Feds Clear South Fork Wind To Begin Constructing Wind Turbines off Montauk

The U.S. Department of the Interior last week issued the final regulatory approval needed for the South Fork Wind Farm, clearing the way for the construction of the 12 turbines to be assembled and anchored to the sea floor 30 miles southeast of Montauk this summer.

South Fork Wind’s developers, Ørsted and Eversource, said that the project is still expected to come online by the end of 2023 and be the first utility-scale offshore wind farm in U.S. waters.

Currently, only the five-turbine Block Island Wind Farm is delivering wind-driven energy from offshore to East Coast states, but nearly a dozen other projects, totaling hundreds of turbines in the New York Bight and in the ocean between Block Island and Nantucket, are in various stages of design and review and are expected to come online over the next several years.

The turbines to be used for South Fork Wind are Siemens Gamesa 11-megawatt turbines, the most powerful offshore turbines currently in production. Each turbine will tower some 740 feet from the ocean surface to the tip of the blades. The blades themselves are more than 600 feet from tip to tip.

Crews began laying the first section of the undersea cable that will connect the wind farm to the beach in Wainscott, some 50 miles away, last month. On land, the finishing touches are being put on the construction of a new power substation in Cove Hollow and repaving roads dug up to bury the four-mile onshore cable.

The turbines will be anchored to the sea floor at Cox Ledge, an undersea plateau southeast of Block Island popular with fishermen. Critics have said that the construction — in particular the driving of piles to anchor the turbine foundations — could pose a threat to fish like cod that live and spawn around Cox Ledge.

The project was given the official green light in November 2021 by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

New York State has set a goal of drawing 9 gigawatts — 9,000 megawatts — of power from offshore wind by 2030, and the Biden administration has set a national goal of 30 gigawatts in that same time frame.

“Two years ago, President Biden issued a bold challenge to move America toward a clean energy future,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement following the final sign-off for the South Wind Project. “The Interior Department answered that call and is moving rapidly to create a robust and sustainable clean energy economy with good-paying union jobs.”

Offshore wind rollout has been somewhat rocky in the United States. The Block Island Wind Farm, which came online in 2016, has been plagued by technical issues in recent years, resulting in some of the turbines being inoperable for months at a time last year.

At the same time, opponents of offshore wind development have blamed survey work for the coming developments for a rash of whale deaths along New York Bight coastlines — though scientists have said there’s no evidence that survey work causes any distress to whales, and that the sorts of bottom scanning they are doing does not employ the most powerful sonars that critics say are harmful to sea life.

Federal officials this week sought to reassure that the construction and operation of South Fork Wind and other offshore developments will be environmentally safe.

“The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has the important responsibility of reviewing renewable energy projects and is committed to ensuring they will be built and operated in a safe and environmentally sustainable manner,” BSEE Director Kevin Sligh said in a statement from the agency.