Tag Archives: Mayor Michael Passero

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

I liked Mayor Passero’s State Pier comments before he signed a gag order

I am sorry to say that not only did New London Mayor Michael Passero sell out the other victims of Gov. Ned Lamont’s $200 million remake of State Pier from road salt contractors and longshoremen to local fishermen when he signed a deal with the rich utilities that will profit from the project. But he settled cheaply. We all know that Eversource has legions of Connecticut politicians in its back pocket. I assume the utilities have prepared a T-shirt for Mayor Passero, with a big “E” for Eversource on the front and an “O” for Orsted on the back, and he might be expected to wear it whenever they call a news conference, jerk on his leash and demand a performance, as they are enabled to do by the host community agreement. >click to read< 09:53

Key Word -“displaced”: New London wants state to fund new pier for displaced fishermen.

The city is calling on the Connecticut Port Authority to help establish a new home for two commercial fishing businesses being displaced from State Pier. The city says it’s found a spot on its waterfront for a new pier but doesn’t have the money to fund a project. Mayor Michael Passero is calling on the port authority to provide the funding. The fishermen — Montville-based Donna May Fisheries and Waterford-based Out of Our Shell Enterprises — are among the tenants of State Pier being displaced by a $157 million project to redevelop it into a staging and assembly hub for the offshore wind industry.  The redevelopment project is a partnership between the Connecticut Port Authority, Ørsted and Eversource. >click to read<  07:56

The “Silicon Valley of renewable energy”? – New London gets shorted in the wind deal

There was enough hot air blowing around New London for the recent announcement about plans to spend $93 million for a new wind turbine assembly facility here to light up more than a few quadrants of the state’s power grid. The politicians and wind power purveyors who secretly have been hatching this plan for many months in back rooms finally pulled back the curtain to congratulate themselves and tell the public, who will pay for it all, what is to be foisted on them. >click to read<20:44