David Wojick
In formal comments, CFACT has asked EPA to assess the adverse impact of the giant Virginia offshore wind project on air and water quality. The issue is far-reaching because all big offshore wind facilities could have these adverse effects.
CFACT points to three specific impacts, two of which come from what are called the “wake effects” of operational offshore wind facilities. Both effects have been observed and modeled in large European offshore operations. I discuss these wake effects in my article HERE.
The first effect CFACT calls the reduced energy air plume. They explain it this way:
“The wake effect is the well-established fact that the air flow downwind of an operating wind turbine has significantly less energy than the air flow upwind. This is because the turbine’s job is to remove energy from the air flow, converting it into electricity. By some estimates, 50% of the energy is removed.”
The Virginia offshore wind facility is removing energy from a 150-square-mile area, thus creating a massive reduced energy plume. The adverse impact is that this plume could increase the ozone levels in nearby urban areas. Ozone flourishes in low energy air.
Immediately onshore from the Virginia wind facility lies the city of Virginia Beach. This sounds like a little tourist town, but it is, in fact, Virginia’s biggest city. It is half again bigger than Pittsburgh.
Virginia Beach is presently in compliance with the EPA ozone standard, but not by much, so the adverse impact of the offshore wind-reduced energy plume is a serious concern. This will be a concern for other coastal urban areas that are onshore of big wind facilities. EPA should be required to take a hard look at this potential impact of reduced energy air on ozone compliance.
The second wake effect is, in a way, the opposite in that there is too much energy. Each wind tower causes turbulence in both the air flow and the water currents as they pass by. This turbulent energy disturbs the sea floor so much that it creates a suspended sediments plume that flows with the current.
Here again, we are talking about a 150-square-mile plume generator, so the result could be massive. There is a large body of scientific literature on the potential adverse impact of these sediment plumes on marine life.
CFACT points out that EPA appears to be ignoring this serious impact in violation of the Clean Water Act. An impact of this magnitude should require a permit under the CWA, but no such permit has been made public.
Perhaps it has not occurred to EPA to apply the CWA to offshore wind facilities. But it should. The law applies to the “navigable waters” of the US. The Virginia facility is certainly in navigable waters, as several shipping lanes have to be rerouted around it. All the offshore wind facilities presently in development had better be in US waters as the Feds are collecting billions in lease payments for them.
At this point CFACT is merely raising the question, why isn’t the Clean Water Act employed in offshore wind industrialization?
The third issue CFACT raises is technological. EPA is considering issuing an air quality permit for the construction and operation of the Virginia facility. Their primary concern is the exhaust emissions from the huge number of boat trips involved.
CFACT points out that other countries are starting to use electric boats in order to avoid these emissions. In fact, there are service boats specifically designed to be charged directly from the wind facility’s output.
The Clean Air Act requires EPA to call for the best available control technology. Electric boats would seem to fit this requirement, and the firms employed in carrying out this construction should be required to deploy them.
Given these facts, it appears the EPA has not been doing a proper job of offshore wind impact assessment and permitting under both the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.
Read CFACT’s official submission here
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It cuts both ways when elected politicians can’t make the decisions-
Narrabri gas project appeal granted on public interest (msn.com)
At some point in the future these windmills will be removed and/or replaced. Has the cost of replacement or returning these waters to their pristine natural state been included in planning?
https://therufffarm.wordpress.com/2012/11/19/do-not-miss-the-dust-bowl-tonight1/
re: “At some point in the future these windmills will be removed”
Are wind farm owners required to pay into a fund (like nuclear plant operators are) to cover the future cost of removal (‘I don’t think so’ would be my default assumption.)
YES! The Taxpayers will have to fund it, as usual….
“”why isn’t the Clean Water Act employed in offshore wind industrialization””
Why is a blind eye turned to the carnage of onshore wind (and solar) on birds, bats etc? The West over.
My answer to that is ‘blind faith’.
No blind faith, but the big $bucks for multi-millionaires, who live in the poshest places, to enable them to long-term, fatten their tax shelters, with 10% for the big Guy and his well-heeled political, grifting and grafting cronies, who are beating Wall Street experts year after year; just ask Pelosi and her husband
Yes, but a clerisy, a new priesthood, is nothing without its congregation. And they believe. True, mostly angst-ridden middle class people, but they believe and they have some influence as teachers, doctors etc.
The Theocracy of the Damned; they would fill every level of Dante’s circles of Hell.
It appears to me that extracting energy from the climate by either wind or solar, on land or offshore, is going to have an impact on the climate. Why is this not obvious to everyone? Free energy…NOT.
So…man made climate change?
Nope…Mann made Climate Change!
You understand.
The climate changed long before man walked the earth.
