Tag Archives: David Collins
New London: Does Orsted/Eversource charter of NL fishing boats violate city lease?
Many fishermen resent the interference in the waters they regularly use and suggest still-unknown harm will be done to undersea environments and marine life. But I didn’t realize until recently that wind partners Orsted and Eversource actually have a fishing fleet strategy, chartering some fishing boats to “scout” for their wind turbine work in offshore fishing waters. One fisherman I met recently, Rob Morsch, claims the big utilities are driving a wedge between fishermen by “buying off” some of them with thousands of dollars in daily charter fees. Morsch raises the interesting point that the mooring of the boats being used for offshore wind, he calls them “windmill boats”, is a violation of the city’s intent, with its low-cost rent, to have a fishing fleet based there. >click to read< 08:10
Bad Press for Block Island Wind Farm! The blades ain’t turning, questions of cables, and huge $$$ extra’s!
The Block Island wind farm has largely shut down – And so I can understand why no one wants to talk about how four of the farm’s five turbines have, without any public notice, stopped running this summer. I spent the better part of a week trying to learn why, It was an unsatisfying explanation. More troubling, the reburying of the cable, The last estimate to rebury the cable was $30 million, I can understand why Ørsted and the other wind company contenders jockeying for new development up and down the Eastern Seaboard might be worried about bad press for the Block Island system, given the growing opposition to wind farms from the fishing industry, consumer activists and coastal communities where cables are proposed to come ashore. Thank you for the exposure, David Collins! >click to read< 12:58
The NIMBY oyster people
I have covered, over the years, a lot of animated public hearings, more than I could ever count, in which neighbors turned out to protest things they wanted to stop: all kinds of egregious development, buildings too big, lights too bright, too much parking, too much traffic or general commercial sprawl. I don’t think, though, I have ever seen such a whiny, self-satisfied and selfish group as those, many of them waterfront property owners, who have been turning out to protest a proposed oyster bed in Stonington’s Quiambaug Cove. They are lawyering up, too. click here to read the story 09:17
