Wind farm plan may include Horseneck landing

Is a wind energy company planning to bring electric transmission cables from a large offshore wind project ashore at Horseneck Beach, and run transmission cables up the Route 88 corridor? It depends who you ask, but the town is considering forming a new advisory committee to keep track of the project and other wind projects off the coast.

Vineyard Northeast is currently in the planning and environmental review stages of a plan to build a 160-turbine farm south of Nantucket. Company officials met informally with town administrator James Hartnett and select board member Richard Brewer last fall, and Hartnett told the select board last week that as he has heard, “there is no bid proposal that goes up 88.”

But that may not be the whole story, members of a newly-formed environmental group believe.

“We are front and center throughout the whole thing,” Constance Gee, of the newly-formed Protect Our Westport Waters (POWW) group, said.

According to plans on file with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), Vineyard Northeast proposes two cable landings — one in Westport, the other in Connecticut — to serve the offshore farm. Here in Westport, the lines would come ashore at Horseneck Beach, and they would be routed under a portion of the Westport River and up the Route 88 corridor to points north.

“A landfall site at the Horseneck Beach State Reservation ... provides the most direct onshore cable route” to substations to the north, officials write in a 700-page operations plan on the BOEM site.

“Landfall sites west of Horseneck Beach were not considered because the corresponding onshore cable routes would be unnecessarily long to circumvent the West Branch of the Westport River and/or would cross into Rhode Island, adding additional permitting complexities. Landfall sites immediately to the east of Horseneck Beach would require the onshore cable routes to traverse Mass Audubon’s Allens Ponds Pond Wildlife Sanctuary and/or require the offshore cables to cross Aquaculture Areas east of Gooseberry Island. Any other potential landfall sites farther east within Buzzards Bay would increase the length of the onshore cable routes and/or the length of the offshore cable routes.”

At minimum, documents show the farm would generate 2,600 megawatts of power.

At the most recent select board meeting, Hartnett said that while he and Brewer spoke with company officials last year, the meeting was introductory in nature and he told Shorelines several weeks ago that to his knowledge, a Horseneck landing is not currently on the table.

“What I’ve been told is the connection to Connecticut is” further along in the planning stages, he added last Monday.

“We’ve only been approached once and it was just a general discussion. The town has not been approached, that I’m aware of, in any official capacity."

But "from what I understand they left the option open” to reconsider Westport in the future.

Given the uncertainty, Hartnett suggested, and chairwoman Shana Teas recommended, that the town form an advisory committee to watch the project and others. It will likely be discussed at the next meeting.

“I’m not tracking them,” Hartnett said of offshore wind projects. “At some point we should really have somebody that’s more involved in overseeing the status of these wind projects.”

Gee said the time is now to start watching, admitting it is difficult to get concrete answers on the ultimate plan because landfall would be on state property and would run up a state highway.

“Because so much of it is on state property, it is difficult (to see) where Westport could weigh in.”

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