Offshore wind design work now underway

SALEM — This summer, it may only seem like the waterfront has gone quiet on offshore wind turbines.

Developers are now designing the Salem Offshore Wind Terminal to be proposed around the Salem Harbor Footprint power plant, according to Seth Lattrell, Salem’s harbor planner. The proposal seeks to build offshore wind turbines using undeveloped land currently owned by Footprint. The turbines would be partly assembled in Salem at the to-be-built “marshalling yard” and then shipped out to waters off Martha’s Vineyard, where they’d be fully assembled and connected to the power grid.

With a round of community meetings wrapping up recently, another wave of meetings will unveil a more polished design for the project and launch permitting later this fall, according to Lattrell.

“It’ll be started with a MEPA (Mass. Environmental Policy Act) filing. That’ll be their environmental notification form,” Lattrell said. “That’ll kick off a probably 12-month permitting process, and there will be public meetings throughout the process.”

The meetings will be taking place at all levels, Lattrell explained — locally with the Conservation Commission and Planning Board, and then at state and federal levels for everything touching the water.

“They’re continuing to advance design,” he said. “They haven’t gotten to a point where they’re ready to show us the treatment for the periphery of the site. That’s going to be super important to the community, how they’re going to be handling the buffer between the neighborhood and the property.”

It remains unclear exactly what wind turbine construction will look like in Salem, but there’s an early perspective circulating, according to Lattrell.

“For the initial lease, what we know is they’re fixed foundation piles,” he said. “We’ll be getting the towers, which will come in sections. So it won’t be the full 400-foot tower. It’ll be sections of the tower.”

Vessels will come in by sea to collect the parts — the sections of the tower, blades, and the nacelle generating power — and then head out to Martha’s Vineyard, according to Lattrell. But it remains unclear how much of that will be visible from the rest of the city, as only vertically stored parts will stand out among Salem’s waterfront buildings and trees.

“They’ll be horizontal on the site, not assembled,” Lattrell said. “When they’re getting ready for loadout, they’ll have sections of the tower upright adjacent to the berth. The type of vessel (going out to sea) will determine if they’re horizontal or vertical on the vessel.”

That’s important to note, according to Lattrell: “You won’t see a full turbine,” he confirmed.

Future projects remain completely unknown. Officials have previously said the marshalling yard would serve one contract for offshore wind for several years before moving on to another project that would lease to use the marshalling yard for however many years it needed.

For more on the project, including recent community updates and presentations, visit salemoffshorewind.com.

Contact Dustin Luca at 978-338-2523 or DLuca@salemnews.com. Follow him at facebook.com/dustinluca or on Twitter @DustinLucaSN.