By Scott Brinton
"Six of these will take care of the wind farm," declared Schary.
The longtime environmental activist spoke last Thursday during a Save Jones Beach forum at Kennedy High School in Bellmore. Schary's point was this: Fluorescent light bulbs consume less electricity than incandescent bulbs. If each home were fitted with six fluorescent bulbs, the Island's energy use would drop by 1 to 2 percent. If the Island required less electricity, LIPA wouldn't need a wind-energy ³park² off Jones Beach State Park, as is currently proposed.
Save Jones Beach is a coalition of six South Shore civic groups, six businesses and two recreational groups that oppose LIPA's plan for the wind farm, which is to be constructed in the Atlantic 3.6 miles due south of Jones Beach.
The wind park, to be built and owned by Florida Power & Light, would provide enough electricity to light 44,000 Long Island homes, according to LIPA. The power authority expects the wind farm, which would comprise 40 442-foot-tall windmills, to be completed by 2008. But Michael Lowndes, a LIPA spokesman, said the project is moving more slowly than expected, because the federal government recently switched the lead oversight agency from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, a division of the Interior Department.
Subhed: Call for a moratorium
Save Jones Beach is calling for a moratorium on the wind park project "until all questions on public safety, the environment, property values, noise pollution, estimated costs and aesthetics are satisfactorily answered, and all remaining issues are resolved." The group wants a public hearing and an Environmental Impact Study on the proposal as soon as possible.
Lowndes said the project would be subjected to an intense review, including an EIS, before construction could begin. LIPA is not offering an estimated cost for the proposal because it is still running the numbers. But Florida Power & Light will pay to have the windmills built.
Save Jones Beach has three main issues with the wind farm:
€Group members believe that it's a tax shelter for Florida Power & Light that would help the company reap millions in profits at ratepayer and taxpayer expense.
€They contend that it wouldn't reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide to the extent that conservation and retrofitting of the Island's aging power plants would.
€They fear that the 40-story windmills would be visible from the shoreline and change Jones Beach State Park's unspoiled character.
LIPA insists that the wind park is about providing environmentally friendly energy and protecting the earth. Power authority officials cite a host of environmental groups that endorse the project, including Citizens Campaign for the Environment, Healthy Planet, Earth Echo, Renewable Energy of Long Island, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Advocates of New York, the Long Island chapter of the Sierra Club and the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Subhed: Tax shelter?
Schary and Joseph Kralovich, president of the Old Lindenmere Civic Association in Merrick, noted that wind energy is growing more popular among power producers because of federal tax incentives aimed at encouraging them to switch from fossil-fuel power plants to renewable energy. Those incentives also enable the electric companies to realize profits even when they would otherwise lose money on wind power.
"It's about the money and tax shelters," Kralovich told the audience of about 60 at Kennedy.
Save Jones Beach says that Florida Power & Light would profit from the project, and then, 20 to 30 years from now, when the wind park is outdated, LIPA and its customers would assume the cost of decommissioning, or dismantling, the windmills. And, organization members argue, that's unfair to ratepayers.
Lowndes said LIPA is "very comfortable" with having to pay for decommissioning. Scrap metal from the windmills would "offset the cost," the spokesman said.
Schary suggested that LIPA proposed the wind park as a special deal to Florida Power & Light. He noted that Frank Zarb, a former LIPA chairman and head of the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, sits on the FPL Board of Directors. On FPL's Web site, Zarb is listed as a board member. He owns roughly 9,000 shares of FPL stock.
Lowndes said FPL was selected from among several bidders, both American and international utilities. "The bottom line is that FPL came up with the best package," he said. "It's a complete package. This was a highly competitive process."
Subhed: Less emissions?
According to LIPA, the wind park would burn no fuel to produce electricity, meaning that it would not emit smoke into the atmosphere. By contrast, if the wind park were a traditional fossil-fuel power plant, it would, each year, release an estimated:
€235,000 tons of carbon dioxide;
€221 tons of nitrogen oxide;
€489 tons of sulfur dioxide.
Save Jones Beach challenges those numbers, saying that windmills are intermittent energy sources; that is, they only produce energy when the wind is blowing. There is no way to forecast how much wind will blow in a given year, so it's impossible to say precisely how much of any pollutant the wind park would offset.
Save Jones Beach cites the work of Matthew Cardaro, Ph.D., director of the Center for Management Analysis at Long Island University. Cardaro believes that repowering the Island's outdated power plants -- that is, refitting them with clean-burning equipment -- would reduce pollution emissions "by millions of tons."
And, Cardaro noted in a cost-benefit analysis, retrofitting outmoded plants would be cheaper than constructing renewable energy sources like the wind farm. He estimated the cost of repowering at $700 to $900 per kilowatt of electricity, while he said building renewable energy sources would run $2,000 per kilowatt.
Referring to LIPA Chairman Richard Kessel of Merrick, Schary said, "If he wants to build a new power plant, I say he should clean up the ones he has first."
subhed: A changed experience?
The power authority says the windmills, though 40 stories high, would appear to be about the size of a thumb from shore. Save Jones Beach, however, disputes that assertion. Kralovich said the claim is based on modeling done from the back of the beach, not from the water's edge. If the modeling were done at the shoreline, the windmills would appear larger, Kralovich believes.
Whatever the case, the windmills would be seen from Jones Beach. Jim Papa of the Surfrider Foundation, a national environmental group, said the wind park would "alter the experience of Jones Beach. ... The parks are what they are because they belong to us. ... If you can't see out forever free [from Jones Beach], that park is no longer what it's there for."
Jay Pitti, a Merrick environmental activist who helped found the Town of Hempstead's Levy Park and Preserve, said he thought of Jones Beach as "an adjunct" of his backyard, and the park's West End as his "church" when he was growing up. "I was raised in south Merrick," Pitti said, "and I was privileged to grow up in an environment very much like Suffolk County. I had a wonderful opportunity to grow up with nature. You cannot forget that corporate America is behind [the wind park] 100 percent."
Comments about this story? SBrinton@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 203.
