from legal riots
Posted by Jody Stone
Once considered the most respected environmental nonprofit in Rhode Island, Save the Bay Rhode Island is now failing to live up to its mission. As America's first offshore turbine power plant—one of the largest ocean construction projects in history—comes online just 12 to 24 miles off the coast of Rhode Island, locals, conservationists, fishermen, and boating enthusiasts are In asking: “Where is the savior?” Bay?
Save the Bay has been considered a leader in environmental stewardship in Rhode Island since the 1970s, when citizens banded together to oppose a proposed refinery in Tiverton. For more than four decades, Save the Bay has been “committed to protecting, restoring and improving the ecological health of Narragansett Bay.”
They honor this legacy by claiming to be the “eyes, ears and voice of Narragansett Bay.” As an organization, Save the Bay is overseen by a Board of Directors and a Board of Directors, with day-to-day operations being the responsibility of Executive Director Topher Hamblett. The board appointed Hambright to the position last January.
A quick look at their website reveals no mention of this plan, which will impact Rhode Island, Narragansett Bay, its watershed and adjacent coastal waters for generations to come. There is no mention of this in their advocacy efforts or legislative agenda. In an online tag called “Bay Matters,” the group reminds us that “Narragansett Bay is truly an environmental treasure, connecting communities in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts to the Atlantic Ocean.
It is our greatest public asset and a symbol of the region's history and culture. So why is the largest marine industrialization project in the nation’s history, one that would use Narragansett Bay as a route for electromagnetic cables, a shelter for sailboats, and a shipping channel from the coast to farms, not even listed as a bay issue?
To recap, nearly 1 million acres of oceanic land in Rhode Island and Massachusetts were leased to nine independent wind companies during the auction bidding process. The companies have been selected to develop wind farms off the coast of Rhode Island. When completed, in addition to hundreds of miles of cable stretching along Narragansett Bay, there will be 1,000 turbines 800-1,300 feet tall, covering more than 1 million acres of ocean, and five electrical substations with living quarters and a helipad for maintenance) within this lease area.
According to the April 26, 2024 tax filing, the organization’s mission and most important activities include “protecting, restoring, and improving the ecological health of the Narragansett Bay region, including its watershed and adjacent coastal waters…” These programs Painted ship traffic and construction are having severe adverse impacts on our fisheries, marine life, habitats and ecosystems. Where are the concerns of Save the Bay?
Save the Bays, which has been filing testimony on proposed construction projects in critical habitat known as Coxes Ledge, has been strangely silent since it filed testimony in 2021. Cable-laying preparations are currently underway in the Gulf, and the federal government has paused the Vineyard Winds project following the infamous July 13 blade failure, caused by a manufacturing issue, which caused damage to Nantucket, Cape Cod, and Tokushima beaches are littered with fiberglass and Styrofoam, and many people are concerned.
The blade incident, coupled with the sharks, whales and dolphins washing up off the coast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, has many people asking – where are our Ocean Watch’s concerns?
The group's “silent strategy” on offshore wind is more surprising than the issues they speak openly about. In May, Save the Bay teamed up with the Rhode Island Attorney General's Office to rally people against a small stone wall erected at a local country club.
Save the Bay and the Rhode Island Attorney General's Office held a press conference on the oceanfront with great fanfare, inviting local leaders and the public to join in the outrage. Save the Bay has dedicated an entire web page to educating the public about the illegal golf course fence erected at Quadneset Country Club.
They are once again working with the Rhode Island Attorney General's Office to try to change the structure of the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC). In a May 22 press release from the Attorney General's Office, Topher Hamblett, executive director of Save the Bay, said, “Narragansett Bay is the heart of Rhode Island,” he continued. “Important decisions affecting our coastal resources should not be left to the government,” he said, in the hands of a board of politically appointed volunteers.
No one, nor the Council as an entity, is held accountable for bad decisions and overruling of expert staff advice. This comment is especially interesting when you consider that Sandra Thornton Whitehouse, wife of our most outspoken environmentalist, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, chaired the committee for more than four years. Save The Bay has added a new anti-CRMC legislative campaign page to its website.
