David T. Stevenson, director for the Center for Energy Competitiveness for the Caesar Rodney Institute, has thrown out a gauntlet to me with the Cape Gazette’s top headline: “Critics: Wind farm could hurt tourism, horseshoe crabs”!
In considering allowing and encouraging Skipjack Wind and Orsted to build wind farms off our coastline, we definitely need to consider horseshoe crabs. (I know because I am privileged to teach children about horseshoe crabs at Abbott’s Mill Slaughter Beach site.) Horseshoe crabs have adapted to our earth and its creatures since the time of the dinosaurs. They are unchanged and still flourish since that time. What does deplete their numbers in dangerous ways is using them for fertilizer, too frequently using them as bait for eel fishing, overly settling every coastline, and the pollution caused by fossil fuels.
Yes, wind turbines probably would kill some hibernating crabs, but nowhere near the number that we kill in those other ways. Birds who use Delaware as a flyway (many of whom eat crab eggs) are rather adaptable to new structures wherever they are built.
Mr. Stevenson proposes, “Please slow this project down.” Wind projects 20 miles out from our coast have been proposed and welcomed by residents for at least 15 years in our area. Wind farms in the ocean is not a new idea!
Unfortunately, climate change seems to be a new idea at a time when our earth is in desperate shape. Environmental degradation due to use of fossil fuels has gone on so long that unless we take action to use clean fuel, we and maybe even the horseshoe crabs will not survive. I care about our children and grandchildren!
As far as affecting tourism, Orsted has promised funding many needed improvements to Fenwick State Park. That will help tourists. Many tourists would really appreciate the fact that we are taking steps toward providing clean energy.
Turbines far out in the ocean look like toothpicks according to some folks in MA who have turbines off their coast. Visiting Europe and flying over the North Sea, we saw many wind turbines in the ocean, and they are beautiful and encouraging. If we have wind turbines off our coast, we may fend away offshore drilling for oil.
Wind is more consistently present in the ocean than on land. Wind farms will provide many jobs.
They may give us energy to provide mass transportation which could help tourists and those of us who are residents to break our traffic gridlock. More electric cars powered by wind energy would clear the air. Eventually we would reduce costs for electricity and heating and cooling, not to mention reduced medical problems incurred with pollution.
Horseshoe crabs come to our coasts every spring to mate, to be participants in a special mystery that provides food for migrating birds as well as more crabs. The crabs wait for no one. They are moved by the moon and the sea. They do not fear change. They welcome it. Horseshoe crabs are survivors! We need to follow their lead!
Nettie Green
Rehoboth Beach
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