Dear Supporters,                                     

I am glad to announce that the Atlantic Shores South wind project off of Long Beach Island (LBI) and Brigantine, NJ has been sunk. Shell New Energies, a 50 percent owner, is stepping away from it - notably twenty days after Save LBI filed a comprehensive federal lawsuit against the project. The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) has decided not to make a new enabling subsidy award to it. The existing BPU award that it had for project 1 will be terminated without penalty.

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Our sincere thanks to all of you who have made this possible.

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Save LBI is gratified that the Atlantic Shores South project has been tabled. This is a major
victory for shore values, communities, others and common sense. But there is also unfinished business here to ensure that this project, or a similar one, never reappears, and that the flawed federal and State processes and impact assessment methods that carried such a costly and damaging project this far are fundamentally changed. 

There are a number of ways to do that.

 

1. Federal Legislation.  The removal of the investment tax credits and other incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act would insure that these companies will not make sufficient return on their investment here.

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2. Cancelling the Lease Area.  An effective way to permanently end this project- and prevent future projects in the same area - is to cancel the lease area itself. Only the Interior Department can do that. We have written to Secretary Burgum suggesting that, and will be filing a formal petition asking for cancellation. Our recent federal lawsuit provides ample justification for such a cancellation, but we do not yet know whether the Interior Department will do that or how long it will take.

 

3. Overturning Prior Project Approvals. The prior Atlantic Shores project approvals can be overturned. Atlantic Shores or any new project would then have to start over with a new environmental impact statement, and other applications. This requires a Court judgement so we must continue our lawsuits. It is possible now that Justice Department lawyers may agree with some or all of our claims. A Court judgement that the Atlantic Shores approvals were not lawful and overturning them would set a precedent for other cases because the methods used elsewhere were similar. 

 

4. Protecting the North Atlantic right whale.  A safe migration corridor along the East Coast is essential for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. We will soon be filing a petition with NOAA (the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) to designate a migration corridor for the right whale as critical habitat. That petition will demonstrate that offshore wind projects in that corridor would seriously impede or block the whales migration. So we will ask that any and all wind projects be excluded from that critical habitat corridor. The Atlantic Shores lease area is entirely within the migration corridor we will propose.

 

5. Process Change and Education.

The Administration is conducting a welcome review of the leasing and permitting practices for these projects. We too should reflect on how a project with virtually no benefit, high cost and and significant environmental damage got so far. Our work on this over the last few years showed that the entire process of site selection and project review was fundamentally flawed. The public was excluded from the selection of the lease area, the most important decision. Alternatives to the company’s proposal were excluded from the environmental impact statement rendering it essentially worthless in terms of fostering wise environmental decisions. Opposition groups were excluded from the preparation of documents prepared under the Endangered Species act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Noise-related impacts to marine mammals have been systematically and significantly underestimated, and changing those methods is paramount to protecting these animals for any offshore project. 

Save LBI will do what it can to correct these defects. We will continue and expand our efforts to inform the public, the media, and our elected representatives as to the true costs and impacts of these projects, on the leasing, environmental review, and financing practices used and how they should be changed, and provide constructive energy supply options to keep the lights on.

 

Join us on February 16th, World Whale Day. We will be marking our progress and committing
to the work ahead on the Seaside Park boardwalk at the Funtown Beach Pavilion (Stockton
Ave) at 1PM on February 16th as shown above. We welcome your presence there, your
continuing support, and any suggestions.

 

Thank you again for standing with us in this fight.

 

Bob Stern 

Save LBI