Massachusetts spent $140 million on a pier that now sits empty
On a hot July day in 2022, then-President Joe Biden spoke from the ruins of a coal-fired power plant on the southern coast of Massachusetts, saying the dock where ships once delivered coal would soon launch components for wind power out to sea. He praised an Italian company’s plans to build a factory there, set to create 250 jobs and supply American-made undersea power cables to a line of offshore wind projects then waiting to be built.
Four years later, weeds and tall grass have reclaimed the dirt lot where Biden spoke, ProPublica reported. The cable company Biden touted decided not to build its factory, citing “long-term trends in the U.S. market.” In New Bedford, Massachusetts, hundreds of workers who assembled wind turbine parts from Canada and Europe over the last three years have given way to seagulls and geese on the pier the state spent $140 million to build for offshore wind development. In Providence, Rhode Island, a newly built factory that manufactured offshore wind turbine foundation platforms has emptied out.
Many offshore wind projects faced a precarious future before President Donald Trump retook office. Rising construction costs driven by inflation and supply chain shortages forced some developers to back out of contracts, and various groups have opposed construction on the grounds that projects disrupt marine ecosystems and mar coastal views.
The administration then temporarily forced five projects to stop construction last year. Courts allowed the developers to proceed, but last month the U.S. Department of the Interior asked a court for permission to reconsider a key permit for Revolution Wind, one of those five projects, which is already running and can power more than 350,000 New England homes at maximum capacity.
The administration has also frozen future development on all offshore wind farms, including projects that have not been built but proposed to power up to 1.7 million New England homes, blocking or seeking review of the permits that would allow them to be built. It is also paying other wind developers billions of dollars to sell back their leases and walk away.
At a press conference Monday, Trump said he supports a bipartisan bill that would accelerate U.S. energy development. When a reporter pointed out that the bill includes wind energy, Trump said he would not approve “wind turbines ’cause wind turbines are a major loser.”
Port cities like New Bedford, Massachusetts, and New London, Connecticut, are left trying to hold onto the economic gains they have made building wind farms. As recently as last winter, New Bedford, a historic whaling and textile manufacturing center, had hotels, offices and piers buzzing with offshore wind workers. Local businesses from caterers to cleaners to fuel suppliers landed new contracts servicing the wind industry.
In New London — another port once central to the whaling industry — officials worked with one of the world’s largest wind developers to pump more than $300 million of public and private funds into a state-owned pier. Despite significant cost overruns and some early construction challenges, the effort transformed the pier into a staging area where hundreds of workers loaded and offloaded turbine parts with blades the length of a football field from specially designed ships, some with names drawn from Greek mythology. Over the last four years, the pier has been a hive of activity, and local companies also found work supporting the industry, including one that offered water rescue training for people working on construction sites offshore. Mayor Michael Passero said he thinks “the future just looked limitless.”
Before wind, Passero said, officials tried for years to attract different industries to the pier, which is overshadowed by larger port facilities in New York and Boston and was often used to import and store road salt. The most recent wind project based at the pier is scheduled to finish work next year, and port officials have yet to find a tenant to occupy the space. “They’ll be back to the old days of trying to lure cargo here,” Passero said.
Vineyard Wind, the first large offshore wind farm fully permitted by the federal government, directly employed more than 3,700 full- and part-time workers — most from Massachusetts — over eight years of development and construction, according to the developer. During peak construction, as many as 300 union members worked onshore in southeastern Massachusetts on the project, which was completed this year.
Longshoreman Onix Vazquez, 34, worked full-time tying up barges and moving turbine components on and off New Bedford’s wind pier. He grew up a few blocks away and said he had struggled to find lucrative work until Vineyard Wind began hiring from his union. His $50 hourly wage was nearly double what he previously earned unloading occasional shipments of tangerines and juice concentrate, money that let him and other members of his historically Black union make down payments on houses, pay off medical bills and for the first time take their families on out-of-state vacations.
“Most of us have to get other jobs for now or collect unemployment,” said Kevin Rose, president of New Bedford’s longshoremen union, which put about two dozen members to work on the project. The union had planned to rebuild its nearby meeting hall, demolished a decade earlier when work grew scarce, but those plans are on hold after the next developer to lease the wind pier delayed its project indefinitely. Vazquez now works a seasonal job in the cranberry industry for much lower pay. “They don’t see that it affects us, the ones that work the projects,” he said.
In response to questions about the impact of the administration’s actions on American offshore wind workers, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of the Interior repeated criticisms of offshore wind as an expensive and unreliable source of energy. “The reality is that the Biden administration lured companies into these projects with the promise of millions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies to make these offshore wind projects viable,” the spokesperson said in an email.
New Bedford’s fishing industry is generally critical of wind farm development because fishermen worry about disruption to fishing grounds, but catch limits keep boats tied to docks for much of the year, and wind work helps pay the bills. Over the past few years of construction, Vineyard Wind paid about $11 million to 55 fishing vessels from New England and an estimated 60 to 70 fishermen, according to the developer; the figure also covers fuel. The fishermen look out for protected species, guard exposed underwater cable as it’s being laid and log information for the developer.
Some fishermen say they will work in offshore wind for as long as they can.
Patrick Walsh, 37, a fifth-generation fisherman who plans to rejoin his father’s fishing business when wind work wraps up, said “the scallop boats need the extra revenue” and “the worst thing for a boat is to sit. Those boats are made to work.” Wind farm work made it possible for him to buy his first house: “Fishing would pay bills, and wind was going in the bank.”