Ocean wind projects off California’s Morro Bay and Santa Barbara County — which could transform these quiet coastal towns — face a turbulent path.
Afternoon fog slowly covers Morro Rock, a major landmark in Morro Bay. The federal government has leased 376 square miles of oceans waters off Morro Bay for floating wind farms. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight LocalMassive ocean wind farms off Morro Bay and Santa Barbara County — which could transform these quiet coastal towns and affect marine life — face a turbulent path.
“I can just see Port Hueneme with cranes and lights and a huge wharf in my charming little coastal community. No way.” The coastal economy here is largely dependent on lonely beaches and bluffs where vacationers flock to swim in quiet coves, look for migrating humpback whales and watch piles of corpulent elephant seals wrestle or snore. Main streets have remained as visitors remember them from their childhoods.
First of its kind, the floating wind technology carries a host of unknowns, including how the projects will affect marine life, especially whales. The projects off Morro Bay will bring with them onshore development, but exactly how it will all come together is still to be determined. Building and operating them and bringing the power to shore will require a new, expanded port somewhere along the coast, as well as offshore and onshore local substations and transmission lines.
At the residents’ meeting, ideas ping-pong around the table, voices rising and overlapping. How are boats going to move in and out of Morro Bay’s harbor? What will happen to the biologically-valuable Estero Bay? What about whales, fish and birds? How might our hometowns be transformed? California Energy Commission Chairman David Hochschild said many residents’ fears do not align with the facts.
“It’s not a secret — there are a unique set of regulations that have been important to California and will continue to be,” said Tyler Studds, CEO of Golden State Wind, which holds an 80,000-acre lease off the Central Coast. “We went into this with our eyes open, we were prepared for it.”will be too far offshore to be seen from anyone’s kitchen window.
“This will create a drastic change to the community,” said Robert Sidenberg of Arroyo Grande, who said he is working with others on a ballot initiative in San Luis Obispo County to stop offshore wind. “I don’t trust anyone from Sacramento with what they are telling us, which is very little. People had this sprung on them. These wind farms are ridiculous, the whole thing is absurd.”
Over a week and a half, more than 100,000 barrels of crude oil spewed from Platform A, 6 miles at sea, and coated the coastline — and uncounted numbers of shorebirds and marine life. “It’s not a pristine wilderness. Of course we are taking heat, and some people criticize it, and some people think this is the best thing. Do we have all the answers? No.”Santa Barbara, with its rooftop solar and electric vehicles, has been fiercely debating offshore wind. McGinness doesn’t see a contradiction with advocating to protect the environment and being skeptical about the impacts of a clean energy source.
In part to minimize impacts on Santa Barbara County, the company says the giant platforms likely would be constructed at the Port of San Francisco, and then towed to the Port of Los Angeles, where the bulk of the work to assemble the turbines and staging of vessels and equipment would occur. Then they would be towed back to the waters off Vandenberg.
“Although we can draw on data and information from other parts of the world and from similar industries in California, realistically, we will not be able to know the full scope and scale of impacts from offshore wind to California’s marine resources until projects are in the water and we are able to monitor and measure the resulting effects,” the staff of the California Coastal Commission wrote in a, studies human impacts on the ocean and how to manage them.
“Each offshore wind development project incrementally increases the risk of bird strikes, vessel strikes and entanglement, and increases the impacts of displacement. Whales and seabirds are of particular concern for these types of impacts,”at Humboldt State University suggest design changes that lessen birds’ attraction to the platforms, such as fewer nighttime lights and reduced areas for perching.
Along the East Coast, an unusual number of humpbacks have been stranded on beaches in the vicinity of offshore wind operations in recent years. But state and federal authorities say there is no evidence that the projects played any role in the deaths of more than 200 whales. The"" began in 2016, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which blamed ship strikes or entanglement for the deaths.
Climate change is rapidly altering the world’s oceans, making the siting of renewable energy projects in fragile seascapes a complicated and double-edged proposition for some researchers. The smaller wind project in state waters will be less than three miles off Vandenberg Space Force Base. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local
In an interview with CalMatters before the draft plan was released, Bill Douros, NOAA’s regional director of sanctuaries for the West Coast region, called the sanctuary area an environmental treasure. But he said offshore wind wouldn’t necessarily threaten it. Walker said Floventis has been insensitive to the tribe’s cultural objections. “If we have to occupy the land again to protect that guy from destroying our stuff, we will,” she said.
More than a dozen federal and state agencies have a role in assessing the projects, which also will require a massive infusion of private and public funds. Each of the five wind farms off California's coast could cost $5 billion to develop, construct and assemble. “I get the feeling like there are some policy makers who are jumping the gun, who are pushing this. If you ask people, for the most part they live in this county to not live in a big area of industrialization. Most people have a fondness for just the way it is.”
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