The math says clinate has to change. Climate is average weather. Weather is chaotic and in chaotic systems the averages oscillate so constantly change.
Is Weather Chaotic? Coexisting Chaotic and non-Chaotic Attractors Within Lorenz Models
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-70795-8_57
The problem is the persistent belief in a “free lunch” – this has been going on for ages. The notion of a “philosopher’s stone” is a great example. Some magical piece of rock would make acquiring gold so much easier than digging in the earth or panning in streams to get it!
Wind and sunshine are free in the sense they are always there, at varying times. Rain is also free, but if you want to store it up, you will have to build a cistern. Or, dam up a river and build aqueducts to transport the water to where it is needed and used, as the Romans did. Speaking of running water, its energy is also free, but you must build a mill or a power plant on said river to capture it.
For some reason, there are a lot of people who don’t understand this concept.
But worse yet with regards to wind and solar power, using solar panels and wind mills to collect those “free” energies would be like using thousands and thousands of large buckets or other containers to catch rain water. Instead of tapping a river and piping the water to where it is going to be used. Imagine how much land millions of large containers (and the environmental impact of such) would take up – just to collect rain!
We don’t do this with rainwater because it just isn’t worth it. Drawing from rivers and aquifers is so much easier and works so much better. Same thing with wind and solar – it is so much simpler to drill for gas or oil, or construct nuke plants to generate consistent and high levels of electricity. But yet money is wasted and the environment negatively effected by the greens’ “rain barrels” – wind and solar….
That is a very interesting and logical comparison.
From AN ACCOUNTING AND SUMMARY OF OYSTER RESTORATION PROJECTS IN THE GULF OF MEXICO FUNDED BY DEEPWATER HORIZON OIL DISASTER FUNDS
“Few of the projects discussed reef height as a necessary consideration in project planning….. Although most completed projects met or exceeded their construction goals, the oysters have not responded as expected and production goals have generally not been met.”
For years there have been a number of papers about restoration problems, follow-up a major one. Build it and ‘they’ will come.
Depends what you mean by “proper job”.
The original EPA charter, one that was crafted from hysteria over Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring”, was concerned about the Cuyahoga River catching on fire and Love Canal. Since then the participants in the early mission are either dead or enjoying fat pensions, and has quickly blew past the business phase and has been for the past generation a racket, particularly when we see the politically weaponized Sue & Settle model being the basis for much of the EPA’s business model.
The EPA’s job is to crush human flourishing and replace it with being a “fixer” for Party interests. If the Party is deriving good vig from a particular industry, the EPA understands this arrangement and in duty to the Party goals, will either hyper-enforce some vaguely written environment codes, or will blatantly ignore violations until the scheme (offshore wind) has been fully milked for whatever grift can be obtained.
Then the offshore wind will be Pump & Dumped, the original note holders will profit, and the Mark who take administrative control of the boondoggle, will then experience the heavy jackboot of the enforcement branch of the EPA and pick up all kinds of fines, penalties and other punishments.
That is considered the “proper job” of the EPA in particular, and Western bureaucracies in general.
The EPA was not created out of hysteria. It was created to correct many serious environmental problems then occuring. The Cuyahoga River no longer catches fire. Love Canal and other sites like it were remediated and new Love Canals prevented. When I was in Pittsburgh in the early 1960’s the air carried soot from nearby steel producers and that soot was often capable of eating up the paint on your car. This too has been corrected as has the air quality throughout the US. The current problem with EPA is that it is a large Federal Bureaucracy that was created to solve many specific serious problems and having done this, nonetheless remains a large Federal Bureaucracy whose new function is to ratchet down and down environmental standards regardless of need and create new unneeded ones, because that is what they do, and obstruct application of others, because that is what their political leaders and pressure groups demand. It is the job of Congress and the President to redo the charter of EPA so that it no longer is a simple drain on the taxpayers and businesses. Sadly, our current Congress and President are simply incapable of considering any such constructive action.
Yup. The (real) problems the EPA was founded to address were solved years ago for the most part. At this point, best it be disbanded and leave things up to State departments of environmental protection.
Now there’s an interesting picture.
Flotilla of wind turbines all connected to barges toting massive batteries to supply recharging centers to enable overseas transportation of goods by Eboats. Or do the far simpler thing and convert shipping to nuclear power like many Navy Vessels.
Nuclear power in ships is not simple.
Batteries and electric motors is much less costly and quicker to implement.
Just consider the factor of necessary shielding along with training.
If you need a “ship” that can only travel a few 10’s of miles, batteries and electric motors might work. If you need a ship to cross the oceans, they will not work and there is no technology on the horizon which would allow them to do it. And fyi, radiation shielding is a very important but fiscally small part of the effort needed to build and operate nuclear powered ships.
