Smith pushes for NDAA amendment to review offshore wind’s impacts on military capabilities

Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester), continuing his criticism of wind development along the Jersey Shore, is pushing for an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would require the U.S. Secretary of Defense to review whether offshore wind turbines would negatively interfere with radar and sonar used by the U.S. military.

Smith testified on the amendment today at a meeting of the House Rules Committee, which is currently reviewing a large number of potential amendments to the NDAA, a must-pass annual bill that appropriates funding to the Department of Defense.

“We are making ourselves blind, if all of this is true, on the coast of New Jersey,” Smith said, citing a National Academy of Sciences report from last year on the potential effects wind turbines could have on marine navigation. “We need to know: does this hurt, degrade, or in any way impair our military capability to know what’s going on?”

The testimony was far from the first time Smith has criticized wind development, which has been strongly pushed by top New Jersey Democrats like Gov. Phil Murphy.

In March, the House approved amendments authored by Smith and fellow New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) requiring the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate offshore wind’s impacts on vessel traffic and the marine ecosystem, especially whales. The bill those amendments were attached to went nowhere in the Senate, but last month, the GAO announced that it would conduct such a study anyways after Smith and others made a formal request.

At today’s Rules Committee hearing, Smith also faulted Murphy and the New Jersey Legislature for passing a bill granting Ørsted, the wind energy company responsible for the offshore turbine farm currently in the early stages of development, access to substantial federal tax credits.

“They’re hurrying up this process in a way that is unconscionable,” Smith said. “There’s a money grab, a blank check being given to [Ørsted]. This is going to cost an enormous amount of money, and it’s going to do irreparable damage to our coast, to our ecosystem.”

One member of the Rules Committee from further down the coast, South Carolina Republican Ralph Norman, concurred with Smith’s pessimistic view of wind development.

“They are sticking it to the taxpayers,” Norman said. “You’re going to have a mass exodus of people from New Jersey if this goes into effect.”