House approves another Smith amendment requiring analysis of offshore wind’s impacts

Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester), who has become Congress’s leading critic of offshore wind development along the Jersey Shore, successfully got another amendment passed by the House today that would require further analysis of wind development’s potential impacts.

Smith’s amendment, which was made to a larger Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill, requires the president to certify that offshore wind projects won’t interfere with radar or otherwise detrimentally affect aviation and space activities.

“Many of us are deeply concerned over the safety, efficacy, and likely deleterious environmental impact of embedding some 3,400 ocean wind turbines – each the size of the Chrysler Building in New York – off our coast,” Smith said on the House floor. “We have serious, well-founded concerns that offshore wind turbines will interfere with radar capabilities, and as a direct consequence, create a dangerous and potentially catastrophic impact on both military and commercial aviation activities.”

The amendment was part of a larger 17-amendment bloc that was approved by the House on a 348-57 vote. Despite the broad bipartisan margin, however, most New Jersey Democrats were opposed; only Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) voted in support, with the other eight Democratic representatives either voting against the bloc or not voting at all. (It’s not clear whether their opposition was to Smith’s amendment, or to another amendment within the bloc.)

The overall bill was passed by a similar 351-69 vote, with four New Jerseyans – Reps. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown), Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch), Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson), and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) – voting no.

Smith and neighboring Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis), a cosponsor of the amendment that passed today, have both made a number of efforts this year to push back on offshore wind, which has been heavily promoted by New Jersey Democrats like Gov. Phil Murphy.

In March, Smith and Van Drew each authored successful amendments that required the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study the impacts of offshore wind development. The bill those amendments were attached to was dead-on-arrival in the Senate, but the GAO later announced that it would conduct a study all the same, with the results potentially coming later this year or early next year.

Last week, Smith attempted to get another amendment attached to the annual defense bill that would have required a study on offshore wind’s effects on the country’s marine defense capabilities; that amendment was ultimately rejected from consideration by the House Rules Committee.

Proponents of wind development in New Jersey have argued that time is of the essence, and that the ever-increasing threat of climate change means that renewable energy production should be ramped up as soon as possible.

“We know climate change is not only real, but it’s existential,” Murphy declared last year, shortly after increasing the state’s wind energy targets.

But Smith said today that even wind development supporters should want to slow down and assess the potential risks.

“No matter where any of my colleagues come down on offshore wind, a certification by the President or his designee – and the due diligence that will require – that offshore wind turbines do not weaken, degrade, interfere with, or nullify the capability of radar relied upon by the FAA, is both prudent and absolutely necessary,” he said.