Committee to Focus on Wind Farm Rate Effect
The East Hampton Town Trustees’ harbor management committee, which has served as an unofficial liaison between residents and Deepwater Wind, the Rhode Island company that plans to build an offshore wind farm some 36 miles from Montauk, will hold its next meeting on Wednesday at 6 p.m.
Rick Drew, a trustee and co-chairman of the committee, said at the trustees’ meeting on Monday that one topic will be the proposed South Fork Wind Farm’s cost to the community, including the cost to customers of PSEG Long Island, which has signed a contract to purchase electricity from Deepwater Wind.
In addition, “we will be covering resiliency, specifically resiliency of our energy grid,” Mr. Drew told his colleagues. He hoped for the attendance of a guest speaker, who he said “was just in the Caribbean in an official capacity” to survey the recent hurricanes’ impact on electrical grids, “and what may happen, via simulation, if a serious hurricane were to hit East Hampton, and how we may want to plan accordingly.”
As of yesterday, the meeting’s location had not been determined. It may be held at the Donald Lamb Building on Bluff Road in Amagansett, which houses the trustees’ headquarters, but a larger venue may be chosen to accommodate the anticipated turnout. The Oct. 4 meeting of the committee, which also focused on the South Fork Wind Farm, was held at Scoville Hall, also in Amagansett.
At the committee’s December meeting, Mr. Drew said that he expects Deepwater Wind officials to present findings from post-construction surveys around the Block Island Wind Farm, a five-turbine installation built by Deepwater Wind. That installation, the nation’s first offshore wind farm, began operation last December.
The trustees, who have jurisdiction over many of the town’s beaches, waterways, and bottomlands on behalf of the public, have committed to announcing their position on the proposed South Fork Wind Farm by the end of this year. Opinion is divided in the town, with fervent support from environmentalists and opposition from commercial fishermen, in particular. Candidates for the trustee board, who will be selected in the Nov. 7 election, are similarly split.
“We want to have this project work where it’s going to be safe and not harm anybody,” Brian Byrnes, a trustee, said on Monday, adding that the body is performing due diligence and acting as “messenger for the community.”
“We get an answer to a question” about the project, said Diane McNally, “and it leads to more questions. Unless and until all those questions are answered, the way it has been presented does not have my support.”
The terms of all eight sitting trustees expire at the end of 2017, and six of the current trustees are running for re-election. One seat on the board was left vacant after the resignation of Pat Mansir in April.