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OPINION

Cottrell: Sussex council’s US Wind vote raises concern

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Steve Cottrell is the president of Delaware Audubon.

On Dec. 17, 2024, Sussex County Council imposed a great disservice to the residents of the fastest-growing county in the fastest-growing state in the mid-Atlantic region. Council members voted down an opportunity to receive $128 million from US Wind — in the form of lease payments, community benefits and upgrades to Delaware’s grid — in exchange for the use of a parcel of land for a new electrical substation for its offshore wind project off the coast of Ocean City, Maryland. The parcel of land of interest is adjacent to the Indian River Power Plant, which, for decades, was responsible for high levels of toxic chemicals seeping into the county’s groundwater and surface water from its Burton Island coal ash landfill. The stack emissions from the plant are also suspected to be linked to the elevated cancer rates in the area that includes Dagsboro, Frankford, Georgetown, Millsboro, Ocean View and Selbyville.

Given that legacy of tragically poor environmental management, it is ironic that Sussex County Council would vote to block a clean-energy project that would boost the Delaware economy, as well as contribute to cleaner air for all area residents. That is after the Department of the Interior issued final permits for the project, with support from then-Gov. John Carney, the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, the Sussex County Planning & Zoning Commission and other state officials.

The circumstances surrounding council’s vote raise questions. Journalists discovered that, immediately prior to it, officials from Worcester County, Maryland, and Ocean City mysteriously funded a public relations campaign to sway the decision. Seemingly out of thin air, Ocean City and Worcester County each came up with $100,000 for a new website, stopoffshorewind.com, which materialized just days before council’s vote. The website urged its readers to tell council members to deny the permit. Whether or not that campaign influenced the vote, questions remain. What gives officials in Maryland the right to meddle in the affairs of a neighboring state? Where did the $200,000 spontaneously come from? Did the officials from Worcester County and Ocean City privately benefit from the scheme to thwart the economic, environmental and health benefits that Delaware residents were on track to receive?

Sussex County citizens ought to be outraged that their interests were superseded by the meddling of elected officials from another state. In light of what has occurred, Sussex residents ought to demand that the vote be taken up a second time, this time taking into account the interests of Delaware residents and not the interests of the agents behind the interstate meddling.

Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.

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