Whaling to Wind Farms: How Ports are Pivoting
Plus the latest on congestion pricing in New York City
The boats tied up at Gary Yerman’s dock have long trawled for scallops and squid. But they have recently been used for something else, too: scouting and security work for a trio of wind farms under development several dozen miles off the coast.
I met Gary recently in New London, Connecticut, where I traveled for my latest article in The Wall Street Journal. The city of 28,000 residents represents a rebirth in some Northeast ports, the beneficiaries of aggressive clean-energy goals in the region that are creating the first commercial offshore wind construction sites in the nation. Before the wind farms’ megawatts reach the grid, the projects are already transforming cities such as New London and New Bedford, Mass., once best known for their whaling fleets in the era of Moby Dick.
The 73-year-old Yerman, who has worked in commercial fishing for 50 years, can see yellow tower cranes unloading big steel pieces from his desk. They were shipped in from Scandinavia to form 12 turbines for South Fork, a 132-megawatt project east of Long Island. Officials say that this is the busiest the century-old State Pier has been in years, following a $300 million upgrade.
Dozens of people will be employed here bolting together tower sections that will then be anchored offshore, company officials said. Engineers filled in 7 acres between two finger piers to create a reinforced space to lay them down. Mayor Michael Passero, a Democrat, said he hoped people will come to watch towers longer than a football field be loaded onto installation ships.
“It will be sort of like a rocket launch down in Cape Canaveral,” he said.
I worked on this article with my colleague Jon Kamp in our Boston bureau. Kayana Symczak took beautiful pictures around New London. While there’s new activity, we found that the wind-energy transformation has been turbulent at times, and the boom the ports are betting on is far from assured.
Many fishermen have objected to anchoring turbines to the ocean floor in East Coast fishing grounds—and still fear for their livelihoods—though some have found added work aiding the new developments. Developers behind several wind farms slated to use these ports say they need to renegotiate power-sales contracts to cover soaring costs. This month, the largest utility in Rhode Island walked away from a proposed 884-megawatt project after determining the required subsidies were too expensive for customers to bear.
The cost of the pier upgrades in New London grew from an estimated $93 million in 2019 to more than $300 million—about $200 million of which is coming from the state and roughly $100 million from developer Ørsted. Some Republican officials have questioned whether public subsidies for wind, including the port face-lifts, are worth it.
“If the future of the State Pier is to be built up as a major cargo hub for decades, it makes sense. If it’s just to build out a few wind farms and then have a behemoth that nobody’s using, perhaps less so,” said GOP state Rep. Holly Cheeseman, who grew up in New London and represents nearby suburbs.
CONGESTION PRICING: There was news this week which builds on last month’s post about congestion pricing. New Jersey sued the U.S. Department of Transportation on Friday for its role approving New York’s planned congestion toll, arguing the federal government should conduct a fuller environmental-impact study of what would be the nation’s first congestion pricing system.
The Federal Highway Administration, or FHWA, doesn’t comment on pending litigation, a spokeswoman said. A spokesman for New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which will oversee congestion pricing, said the lawsuit was baseless and that the authority’s environmental review “covered every conceivable potential traffic, air quality, social and economic effect.”
“Some may call this strategy hardball,” said U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat. “If any state, be it New York or any other, wants to shake down New Jerseyans in order to balance their budget—they have another thing coming.”
THE QUESTION: While I was in New London I saw a cool exhibit at the Maritime Society on a famous slave ship that was brought into its port. What is the ship, which was the subject of a 1997 movie?
Have an answer? Drop me a line at jimmy.vielkind@gmail.com. Or just write with thoughts, feedback or to say hi.
THE LAST ANSWER: Charles Evans Hughes served as New York governor, U.S. secretary of state, U.S. Supreme Court chief justice and was a Republican presidential candidate. I was in Glens Falls when I walked past the house where he was born.