11/17/2023
This page of mine has been dormant for most of this year (reminder – I’m no longer an elected official, which is why it’s been dormant), but now as a volunteer member of the Planning Board I’ve got a seat at the table for some of the major possible projects going on here in Salem. So far it’s been pretty positive in my year spent on the board – a number of projects have been approved that should improve the city over time and provide much-needed housing supply.
But right now we have a big project in front of us that’s been taking up a lot of bandwidth – Crowley’s redevelopment of the unused Footprint site to become a marshaling and service site for offshore wind turbines. Right now the only project that has any possible impact is the Vineyard Wind project that’s being built now. But over the next decade it’s likely that we’ll see a number more offshore wind developments go online in the waters south and east of Massachusetts. A number of them are being re-bid as the costs have escalated dramatically, but ultimately most if not all of these will happen. We need electricity. And we need it from non-carbon emitting sources. I’m very pro-nuclear but we’re not going to build enough nuclear plants to replace all our coal, oil, and gas plants. So we have the trifecta of solar, wind, and hydro to generate power in addition to traditional sources. Wind turbines offshore have become a big part of Europe’s capacity over the last 15 years or so as turbines have become more practical and efficient – currently putting about 35GW of total power into the European grid and expanding at a rate of about 2-4GW per year.
Back when Salem was dealing with the closing of the old Dominion power plant (coal and oil-fed) it was bought by a company that gave us a vision of a much smaller gas-fired plant with 40+ acres used in the future for a wind servicing port. Well, it took over a year longer than it was supposed to for the plant to be finished and put online, but several years after commissioning it’s quieter than the old plant, less obtrusive, and hosts a fraction of the personnel onsite that the old plant did (far less daily traffic), while contributing as a large taxpayer to our base.
Was the construction a mess with thousands of people onsite at the peak? Yes. And as I said it went on too long. Did we get the benefits promised? Well, we got most of them. We got full control and ownership of Blaney Street. We got the dock itself, we got the tax money, and we got a nicely landscaped walking area and path that got cut off near where it was supposed to go to. We also got money to re-pave Webb Street and that has yet to be done, and we got money to rebuild Derby Street (National Grid also contributed to that from their cable project) which has resulted in a lot of sidewalk improvements that are great but not the roads so far.
As for the additional acres – Well, when Footprint still owned it the political climate in DC was very pro-fossil fuel and anti-renewable. Areas weren’t being made available for wind use, and the demand for a yard wasn’t around. In 2020 Footprint was looking at a Plan B that would have given up on the idea and instead removed the port area designation and allowed a redevelopment into a full-fledged neighborhood of housing and commercial uses. Had that happened, we would have added as many as a couple of thousand new residents (most with cars), more business by the water, and poured a lot more people into a neighborhood that realistically has only two roads that can access it – Derby Street and Webb Street.
It wasn’t a great plan, but it was an attempt to find a use that could make all that waterfront property pay for itself.
Then we had a national election. 2021 saw a shift back to renewable development as part of our energy policies. And Salem was back on the map. So now we have over 40 acres of waterfront property that’s zoned for industrial use (allowing things like 24/7 operation by right) and subject to the restrictions on activity covered in the state’s DPA (Designated Port Area) zones with a federally managed deep water channel to access it.
So what’s possible here? Well, first of all what’s possible is basically any water-dependent industrial use. That’s possible by right. Because of the size and location, there are permitting steps that have to be taken – but frankly to try and refuse any proposal is a pretty tough lift legally. In fact it’s all but certainly not likely to happen, because it is such a large burden to disallow in a legal manner. Plus it’s not city-owned land. It’s privately owned. And changing the zoning is not something we can do after the fact – were the city to change the zoning for the parcel it’d only apply to whatever goes on this site next, after a wind facility closes down and is sold (assuming that happened someday).
Given that, what can we actually do? Well, realistically here’s the bad news for some of you. It’s been hoped for over a decade that a wind servicing facility would be put there. Go back and read the coverage from when Footprint bought the site – that was always the next step. Footprint is gone now, but the goal remains. The state wants it to happen, city government wants to see it happen, the school system (with an investment in vocational training) wants to see it happen, and the private company that bought it wants to see it happen. Not to mention that a pretty large portion of Salem (including some of the abutters) want to see it happen. It’s all but certain that this will happen.
There are things we can do, though, to minimize impacts as best as anyone can. First of all, this will require far less time and far fewer people to build out. Which is good – the most disruptive part of construction is the traffic with workers and material coming in to build the project. This is not a power plant in scale. Thankfully. I won’t pretend that construction will be a party – not even the smallest project is impact-free. But there is no way it will take what the plant took, or even a fraction of it.
The other thing we can do (and this gets into our abilities as a board to steer things) is to force design changes to be made that minimize impacts as well. For starters, requiring the activities with the most visual impact to happen at the water’s edge rather than at the Derby Street edge is a given. Forcing the lighting design to focus light on the facility without significant spillage, and also making sure that there’s lower-powered lights that are used when there’s not work going on instead of the stadium lighting being always in use is a pretty obvious thing. Requiring cranes to be stowed in the lowest or folded position when not in active use is something that should happen as part of the permit. There’s plenty more things that can, should, and likely will be done as part of any permitting that’s granted.
Also, realistically speaking this facility won’t be in use 24x7 year-round. There will be times where it’s really busy. There will be times when tides mean that equipment is loaded or unloaded at night. But it’s also going to have a lot of time when there’s minimal activity happening, and times where there’s virtually no equipment being stored on site. That’s the nature of construction.
I know I didn’t really change any opinions by writing this. My goal wasn’t to change people’s minds – everyone’s minds are probably made up. If you think it’ll ruin the neighborhood and want to sell your home, that’s a personal decision. If you think this is the best thing since sliced bread, that’s also personal. I think it’s more complicated than either of these extremes. And given what is legally permitted there to begin with and the economic stakes, the city is not likely to even try to say “no” – that was never really on the table. The city (and all the permitting authorities involved, including the one I sit on) has a responsibility to do everything we can do by law to minimize the impacts of this (and any project) as best as possible while also not being arbitrary in any decisions made.
I can’t say how I or other permitting board members will vote on this overall. I can’t say anything more than what I’ve said here, other than that I personally take the responsibility of evaluating this very seriously even if I don’t talk much about it online.
After issues earlier this year that most of you may recall, what few posts I've made here have had comments turned off. I'm not going to do that with this post, at least not initially. We'll see if we can have an actual discussion again here, because there used to be some good discussions held on this page even when I didn't agree with people. And maybe in another six months or so I'll post something again. But two years gone from being an elected official (and not missing it at all), this page will get used less and less - as is only proper.
