DEM to Hold Public Hearing on Deepwater Wind Wednesday

On Wednesday, Dec. 11 from 6-10 p.m., the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management will hold a public hearing regarding Deepwater Wind at Narragansett Town Hall. Residents are urged to attend and with them bring any questions or comments they may have.

The hearing was scheduled in order to address a proposed modification to the Environmental Report portion of Deepwater Wind's RI Dredge Permit and Water Quality Certificate Application. If approved, the modification would move the previously proposed Narragansett Town Beach landing six kilometres south to Scarborough Beach.

Click here to view hearing notice and details or download attached document.

Deepwater submitted the application to move forward with construction of the Block Island Transmission System (BITS), a new electric cable that will deliver clean, renewable energy to the mainland electric grid from the future Block Island Wind Farm, the first offshore wind farm in the country.

The following changes are proposed:

• Withdrawal of the long-distance horizontal directional drill (HOD) landing option for the BITS Export Cable landing at Crescent Beach in the Town of New Shoreham, Rhode Island. 

• Withdrawal of approximately 4.4 miles of the BITS submarine cable and landfall installation options on Narragansett Town Beach and the associated onshore BITS facilities, which consisted of approximately 0.8 miles of buried terrestrial cable and a switchyard located on property owned by the Town of Narragansett. Accordingly, all corresponding environmental studies provided in the Environmental Report/Construction and Operations Plan dated September 2012 are also withdrawn. 

• Proposal for a BITS cable landfall at Scarborough State Beach and associated terrestrial facilities, referred to as the Scarborough Beach Alternative. The Scarborough Beach Alternative does not change the BITS terrestrial cable route on Block Island or the proposed submarine cable route corridor through state and federal waters up to a point approximately 17.4 miles from the manhole on Block Island. In total, the Scarborough Beach Alternative will consist of approximately 4.3 miles of terrestrial cable buried entirely within state rights-of-way and/or within maintained portions of the road shoulders.