Save the Bay and the Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office are once again teaming up to crack down on metal recyclers, releasing a Rhode Island Recycled Metal News statement stating: “For more than a decade, Rhode Island Recycled Metal has blatantly ignored Environmental laws that protect our rights.
This is important work, but these actions only highlight the organization’s silence on the need for offshore wind materials recycling. Thousands of steel monopolies, each weighing 2,000 tons, are driving 200 feet into the ocean floor, covering an area larger than the entire state of Rhode Island.
Save The Bay has not yet issued any press statement on how it will decommission the 1,000 monopiles at the end of their useful life (10-15 years). The amount of steel used in offshore wind turbine monopiles can vary depending on water depth and other factors, but can be as high as 2,500 tonnes per turbine. Each single pile is 40 feet in diameter and the walls are 5 inches thick.
Wind turbine blades are not recyclable
Nor did the turbine blades themselves cause any concern. These blades are not recyclable or biodegradable. They are made from a composite of very fine plastic and glass filaments that are extremely difficult to process during recycling. According to Cleanpower.org, “Blades made of composite materials (such as fiber reinforced plastics, mainly fiberglass and carbon fiber) pose more significant recycling challenges to the wind power industry and the composites industry. Due to fiber reinforced plastic (FRP) recycling It’s complicated. Currently, most rotor blades are either landfilled or incinerated.
Solid Waste Management officials remind us in their 2022 fact sheet that “most wind turbine blades end up in landfills when they are retired because, as mentioned above, the materials used to make wind turbine blades make them difficult to recycle or repurpose.”
However, they did hold a press conference a few weeks ago with Governor Dan McKee pushing for a $53 million green bond that will be on the ballot this November. This is in addition to the $50 million green bond that was voted on two years ago, in 2022.
To our knowledge, the most significant shift in Operation Save the Bay’s operations is from ocean watchdog to national policy stooge, which coincides with the expansion of the organization’s advocacy arm in 2019. In April 2019, Save The Bay hired Jed Thorpe as its first Initiative Coordinator. For the past five months, he has served as the organization’s new communications director.
Discussing his work with the organization, Mr. Thorpe explained, “I have always lived by the theory that there are two forms of power in politics: money and people.” “Ultimately, the political power to save the Gulf organization comes from support. The people we work with and advise on policy. My role is to transform the “people power” we have into “political power”. He continued, “I see tremendous potential political power that can be mobilized thoughtfully and strategically to advance our agenda of protecting and improving Narragansett Bay. I love working with and empowering people to help They participate in the political process. Many people think “politics” is a dirty word, but politics is just the process of deciding who gets what, when and how.
In response to our question about why Save the Bay has not made the issue of offshore wind a priority, Mr Thorpe replied: “So, it's not that we don't think offshore wind is a legitimate issue. But, Most of the activity is outside the bay, but offshore wind electromagnetic cables are currently being laid in the center of Narragansett Bay until November 6, 2025.
With the bay being dredged for cable lines, unprecedented amounts of marine life stranded, and turbine debris still washing up on Nantucket Island, the lack of public attention to our bay and adjacent waters is astonishing.
“We hold state and federal agencies accountable for enforcing the laws that protect Narragansett Bay. We are the watchdogs of Narragansett Bay’s citizens and the eyes, ears and voice of Narragansett Bay. – Jed Jed Thorre, Communications Director, Save the Bay
As politics, the Orsted money and energy market agenda permeate environmental groups across the East Coast, is it a coincidence that they are silent on the adverse impacts we are seeing? Does the “silence strategy” come from the top? Is the board aware of its fiduciary responsibility to the organization and its responsibility to ensure that the organization's actions are consistent with its stated mission?
The people of Rhode Island have lost their seats
Save the Bay was founded out of the community's desire to protect our most precious resource – Narragansett Bay (and adjacent waters). While many questions remain, the organization that once spoke for the people of Rhode Island appears to have abandoned grassroots community in favor of political action and agendas.
With its mission in question and its priorities now focused on agenda-driven government political action efforts – does Save the Bay RI deserve to retain its title as the state's leading environmental regulator?
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