By Sherri Lange

 

We have followed the Icebreaker proposed six turbines offshore of Cleveland, for many years now; once it was thought to be terminated under public scrutiny and following a damning letter of failures and omissions, documented by then Chairman, Todd Snitchler (2014).

SNAPSHOT OF HISTORY of LEEDCo/ICEBREAKER

See these links below for an understanding of the ongoing “contention” in the very lengthy process,” as the OPSB calls it in its bill collection order. The drawn out process involves now  a new case number, a new design, new billionaire Norwegian partner, and an EA (Environmental Assessment) that appears to many as watered down, not nearly clear and focused enough, or accurate enough, for a complex business/construction activity in 20% of the world’s fresh water, a first for North America. Exercising caution, OPSB indicates it would rather not make a mistake: and urges caution. The developer urges expedition of the proposed project, six massive turbines about 8 miles offshore of Cleveland. Matt Butler of the Ohio Power Siting Board says the agency doesn’t want errors in judgement, or haste.  “This case is not only the first of its kind before the board, but it’s also the first of its kind as a freshwater wind farm proposed in the United States.” 

• LEEDCo/Icebreaker, Offshore Wind More Troubles (July 2019)

• Lake Erie Offshore Wind Proposal: Economic Cronyism, Environmental Boondoggle” (July 2018)
• Offshore Wind: Rough Waters for LEEDCo ‘Demonstration Project’ (environmentalists rise up) (November 2017)
• Lake Erie Wind Turbines? Complaints Pour In (Part I: Overview) (October 2016)
• Lake Erie Wind Turbines? (Part 2: Environmental Issues) (October 2016)
• LEEDCo Lake Erie Wind Project: Joint Letter of Protest (April 2014)

There are profound questions that come to mind following a recent request/Order for payment from the OPSB to Icebreaker.  Is this project about to be aborted, failed because of an outstanding bill, to be paid within ten days? What other outstanding bills may be lurking in the shadows of project development and the retention of “partners”? Who do these bills belong to, Icebreaker, the New Norwegian partner, Fred Olsen Renewables Inc., or LEEDCo, the original manager and owner of the lakebed lease and other assets? (Short Answer: Icebreaker.) Why did LEEDCo/Icebreaker allow this outstanding bill to accrue, knowing the possible outcome of being unable to proceed with the application, approval, and build out? Where is the Novation? We repeat: where is the Novation?

With public funds received from the DOE for the “demonstration project,” about $13 million (Thirteen Million Dollars, $13.3 Million Dollars to be precise) to date,  and with an eventual cost they say of upwards of $125 million (Block Island of five turbines cost $300 million and climbing), why would the comparatively small amount owing of $76,840.34, (Seventy-six thousand, eight hundred and forty dollars and thirty-four cents) with a total of  $150,000 (One hundred and fifty thousand dollars) due for current and future Board expenses, be left dangerously accruing to a request to pay in ten days, or withdraw the application. Tantalizing questions for those opposed for over ten years to a proposal that promises a hideous outcome for wildlife, fishing, water quality, likely for aviation safety as well, from the Burke Lakefront airstrip, and with radar safety questions of a deeper radius. See Master Resource, September 11, 2019.

From the Docket, under Case 16 1871 EL BGN Icebreaker, filed on September 4, 2019. (See link for entire ruling)

Icebreaker’s current balance is $76,840.34 and a total of $150,000 is due for current and future Board expenses. Further, the invoice stated payment was due by August 26, 2019. The Board’s Staff stated that, as of September 3, 2019, the Board had not received payment.

…..

{¶ 9} Until Icebreaker files notice in the docket indicating that it has paid the supplemental fee, the ALJ finds that the procedural schedule should be suspended. If Icebreaker does not intend to pay the full fee, the Applicant should file notice in the docket stating that it intends to withdraw its application. If the Applicant does not pay the full fee by Friday, September 13, 2019, Icebreaker’s application will be considered before the Board for potential dismissal of the application. Regardless of if Icebreaker seeks to withdraw its application, the ALJ notes that Icebreaker is still responsible to pay the applicable amount for unpaid services rendered to date, of $76,840.34. If Icebreaker fails to pay the applicable fee for services rendered by September 13, 2019, pursuant to R.C. 131.02, the Board may forward the amount due to the Ohio Attorney General, Collections Enforcement Section.

A few of the frustrations of the OPSB can be felt tangibly in this document.

Consistent with Ohio Adm.Code 4906-3-12, the Board’s expenses associated with review, analysis, processing, and monitoring of a certificate application shall be borne by the applicant. After receiving a complete application, the chairman of the Board provides the applicant with an initial filing fee. R.C 4906.06(F) states all fees shall be deposited to the state treasury. Further, if the chairman finds that funds submitted in the initial fee are insufficient to pay the Board’s expenses associated with review, the chairman shall seek approval from the controlling board to assess a supplemental application fee upon the applicant.

