SUSSEX COUNTY- In a Sussex County council meeting on Tuesday, county leaders voted against a proposal that would have allowed an electric substation be built near Millsboro.
In a 4-1 vote, leaders denied Renewable Development LLC, a subsidiary of US Wind, a conditional use permit for land to build a substation near the Indian River Power Plant. The proposal involved bringing offshore wind power cables ashore under 3Rs Beach to the proposed substation.
The county council previously deferred its decision.
"In my opinion, this application does not benefit the inhabitants of Sussex County," Mark Schaeffer, 3rd District Councilman for Sussex County said in opposition to the proposal at today's meeting. "None of the benefits flow to the residents of Sussex County or to the people of the state of Delaware. They all flow to benefit the state of Maryland."
David Stevenson, the Director of the Center of Energy and Environment for the Caesar Rodney Institute, said he agrees with the council majority. Stevenson said that off-shore wind is a Maryland one, not a Delaware one.
"It was an early Christmas present for the people who live in Sussex County," Stevenson said. "This was going to be an absolute disaster. Bad for our tourist industry, bad for our property values."
The Caesar Rodney Institute was previously involved in a potential lawsuit against the Delaware Department of Natural Resources over off-shore wind proposals. Stevenson told WBOC Tuesday that the non-profit plans to join the town of Ocean City's lawsuit over offshore wind proposals.
Fenwick Island Mayor Natalie Magdeburger was also in attendance at Tuesday's meeting. The mayor told WBOC that the decision is a step towards preventing offshore wind projects along Delaware's shores.
"It's the right thing for Sussex County, and it's the right thing for Delaware," Magdeburger said. "The last thing we wanna see are our oceans destroyed."
Fenwick Island is also a co-plaintiff on Ocean City's challenge against BOEM.
The dissenting opinion in Tuesday's meeting was by Sussex County Council President and 1st District Councilman Michael Vincent.
"We have no control of off-shore land," Vincent said at Tuesday's meeting. "We have never asked a power company, since I've been here, that's applied for a substation 'where's this power coming from, and where is it going?".
Vincent also said the land where the substation applied for, being next to the currently operating Indian River Power Plant, would be permissible for the proposed substation.
"I think this is a bad precedent to set," Vincent said.
Dustyn Thompson, the Director of the Delaware Chapter of the Sierra Club, agreed.
"This needs to be a land-use decision, not a state energy policy decision," Thompson said. "I think County Council way overstepped their bounds."
Thompson went on to say that the power grid Delaware operates on would benefit from the power.
"The investments U.S. Wind was willing to put into the Delmarva peninsula in terms of grid benefits and resiliency benefits far outweighed any impact from the small amount of environmental impact the substation was gonna have," Thompson said.
U.S. Wind's CEO, Jeff Grybowski, told WBOC the decision was "anti-business,” and there was "no basis at all for today’s denial of our application– an application that the County’s Planning and Zoning Commission already unanimously recommended."
Grybowski went on to say, "It is obvious to everyone that the perfect place to build a new electric substation is adjacent to an existing substation, next to a big power plant, on land explicitly zoned for heavy industrial use. The region needs more electricity to grow the economy and support new jobs. Our new substation will deliver large amounts of clean power directly into the electric grid in Sussex County. But a few County officials ignored both these massive benefits and the law. We know that the law is on our side and are confident that today’s decision will not stand. Our plans to build the region’s most important clean energy project are unchanged.”
