Barge Off Long Beach Coast Surveys Seabed For Proposed Wind Farm

LONG BEACH, NY – An imposing barge a half-mile from the shore is surveying the seabed as part of a project to build a proposed offshore wind farm.

The Norway-based Equinor stationed a 70-foot-wide jack-up barge with 175-foot-long legs off the coast at Lido Beach near the Long Beach border early last week to sample soil that will help determine where to lay an underground electrical cable. The cable would transfer energy from the offshore wind turbines fifteen miles from the Long Beach coast to the E.F. Barrett Power Station in Island Park.

After testing the soil at sea off the Lido Beach shore for about 20 days, the barge will move about a half-mile offshore between Edwards and Riverside Boulevards, John McNally, a spokesman for the City of Long Beach, said when residents asked questions about the barge at Tuesday’s City Council meeting held online via Zoom.

Equinor is also currently using a boat to survey Reynolds Channel and conducting other on-land operations in the city, McNally said. The survey is expected to wrap up in March and the barge will be taken away. McNally said construction of the wind farm would not begin before 2024.
Federal and state entities awarded the bid and a land lease to Equinor to build the offshore wind farm, a $3 billion project called Empire Wind. McNally said the city will only have direct control over the preferred route for the electrical cable, if it were to run through Long Beach.

“The council will have to make a decision at that point in time, whether they want to make that allowance, or if they come to some sort of compromise or deal with Equinor through a community benefits package that we are able to extract enough of a benefit from the company in order to allow them to run the cable through city property,” McNally said.

The city wants Equinor to conduct public information sessions on the project in Long Beach, McNally said.

During Tuesday’s meeting, resident Kathleen O’Leary asked if Equinor was married to the idea of running the cable through Long Beach.

McNally said Equinor’s “primary obstacle, in terms of a transmission cable, is getting across Reynolds Channel. And they are looking to do that in the narrowest place possible. So, even if they come ashore in Lido, what it currently looks like is that they still want to come through Long Beach.”

He added that environmental regulations pertaining to marshland and similar water bodies in Lido Beach would make it exceedingly difficult for the company to efficiently run an electrical cable through such systems.

“The least amount of environmental hurdles are going to be in the shortest distance possible, so I think that’s why they’re looking at that section of Long Beach,” he said.

The Long Island Commercial Fishing Association opposes the project, claiming it will adversely impact fish and fisherman, according to the Long Beach Herald.