activists who’ve come together to try to save the Delmarva peninsula from the despoilation and destruction inherent in these boondoggles.

You might remember last year when I posted about the twin wind farm projects planned for the middle of the Carl Shuster Jr. Horseshoe Crab Reserve. The photos of the subsequent and unprecedented massive beaching and die-off of horseshoe crabs recorded on local beaches after surveying began horrified residents and conservationists alike.

Fast forward a year to this September.

…Where local opposition to the projection had been fractured, this seemed to be the galvanizing moment. People sat up and paid attention, not just to the local activists who’d been sounding the alarm (like our very own TurnMDRed here in the comments), but to seaside merchants who’d been saying, “Have you looked at the drawings? Do you see what the view from the beach will be?” and the assorted fishing groups, both pleasure and professional.

Merchants, mayors, fisherfolk, activists, and concerned citizens started banding together, sharing information, and educating themselves on permitting and environmental requirements in order to birddog every step of the process for errors or obvious favors done to developers.

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After all the opposition pleading to the Biden administration to rethink the permits and appeals from blue state governors (including MD’s Wes Moore) for financial help bailing out the projects for the states, collective breaths were held as they waited for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to issue its final yay or nay buying off on the project. When they did, it was devastating to anti-wind forces. Of course, the Biden administration was going for it.

But Maryland opponents were prepared for such an answer. In less than two months, the city of Ocean City, MD, and its partners had filed a 92-page federal lawsuit alleging the federal government had violated any number of federal regulations and statutes in their rush to approve the plan.

Everyone had an eye towards the 6th of November, with even a sour Bloomberg calling it an “election year play.”

All’s fair.

It turns out the folks in Maryland weren’t the only ones thinking of angles of attack. 

Delaware communities who were against the project have stepped up and may have helped deliver the coup de grâce.

While the lawsuit has to wind its way through court processes – or the eventuality of the Trump administration canceling it – the business of planning for building out the wind farm goes on. Or it did until a Delaware county took matters into their own hands to stymie the monstrosity.

Interrupting the parade of approvals was Sussex County.

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Their county council denied the permit to build the farm’s massive, ugly asterisk onshore substation near a local power plant and run the massive connector cables under a local beach.

We don’t see this as a Delaware problem, they said. Maryland wants it? 

Let them do it.

In a Sussex County council meeting on Tuesday, county leaders voted against a proposal that would have allowed an electric substation be built near Millsboro.

In a 4-1 vote, leaders denied Renewable Development LLC, a subsidiary of US Wind, a conditional use permit for land to build a substation near the Indian River Power Plant. The proposal involved bringing offshore wind power cables ashore under 3Rs Beach to the proposed substation.

The county council previously deferred its decision. 

“In my opinion, this application does not benefit the inhabitants of Sussex County,” Mark Schaeffer, 3rd District Councilman for Sussex County said in opposition to the proposal at today’s meeting. “None of the benefits flow to the residents of Sussex County or to the people of the state of Delaware. They all flow to benefit the state of Maryland.”

David Stevenson, the Director of the Center of Energy and Environment for the Caesar Rodney Institute, said he agrees with the council majority. Stevenson said that off-shore wind is a Maryland one, not a Delaware one. 

Perfection. 

US Wind execs were as pissed and ominously threatening as you could imagine.

…U.S. Wind’s CEO, Jeff Grybowski, told WBOC the decision was “anti-business,” and there was “no basis at all for today’s denial of our application– an application that the County’s Planning and Zoning Commission already unanimously recommended.” 

Grybowski went on to say, “It is obvious to everyone that the perfect place to build a new electric substation is adjacent to an existing substation, next to a big power plant, on land explicitly zoned for heavy industrial use. The region needs more electricity to grow the economy and support new jobs. Our new substation will deliver large amounts of clean power directly into the electric grid in Sussex County. But a few County officials ignored both these massive benefits and the law. We know that the law is on our side and are confident that today’s decision will not stand. Our plans to build the region’s most important clean energy project are unchanged.”

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Wait, whut – the “law is on your side”? Stuff a sock in it, dude.

The other terrific news is from feisty Ocean City, MD, again. Those Worcester County commissioners are letting no grass grow under their feet as they wait on their federal lawsuit.

US Wind had planned to use a couple of properties in West Ocean City Harbor to develop an operations and maintenance facility as it starts construction on the much-reviled wind farm. The entire character of the harbor would be changed forever, and the commercial and sport fishing, a traditional and vital part of the area, would be impacted severely, if not irreparably, forever.

I think the old phrase that’s applicable could be modified to the Worcester commissioners cut US Wind off “at the dock” instead of the pass.

On the largely undeveloped Delmarva peninsula – which is surrounded by the Chesapeake Bay to the west, the Atlantic Ocean to the east and includes portions of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia – local lawmakers are getting ready to take on a major international wind power company in an effort to save its crucial commercial fishing industry.

The Worcester County Commissioners in Maryland approved a resolution on Tuesday to acquire two properties in West Ocean City Harbor through eminent domain, which US Wind plans to develop into an operations and maintenance facility as it constructs a wind farm off the coast of Ocean City, Maryland. The action was taken in an effort to protect the county’s historic commercial and sport fishing industries.

The commissioners passed the resolution as US Wind, a subsidiary of Italian-based Renexia SpA, plans to construct a 353-foot-long-by-30-foot-wide concrete pier at the harbor to service vessels used to construct a proposed wind farm consisting of up to 118 turbines at least 15 miles off the coast of Ocean City. Along with the pier, the company plans to install 383 feet of bulkhead.

The two properties the county plans to acquire are currently being used by Southern Connection Seafood and the Martin Fish Company, which are the only two commercial seafood wholesalers in the area where watermen can offload and sell their catches.

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The US Wind rep pitched a fit there, too.

WAAH

It was a twofer the good guys yesterday.

Come January 20th, there may be even more good news brought on by a fresh breeze caused by the stroke of a pen.

Posted in Republican News