Energy Needs and Whales

I don’t know if you saw the article about whales in the newspapers or have seen the news on TV: In the last two months, eight whales have washed up dead on northeastern Atlantic shores.

The newspaper accounts didn’t name the species, but from the photographs they appeared to be mostly baleen whales. They were huge. After examination, they were buried on the same beaches where they washed up.

At the same time, those same Northeastern states have been planning and carrying out preliminary work to have wind turbines installed offshore in contiguous waters to generate electricity.

New York State and its Long Island territories have been at the forefront of this effort, particularly in the ocean off East Hampton’s shore. This column covered the state’s earlier efforts to get such an effort underway.

Indeed, the new governor, Kathy Hochul, and a party of fellow politicians were shown digging into the beach (a good ways away from the spot) where the cable transporting the electricity from an array of wind turbines was to come ashore in Wainscott.

The cable has since come ashore, and a giant earth-moving device is in place out in the ocean waiting to install those giant turbines that the Danish firm, Ørsted, is paying to install. There will be more than enough electricity for East Hampton. The rest is to be sent through PSEG cables, to be installed at a later date, all the way to New York City.

Since then — in protest? — the whales have been dying like flies. Can they read? Did somebody tell them? We don’t know how they found out, but whales are not dumb.

But the New York Democrats and the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, in overseeing the projects, don’t seem to mind. After all, what is more important, a few whales or clean energy?

One government group has been keeping an eye on the migratory movements of one of the rarest whales to be impacted, the right whale, of which there are a little more than 300 individuals left.

We should point out before we go any further that wind energy, although it is clean, is not the same as the solar energy generated from solar panels. While solar energy is almost free, and those who have solar panels installed have a much lower electric bill than those who will be using the electricity generated by the offshore wind turbines, wind energy is not almost free. Electric rates throughout the town may even go up. But the well-to-do will have the pleasure of saying their electricity is among the cleanest produced.

However, the land-based poles carrying the electricity will still stand along the roadsides, and as PSEG is installing taller ones along the north-south Sagg Road, between Sag Harbor and East Hampton, they may get even higher.

What will the town do with the several million dollars it will receive from Ørsted? It has yet to be worked out, but the East Hampton Town Trustees are sure to receive a big chunk of it, as they have worked so hard to see this project take shape and become manifest.

Politics has begun to enter into the picture. The Republicans finally have an environmental issue they can support. They have rallied around the whales, while the Democrats have not uttered a peep.

When it comes to the federal government, we find that it has been going in both directions. NOAA is taking good care of the right whales along our coast, while BOEM could care less. It derives its powers from the Department of the Interior and is more interested in oil and other natural resources — and now wind energy.

The one thing I hold sacrosanct is that the sun has been around much longer than the winds blowing off the Atlantic coast. Solar panels on roofs, where there is adequate sunlight, should become the law.