WAINSCOTT, N.Y.—Construction has commenced on New York State’s first offshore wind-electricity project, Governor Kathy Hochul declared in a ground-breaking ceremony Feb. 11, in the village of Wainscott on Long Island’s South Fork.
The 130-megawatt South Fork Wind project will be in the Atlantic Ocean about 35 miles east of Montauk Point. Built by the Danish company Ørsted’s North American subsidiary and the New England gas and electricity company Eversource, it will contain twelve 11-megawatt turbines and is expected to begin providing power late next year.
“This is not only a crucial step forward in the fight against climate change, but it means jobs and new clean-energy resources on Long Island, where it is needed most,” Long Island Federation of Labor President John R. Durso said in a statement released by Gov. Hochul’s office.
The governor’s office said the project would be “built under industry-leading project labor agreements and specific partnerships with local union organizations, ensuring local union labor’s participation in all phases of construction on the project.”
The first phase will involve the project’s onshore interconnection facility in East Hampton and installing the duct bank system for its underground onshore transmission line. That will be built by the Long Island-based contractor Haugland Energy Group LLC.
“The start of the construction phase for offshore wind marks a new era in reaching New York State’s goal of significantly reducing emissions,” Matty Aracich, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Nassau and Suffolk Counties, said in a statement. He praised New York State for “providing opportunities that will create a local workforce leading to a brighter, cleaner future for generations to come” and Gov. Hochul, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Amanda Lefton, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority head Doreen M. Harris, and the unions involved for being “a moral compass guiding the earth on a path to heal itself.”
The governor’s office said the East Hampton work would create more than 100 union jobs for Long Island skilled trades workers, including heavy equipment operators, electricians, lineworkers, and local delivery drivers trucking materials to the project site.
Aracich told LaborPress he couldn’t say for sure exactly which local unions would be on the job at this point.
South Fork Wind is the first of five offshore wind projects in active development in New York State, which the governor’s office says is the largest portfolio in the nation. When connected to the Town of East Hampton’s electric grid, it is expected to provide enough power for more than 70,000 homes, more than enough for the roughly 55,000 households on Long Island’s East End.
The four other projects underway are larger. The five combined are projected to produce a total of more than 4,300 megawatts, enough to power more than 2.4 million homes. The state’s goal is 9,000 megawatts, roughly 30% of its electricity needs, by 2035.
“The harsh impacts and costly realities of climate change are all too familiar on Long Island, but today as we break ground on New York’s first offshore wind project, we are delivering on the promise of a cleaner, greener path forward that will benefit generations to come,” Hochul said. She said the project would eliminate up to six million tons of carbon emissions over the next 25 years.
“America’s clean-energy transition is not a dream for a distant future — it is happening right here and now,” Secretary Haaland said during the announcement. “Offshore wind will power our communities, advance our environmental justice goals, and stimulate our economy by creating thousands of good-paying union jobs across the nation.”
