South Coast Wind – Article 15 Letter to the Editor 3-31-23 “Really Green?”

Below is the full text of a letter entitled “Really Green?” which was published in the Falmouth Enterprise on 3-31-23.

Links to a second letter to the editor regarding whales and a third letter regarding substations will come to you separately later this week with more information about both.

“Really Green?”

Falmouth’s upcoming Town Meeting Article 15, supporters of SouthCoast Wind’s offshore wind project, keeps trying to convince us that the 1,066-feet-high wind turbines proposed to occupy the ocean land areas of the Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard sacred shoals fishing grounds is a “GREEN,” carbonless way to produce electricity. The electricity produced by the SouthCoast Wind LLC OSW project is projected to power over 1 million homes throughout the United States, of which there are only 89,971 homes on Cape Cod that may or may not benefit from the offshore wind development.

Town Meeting members who vote in favor of Article 15 are signaling to SouthCoast Wind LLC and Shell Oil New Energies US LLC that the Town of Falmouth and its residents support the SouthCoast Wind LLC and the nine other potential Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard offshore wind lease holders’ developers who will also be looking to onboard cables in Falmouth and abutting Cape Cod towns.

Approval of Article 15 also signals support by Town Meeting of the onboarding of 525 kV high-voltage HVDC power cables and ancillary equipment throughout the Town of Falmouth, including Falmouth Heights Beach, Falmouth Heights Article 97 deed-restricted land and public parks, roadways, and on 26 to 33 acres of land located off Gifford Street or Thomas Flanders Road for a loud and intrusive six-acre HVDC power converter substation. The so-called “GREEN” offshore wind developments of similarly sized projects with 147 wind turbines typically contain massive amounts of a wide variety of petroleum-based oils (black crude oil), fuels, lubricants and chemicals that will all be located in the fishing shoals resource area is estimated to be 27,489 gallons of grease, 5,880 gallons of hydraulic gear oil, 15,582 gallons of gear oil, 238,995 gallons of dielectric fluid, 116,571 gallons of diesel fuel, 52,479 gallons of propylene glycol, 7,056 gallons of ethylene glycol, as well as such other dangerous pollutants as 35,721 pounds of sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), identified by the EPA as a greenhouse gas. Is this a “GREEN” carbonless offshore wind development project?

To add one additional comment on the magnitude of this offshore wind devolvement, in comparison, the cables that your children will be laying on only five to 10 feet below the sand at Falmouth Heights Beach will be transmitting the equivalent power generated by two Plymouth nuclear power stations of 690 MW each. I will not be interested in laying in the sun at Falmouth Heights Beach as I have done over the last 60 years, over 1,200 MW power transmission lines. Is this really “GREEN”?

Christopher M. Mutti
Miami Avenue
Falmouth Heights