OCEAN CITY, Md. -- On Monday night, Ocean City leaders voted to hire a consulting firm to look at US Wind's proposal for an offshore wind farm. The motion passed unanimously with a 7-0 vote.
SLR International will take a look at the proposed wind farm off the resort town's coast, but the study comes with a hefty price of $175,000. The town will be using money from the general fund, so room tax, property tax and other money generated by the town to pay SLR.
Town officials are concerned wind turbines off the coast could have negative impacts economically and visually.
"The visual impact, the impact to our economy, the impact to our fishing resources," said Terry McGean, Ocean City's City Manager. "Anything else you can think of when you're building an industrial scale development in the ocean that close to the coast line."
Those concerns are why the town has hired SLR to do a detailed examination of what US Wind has submitted.
According to Dave Wilson, US Wind's Maryland Development Manager, the proposal is for 76 turbines standing at 817 feet tall, roughly 11.5 miles off the coast.
Addressing concerns about loss of tourism, Wilson mentioned a study completed in Rhode Island which disputes that.
"That study actually showed that tourism increased in Rhode Island after the turbines were built, because people wanted to see them," said Wilson.
Wilson also said the wind farm would provide new jobs for people across Maryland and on the Eastern Shore.
Not everyone in Ocean City views the turbines as pleasantly as Wilson. When we spoke with Dianna Harris, who grew up in Ocean City and still lives there, ahead of tonight's meeting, she said she was all on board.
"In my opinion it's a wonderful use of taxpayer dollars," said Harris.
Harris, who has a 'Stop The Wind Farm' sticker on the back of her laptop, said she's spoken to several people who would not return to Ocean City if they could see wind turbines off the coast. Harris is also concerned with how the turbines will look once the sun goes down.
"Let's bring up the fact that at night they have red lights that flash every couple of seconds, 24 hours a day and so the night skyline of the beautiful beach will be destroyed," said Harris.
McGean said the town is in favor of clean energy and always has been, but they also have always been in the camp of wanting to see it done responsibly.
"Their[US Wind] submittal to BOEM includes over 120 turbines, 938 feet tall, constructed as close as 11.5 miles from our coast, we don't believe that is responsible development," said McGean.