Deepwater Wind Opens Local Office, Will Present Ocean Survey Findings To Trustees

Offshore wind farm company Deepwater Wind will open a new office in Amagansett that will be the base of operations for its development of the planned South Fork Wind Farm.

The company will also be sending representatives to the East Hampton Town Trustees board meeting on Monday, December 11, to discuss the findings of environmental surveys thus far.

Deepwater, which constructed the first offshore wind farm in the United States off Block Island, will open its new office at 524 Montauk Highway on Wednesday, December 6, hosting an open house that evening from 6 to 8 p.m.

“We’re proud to be the first offshore wind developer to establish an office in New York State,” said Deepwater Wind CEO Jeffrey Grybowski. “Our new East Hampton office will be a great home for our Long Island team. While we’ve been active in East Hampton for many years, this new office will allow us to work even closer with local residents and become part of the South Fork’s business community.”

Deepwater Wind is a Rhode Island-based company that has leased a large area of ocean floor between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management that the company says has room for more than 200 turbines.

Deepwater has proposed building 15 wind turbines, each some 600 feet tall, in the ocean about 30 miles southeast of Montauk. Last year the company signed a contract worth more than $1 billion with the Long Island Power Authority for the purchase of the 90 megawatts of energy generated by the turbines for the next 20 years. Deepwater has said constructing the turbines will cost more than $700 million.

As proposed, the wind farm would connect to a PSEG substation in East Hampton via a 50-mile undersea cable that will come ashore somewhere in East Hampton. The original proposal called for the cables to come through Gardiners Bay and ashore in Amagansett, but criticism from baymen and the Town Trustees has spurred a new look at three oceanfront landing sites instead.

Deepwater reps will present an update on the progress of their environmental surveys in the region where the turbines are proposed to be built and along the cable route at the Town Trustees meeting on December 11 at 6 p.m.

The company has been battling pushback against the proposal from commercial fishermen who worry that the two-year construction process near prime fishing grounds, the noise of the turbines once they are operating and electromagnetic pulses from the undersea cable will impact traditional fish migrations through the area.