The navy does it all the time, no reason why the Merchant Marines couldn’t as well
Show me a battery ship that can cross a 5000 mile ocean without needing to recharge and can then recharge in the time it takes to unload cargo and reload additional cargo.
Show me a battery ship that can travel from China, up the Suez and into port in Italy carrying 24,000 TEU (containers) and pulling 25 knots without needing to stop and recharge 50 times along the way.
The only way shipping will become electric and remain viable within today’s standard is with nuclear. Battery can’t pull the load and deliver in the same timeframe. Perishables would rot. Then, one battery mishap and the entire load is lost.
Just consider being in the middle of the ocean with dead batteries.
Expect to see more of this except sparked by the ships massive battery megapacks
Or in a hurricane….
All the leaves are brown….and the sky is gray….and it’s rainin’……rain with plastics in it….why?…..you know why….Global Warming….what else?
And when it comes to onshore turbines the BLM and USFWS are modifying the Eagle Take permit process to make a more predictable environment for the wind developers. Isn’t this outside the remit of these agencies? Shouldn’t they produce process consistent with the Migratory Bird and Eagle Protection Acts dating from 1912 and 1940 respectively, which is part of their mission statements?
From all appearances the Federal government now appears to be organized to:
1) Run interference for green energy no matter how destructive or cost ineffective.
2) Prevent critics from saying inconvenient or mean things
3) Protect the Biden family
WORLD’s LARGEST OFFSHORE WIND SYSTEM DEVELOPER ABANDONS TWO MAJOR US PROJECTS AS WIND BUST CONTINUES
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/world-s-largest-offshore-wind-system-developer-abandons-two-major
EXCERPT
Opposition to Wind Turbines in New Jersey
The cancelled Ocean Wind 1 and 2 projects were extremely unpopular in New Jersey, prompting widespread protests and aggressive congressional opposition, led by Jersey Shore lawmakers Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ).
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/11/02/foreign-company-cancels-hated-nj-offshore-wind-plants-after-whale-deaths-protests-blames-bidenflation/
Local commercial and recreational fishing industry professionals fear the wind turbine maritime leases would:
1) prevent them from making a living,
2) kill off thriving fisheries, and
3) destroy century-old traditions along the Shore.
“The commercial fishing industry is extremely upset with the visual observations of dead whales floating at sea,” Brick Wenzel, Point Pleasant Beach.
He is New Jersey’s fishing industry liaison, and a longtime commercial fisherman.
He told Breitbart News in March. “One vessel reported, they had seen 3 different whales in one trip.
Another had parts of a whale come up in their net.
Most of the captains are generational fishermen, and are in their 60s — no one has heard of, or seen anything like the carnage of whales”
The federal government has documented 66 whales stranded, including 10 in New Jersey, along the Atlantic Coast, up till October 2023
New Jersey has documented another 45 dolphins washing ashore in 2023
“The cancellation of the projects is a very, very big deal, and in my mind a good day for fishermen, for our tourism and our coasts, for whales and dolphins and life in the ocean, a good day for national security, and finally, a good day for our taxpayers and ratepayers,” said Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ).
Addition
Damage to Whales, Porpoises, Dolphins
A sparker may damage/destroy the echo-locating, sonar systems of whales, dolphins, etc., which significantly reduce their communication, navigational and food-finding abilities.
They become disoriented, get hit by ships, cannot find food, cannot find their mates, and wash onto shores
https://tos.org/oceanography/article/acoustic-impacts-of-offshore-wind-energy-on-fishery-resources-an-evolving-source-and-varied-effects-across-a-wind-farms-lifetime
.
The dB values in air are referenced to 20 microPa
The dB values in water are referenced to 1 microPa
The energy of a sound wave, SPL, in dB = 10 log (Pa^2/Pa ref^2) = 20 log (Pa/Pa ref.)
Physical damage in air occurs at a measured Pa = 60, equivalent to 130 dB
In the image:
The circle has a measured diameter of 50 km (30 miles)
The dark-red band sounds, near the pile driver, are 170 dB
The green band sounds are 130 to 140 dB, 25 km away
Sound attenuation from 170 dB to 140 dB is 30 dB, after 25 km of travel in about 16 seconds
Each 10 MW wind turbine foundation requires a huge mono-pile
Very nice.
If shipping lanes have to be rerouted, that means ships are being required to travel further.
Surely this will result in these ships burning more fuel, which will have an impact on air quality.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again.
They have not given a moment’s thought to the negative consequences of extracting energy from the wind and the Sun.
And here we have a fine example of the EPA, while chasing non-solutions to imaginary problems like CO2, ignoring ACTUAL environmental impacts of worse-than-useless wind and solar.