A New Jersey company is proposing to build about 200 wind turbines, each taller than the Statue of Liberty, in the Atlantic Ocean or Delaware Bay that would whirl within view of some of the region's most popular beaches.
Officials with Bluewater Wind of Hoboken hope their $1 billion offshore wind farm will be the first in U.S. waters.
Similar proposals are pending for wind farms off Cape Cod, Mass., and Long Island, N.Y., but they have drawn protests and lawsuits from homeowners who say their water views would be defiled by the towers.
In Delaware, the proposal has met with mixed reaction, with some people enthusiastic about the alternative energy source and others worried that the sight of the large turbines would disrupt the tourism industry in Bethany Beach or Rehoboth Beach.
"We will be offering offshore energy sources that will be pollution-free, emission-free and the price of fuel will be free, since it's the wind," said Jim Lanard, director of strategic planning for Bluewater.
The company plans to submit a proposal by Friday to Delmarva Power & Light to build the windmills in one of three locations: 10 miles east of Rehoboth Beach; seven miles east of Bethany Beach; or five miles northeast of Slaughter Beach, Lanard said.
The distance from shore would be far enough that the turbines would appear no more than half a thumbnail high if someone on the beach extended an arm and looked along it out to sea, Lanard said.
Delmarva Power & Light will study the proposal, along with other options for power generation, and decide which if any of the offshore sites the utility will recommend to the Delaware Public Service Commission, said Tim Brown, a spokesman for Delmarva Power.
The plans would then require the approval of several Delaware state agencies and the federal Department of the Interior.
John Schafler, manager of the 10,000-acre Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge, which stretches along the shore between two of the proposed sites, said he strongly opposes the turbines.
Schafler said the wind turbines would disrupt a key habitat for horseshoe crabs and migrating birds such as the red knot, a threatened species.
"They're ugly," Schafler said of turbines, which he has seen in California. "I'm not a big fan of wind power, because of the industrial look, the bird-kill issues, the horseshoe crab disturbance issues."