The project’s complex assessments, public meetings, interrogatories and thousands of pages of record keeping, along with mediation of legal teams, Intervenors, thousands of pubic comments, stipulations, stipulations to replace stipulations,  adjudicatory meetings in Columbus, delays and repeated requests for elevation of the assessment to an EIS (Environmental Impact Statement), seem to have taken on the story line of a “Dead Man Walking.” Appeals, more information, witnesses, hostile and friendly both sides, and a tunnel of uncertainty that the six turbines will ever put a foot forward. (Not that the project is ABOUT six: it is as repeatedly told by LEEDCo developer Lorry Wagner and Vice President of Operations, Dave Karpinski,  to meet the demand for a factory of turbines and its attendant “supply chain,” to embellish and enhance the work force of Ohio in short order. Upward of 1400 plus turbines, they say, Rep Marcy Kaptur put it several times, to create a Saudi Arabia of wind in Lake Erie.) Numerous motions to delay, revised stipulations, walking, it seems to many, not to a fruitful conclusion for the developer, but a conclusion where withdrawing the application appears inevitable.  Having followed the stipulations and proposed mitigations, and to our view feeble or lacking in credibility, responses of compliance by the developer and his paid consultants, even the shortest of the shortcuts to the end of this rumination to place turbines off Cleveland, should be quick and secure.

We cannot be remotely surprised that the Ohio Power Siting Board may be experiencing exhaustion and ennui with this Icebreaker proposal. It has been about ten years in the making. The Icebreaker began as one case number, now another, new design, a refresh on nearly everything, but a certain new apparent multi-organizational “caving” to developer’s standards, not the preservation of wildlife and water quality standards that were initially demanded by so many organizations, including the then Chair of the OPSB, Todd Snitchler.

WIDESPREAD CONCERN FOR PLACING TURBINES IN FRESH WATER

Indeed, the trail of communities around the Lakes, Ontario and Erie, mostly, showing constant and firm objection to projects around and in the Lakes, for many years has worked on motions, objections, prohibitive zoning, and moratoria.  Then NY Representative Clyde Burmaster at first in favor of the GLOW project (Great Lakes Offshore Wind in Lake Ontario, NY), once expressed the public’s reluctance to contaminate the Lakes, Erie and Ontario specifically, with this comment:

“I don’t think there is a county that has voted in favor of (off-shore turbines on Lake Erie or Lake Ontario.),” Burmaster said. “Everyone is saying not in my backyard … If it’s not dead, it has one foot in the grave.”

Burmaster’s comment is imminently relevant today with the Icebreaker rushing to place turbines offshore in the world’s second freshwater turbine installation. But credibility is certainly dragging, and the project might be even more cancerous financially.

As noted in our previous post, the world’s FIRST experimental freshwater turbine array, has proven to be an embarrassment, and a boondoggle (Sweden, Vanern). Bankrupt, and largely non-operational. Searching for a purchaser, quietly. This project’s developers were invited to Case Western U to explain their project, hosted by Lorry Wagner and team, in order to elicit support for Icebreaker. Ironic references to a failed project.

Vanern: Bad Precedent for Icebreaker

An ongoing embarrassment for the developer is the abject failure of the freshwater lake installation in Sweden, Vanern . This first ever freshwater installation was hailed by Lorry Wagner as a model of how harmless and benign freshwater turbines are. This comparison can now be seen as possibly “debilitating.”

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The project is in a condition of “crisis,” financial stress, near bankruptcy and, after much wrangling, approaching a hopeful sale. The distress sale can only occur if various technical problems are resolved: gear boxes, cabling and loss of power. “The insurance company Trygg Hansa has to pay SEK 10 million (US dollars 1,053,750.00, One Million, fifty-three thousand, seven hundred fifty dollars) to the municipal company Vindkraft Vänern as compensation for damage to the wind farm’s wind turbines: “Developers knowingly withheld “data” on the failures:  “We chose not to go out with the data when we are doing a sale so as not to spread more negatively about the wind farm than necessary,” says Mats Enmark.”  If Vanern is any bellwether for turbines in Lake Erie, Icebreaker, take heed.

