The winds of change are turbulent in Sussex County as US Wind gets pushback from Sussex’s elected officials regarding its proposed substation in Dagsboro which would connect to a Maryland wind farm.
The Sussex County Council denied the local conditional use permit for the project that includes 114 wind turbines and four transmission cables designed to export the energy generated over 15 miles underneath Delaware’s coastal area in Sussex County before reaching the parking lot of 3R’s Beach in Delaware Seashore Park and connecting to the proposed 142-plus acres substation in Dagsboro owned by US Wind subsidiary Renewable Redevelopment LLC.
US Wind CEO Jeff Grybowski called the Sussex County Council’s decision “a terrible anti-business move,” and claimed there was no basis for the denial, as the county’s planning and zoning commission had previously recommended the project.
“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,” Grybowski said in a prepared statement to the Delaware Business Times. “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.”
US Wind intends to appeal the decision, setting up the field for a lawsuit.
“We know that the law is on our side and are confident that today’s decision will not stand,” he continued. “Our plans to build the region’s most important clean energy project are unchanged.”
The Sussex County Council vote was one of the last approvals necessary for the US Wind Project, which has been in development since Maryland state officials approved wind lease areas off the coast of Ocean City, Md. in 2017. Since Ocean City officials have been strongly opposed to offshore wind, citing fears how it could impact the tourism industry, US Wind developers had turned to Delaware to build the substation that would connect volts of electricity to the electric grid.
Earlier this month, US Wind was granted permits from groups such as Delaware’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC).
US Wind planned on building a new substation next to the Indian River Substation, seen here in a rendering, to tap in its energy for the wind farm. But county council members were not swayed – their final denial voted 4-1. Sussex County Council President Michael Vincent, who will be departing the office in the new year, cast the only vote in favor.
Even with the writing on the wall, Vincent explained his vote as the land was already zoned heavy industrial and adjacent to a power plant – and that the county officials had never before asked where the energy source for a substation was coming from and where it’s going.
“We have no control of offshore land, none whatsoever, or land on the river bottom… none that is our control. We control just that 23 acres of ground,” the council president said. “I think this is a bad precedent to set… turning it down because we don’t think it benefits people in Delaware. I certainly hope, moving forward, that people in other states don’t feel that way about us, because we generate no power in Delaware, everything we get coming out of state.”
However, Council Member Mark Schaeffer countered that testimony from previous hearings had already proved the benefit of US Wind’s proposed substation would be for Maryland, not Delaware. That includes the energy credits associated with the offshore wind farm, and no jobs would be created in maintaining the site.
“Our code states ‘the purpose is to promote, in accordance with the and present, the future needs, the health, safety, morals, convenience, order and prosperity of the general welfare of the inhabitants of Sussex County, Delaware’,” Schaeffer said. “In my opinion, this application does not benefit in the habits of Sussex County.”
Without giving many details during the vote, Schaeffer and other members mentioned potential risks and “devastating environmental impacts to Delaware’s waterways, ocean and land” as reasons for their denial.
Editor’s note: Katie Tabeling contributed to this report.
