Posted on December 22, 2021
Bill Franks squinted his eyes on a sunny and unusually warm mid-December day and looked out into the Atlantic from the sandy shore of Caswell Beach.
“I support clean energy, so they would be good to have,” said the Michigan resident, visiting family in Brunswick County for the holidays, when asked if having wind turbines in the near-shore waters off the North Carolina coast would alter his view of vacationing here. “But I just don’t know. I guess it depends on what they’d look like from here.”
That’s the rub for many coastal officials in this pocket of Southeastern North Carolina. While most have said they openly support the push to a carbon-free energy future, they also don’t want to kill the golden goose of their economies — namely the oceanfront views that draw tourists and an increasing number of full-time residents to their beach towns.
A new supplemental environmental assessment is likely to do little to alleviate concerns of coastal officials and residents worried the development of the Wilmington East Wind Energy Area, roughly 17 miles south of Bald Head Island, could ruin views from their oceanfront communities.
With clean energy near the top of the agenda for President Joe Biden and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, the federal government this month released an updated environmental report on potential impacts of a proposed wind farm off the Brunswick County coast. The move by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) highlights the push to get offshore wind farms, which have been mired in changing political winds in recent years, in the water, with the agency suggesting a lease could be issued as soon as mid-2022.
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