We might ask LEEDCo/Icebreaker: what else are they withholding? Requests to the DOE and others, by Great Lakes Wind Truth officer and Founding Member, Al Isselhard, to obtain records of the finances and reporting of public money spent for a “demonstration” project, were not forthcoming. As Mr. Isselhard noted, is a foreign billionaire, Fred Olsen Renewables Inc., allowed to carve off US public money and essentially own the lakebed for 50 years? Short Answers: yes, and no; under a US subsidiary, they do qualify for US wind subsides and grants, according to the DOE. But own/lease the Lakebed? Legally questionable.  Public Trust issues are of such a serious depth, they are likely to be welcome fodder if necessary, in a court or two. This is as good a time as any to reflect further on the Public Trust Doctrine.

COMMENTS BY AL ISSELHARD ON THE PUBLIC TRUST IN A LETTER TO MARY MERTZ, DIRECTOR OF OHIO DNR, QUOTES

The state of Ohio, particularly the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources, has abdicated its Public Trust Doctrine (PTD) responsibilities, by leasing sections of the Lake Erie bottomlands for the Icebreaker offshore wind demonstration project. But not only are the bottomlands leased – therefore so is the lake itself and the sky above it because it will be occupied and industrialized by private, foreign owned, wind turbines that are not needed  – impacting marine, avian, human life and activities – for private benefit to Fred Olsen Renewables shareholders traded on the Oslo Stock Exchange under the ticker BON. I also feel the ODNR has abdicated its PTD responsibilities by not requiring an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIS) for the Icebreaker, which ODNR director has the authority to do. I feel the Ohio Power Siting Board would also be abdicating its PTD responsibilities by issuing a certificate of environmental compatibility and public need which gives the Icebreaker offshore wind project state permission to proceed developing this project. These ODNR and OPSB actions are contrary to the principles of the PTD. (fishing, swimming, boating, commercial shipping, aesthetics forever ruined by numerous massive industrial machines and their rotating rotor blades, desired darkness over the lake at night diminished by flashing turbine strobe lights, turbine fog horns disturbing the lake quiet plus numerous other unacceptable problems.)  Contamination of Lake Erie’s drinking water is another dreadful possibility.

The idea to industrialize Lake Erie with offshore wind turbines was begun by the Lake Erie Energy Development Corp. (LEEDCO) in about 2009. In 2016 LEEDCO, in financial trouble, sold the Icebreaker assets to Fred Olsen Renewables and a new company was formed called Icebreaker Windpower Inc. and Icebreaker’s 501(c)(3) not-for-profit status changed to a private for-profit status and obviously providing new and much needed financial support to continue the project.

Offshore wind turbines are not needed. Ohio has a Public Trust Doctrine statue (as do most Great Lakes states) and it’s our belief that the Icebreaker project or any Great Lakes offshore wind project is contrary and illegal according to the Public Trust Doctrine and this policy will likely be court tested in the future and ultimately defeat the Icebreaker environmental treachery. Keep in mind the Icebreaker project has morphed into a venture now owned by a foreign company, Fred Olsen Renewables (Norwegians) and the goal is to eventually locate hundreds of turbines in Lake Erie and be developed and controlled privately for their profit. Ohio cannot allow a business to tamper with the public’s right to use Lake Erie for recreational boating, swimming, fishing, commercial fishing, commercial shipping or interfere with aesthetics that have existed since day one. It is very likely the Public Trust Doctrine will be the cause for major litigation to halt the Icebreaker project from being developed. To allow this project will certainly open the door to hundreds, maybe thousands, of additional offshore turbines not only in Lake Erie but in all the Great Lakes. What a disgusting thought.

CONCLUSION

The realities of the proposed project are obvious at this point. Indeed, many agree that an ongoing tailspin of turbine facts is damaging turbine prospects, on and offshore, globally.

Jobs? Net job losses from industrial wind are the norm, as noted numerously around the world. (Block Island, about 6 or 9 permanent jobs.) Economic wealth: Higher cost of power always equals net downturns in manufacturing and corollary business. No cleaner air: another myth. You always need 100% back up.  None of the myths match the realities.

Woefully missing from the LEEDCo/Icebreaker EA and any experts hired by the developer, has been any meaningful plan to protect species that use the coast as well as the migration superhighway.  This developer does not even acknowledge that birds fly over the Lake….well, Mr. Lorry Wagner says, perhaps a few. The fact is that millions of flying creatures fly directly over the Lake, and bats especially are fatally attracted to offshore wind as resting, roosting or feeding stations. 

The faster we can reach the hoped for conclusion, the withdrawal of the Icebreaker application,  and assert again what people in the millions around the world know, this is an international treasure of potable water, a micro and macrocosm of migration wonder, the more concretely we can all retain the Natural and completely Wondrous resources of Lake Erie.

Please see Master Resource, the excellent letter by Richard Davenport to the EPA and copied to President Trump regarding the need for an offshore moratorium for all of the Great Lakes.