Offshore Wind Canvass Yields Surprising Results / The Sandpaper / July 3, 2024

By Gina Scala

Conversation is defined as an informal talk between two or more people in which news and ideas are exchanged. If dictionaries used pictures instead of words to define things, there would be a photo of New Jersey Resource Project members conversing with members of the public about offshore wind.

“People are open-minded and want to talk about it,” Jody Stewart, an organizer with New Jersey Resource Project, said of her experience. “The most important thing I learned is that most of the people just aren’t informed; they just don’t know (about the offshore wind industry).”

She was also surprised by the number of people who didn’t know offshore wind projects were planned for up and down the coast.

“It is delightful for me to have conversations with people about an issue that I believe in,” Stewart said. “I didn’t push my opinion on people, but if they asked my opinion, then I’d give them an honest answer because I have my thinking, too, that I want to make sure it is being done right.”

NJRP members canvassed sections of Lacey Township every Tuesday in April through the end of May. The town was chosen because of its possible continued connection to the offshore wind industry. Transmission lines from the now-defunct Ocean Wind 1 project were set to come ashore at the former Oyster Creek Generating Station. Ørsted, a Danish-based wind energy developer, pulled the plug on that project and a planned second one last fall.

“We talked to many people who seemed to have their changing community as a major concern and had a feeling they were not being included in the process as the world around them changed. They wanted to be a part of the process,” said Amy Williams, a New Jersey Resource Project board member, who helped to train the canvassers and did one canvass session. “I was very surprised by how many people really didn’t seem to have extreme opinions” about offshore wind.

Cameron Foster, NJRP communication organizer, said the canvass resulted in conversations with 350 individuals. In total, about 1,000 doors were knocked on during the monthlong walkabout info session.

“The impression you get (about) offshore wind when reading it online and in the news is that it’s this polarized issue, and in a way it is, but when you actually go out into the community there are plenty of people who have never heard of the turbines (and) don’t have a definite opinion,” he said, noting a significant number of the individuals said they were looking to learn more about offshore wind so they could engage with the issue.

He said some of the feedback from people was almost apathetic because the individuals didn’t feel like they had a choice in the matter, offshore wind was going to happen, or it wasn’t, and they had no say in the discussion.

“That’s upsetting,” Foster said, adding it shouldn’t be up to the government and corporations to decide what happens in local communities without input from people living there.

Additionally, he said about 80 people said if the offshore wind community is going to make Lacey Township home and the town were to benefit from that, much as it did when the decommissioning Oyster Creek Generating Station was operating, lowering taxes was a top priority.

“The second most common answer we got was school funding. Seventy-two people said that,” Foster said. “In the conversations I had with people, they said school funding was getting cut drastically.”

He said the goal of the canvass was to engage the community about how offshore wind could benefit them.

“We weren’t out there to convince people to be 100% pro wind or we’re not going to talk to you,” he said. “It was more let’s put our heads together on this issue and figure out how we can do the best.”

To that point, he said there were plenty of individuals who oppose offshore wind “but still had plenty of ideas about community benefits.”

“Some people changed their mind (about opposing offshore wind) by the end of the conversation; some (opinions) wiggled,” Foster said, “but the thing is we were still having conversations with all of these people.”

He attributed at least some of the successful discussions surrounding offshore wind to canvassers not coming on as proponents, but rather as pro community.

“If the wind industry is coming into the community, we’d like for it to be responsibly developed, for people who are living in the community to have a seat at the table and for us to see benefits that people identified, like lower taxes and school funding,” Foster said.