Long Island Politicians Claim Victory for Hochul Wind Power Veto

It’s unclear whether the veto will be the wind farm’s fatal blow. Equinor was already reconsidering the project, which would power an estimated 700,000 homes, after New York regulators earlier this month declined to hike subsidies for renewable projects slammed by inflation. If the company does decide to move forward, it could look for another site for the cable.

Climate watchers worry the veto may set a precedent of local deference that isn’t compatible with the state climate law. To comply with its mandates, New York needs to build renewable energy infrastructure 10 times faster this decade than it did in the last — and Hochul’s veto suggests that she may be unwilling to override local opposition to get there.

“The courage to overcome local opposition is going to be the defining factor in whether the projects will be successful and will get built,” said Daniel Zarrilli, a climate advisor at Columbia University who led climate policy for former New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio.

Local opposition tends to combine “propaganda from the fossil fuel industry, rumor mongering in local communities, and basic NIMBYism” into “a heated mix,” Zarrilli said. “It takes real leadership to overcome that.”

“There is no requirement that someone whose district is affected by a particular project has the ultimate say in this body as to what happens to it,” Senator Michael Gianaris, the chamber’s second-highest ranking Democrat, said during legislative debate.

After the bill passed the legislature, over the opposition of every Republican and a few Democrats, community opposition in Long Beach swelled. The Long Beach City Council flipped its position, sending a letter to Hochul announcing the body’s unanimous opposition to the wind project and transmission cable.

Christina Kramer, a commercial photographer and Long Beach resident, helped lead the local opposition.

“It was February of this year, and I received a letter from Equinor that says, ‘Hey, we are going to run 245,000 volts of electricity in front of your house. And if you’re interested in learning about it, hop on this call,’” Kramer told New York Focus. “So I hopped on the call.”

The Equinor representatives on the call weren’t able to answer her “simple questions” about the precise route of the cable, Kramer said. When she asked if it was safe, they told her it was the electricity equivalent of a toaster oven. “It sounded like nonsense to me.”

Kramer started the Protect Our Coast Facebook group, which now counts more than 4,500 members. She collected donations for yard signs, pamphlets, banners, and a lawyer. Frustrated that the City Council wasn’t educating the public on the project, she made her own visual presentation and delivered it 10 times, she said, including in local bars and Veterans of Foreign Wars halls.

“We don’t want to have high voltage cancer cables running through our communities,” she told New York Focus. “They call it renewable because it’s supposedly serviced by the wind but they are strip mining to get all of their precious metals. The turbine blades are made with microplastics which will pollute our water. We are the actual conservationists.”

Most scientific studies have not found a link between high-voltage power lines and cancer. Researchers on the topic told The New York Times in 2014 that if such a link exists, exposure might increase the odds of leukemia in children from one in 20,000 to two in 20,000. Asked about the evidence, Kramer said, “I don’t think it’s up for dispute at all.”

Protect Our Coast shares a name with a New Jersey-based group that has conducted similar organizing against offshore wind and used similar language. In 2021, The Intercept reported that Protect Our Coast NJ’s fundraising link redirected viewers to donate to the oil-funded libertarian think tank Caesar Rodney. Asked if the groups are affiliated, Kramer said, “We’re not connected but we do look for information from each other. We all count how many dead whales together.”

Republican legislators soon took up the cause. Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick and Ari Brown, a Republican assemblymember from Long Island, sent their own mailers this summer urging constituents to sign a petition opposing the project, which they warned involved “intrusive electromagnetic cables,” was “harmful to marine life,” and had a “potential high cost of environmental damage.” The mailers reportedly cited claims from the fossil fuel industry-funded Texas Public Policy Foundation.

“We’ve had a huge number of whales that are showing up on our beaches,” Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick told New York Focus. “I don’t have good answers as to whether the risks to marine life are stemming from offshore wind.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency that conducts autopsies on dead whales, has found no link between offshore wind surveys and whale deaths, instead blaming the recent spike on entanglements with debris and large vessel traffic.

In an election for an open seat on the Nassau County Legislature, both the Republican candidate Patrick Mullaney and Democratic candidate Alexis Pace have claimed their advocacy helped urge Hochul’s veto. “My position is, as a candidate or as a legislator, you have to listen and protect your community,” Pace told New York Focus.

Other Democrats say it’s a vocal minority of residents that oppose the project. “It’s a small group on Long Beach, not the entire community, that was against us,” said state Senator Kevin Thomas, a Democrat from Nassau County. He has made the project a key issue in his attempt to unseat US Representative Anthony D’Esposito, a Republican who won his House seat last year.

D’Esposito said in a statement he was pleased that Hochul “heard our calls.” Thomas said his opponent was “celebrating killing union jobs. He has pushed us back from reaching our climate goals.”