The City of Morro Bay and the County are studying area port facilities in relation to proposed offshore wind energy projects.
The City of Morro Bay is joining San Luis Obispo County in a study of port facilities and needs in relation to the offshore wind energy projects being planned by the Federal and State Governments. Called the, “Waterfront Infrastructure Facility Siting Study and Site Readiness Plans,” the study, which Supervisors approved and hired a consultant for at their Sept. 10 meeting, “intends to analyze whether the offshore wind waterfront infrastructure for O&M (operation and maintenance) could be located at Morro Bay, Port San Luis, and/or the Cal Poly pier. If feasible, the study would determine how the infrastructure sites can be best sited in each location and recommend next steps accordingly.”
Of note, the Port San Luis Harbor District is also conducting a study paid for by a harbor development firm, looking at essentially the same thing as the County’s study.
Also, the “Cal Poly Pier” is a steel pier in San Luis Bay that was built to handle oil tankers that used to call on the port in years past.
Unocal donated the pier to Cal Poly for a marine science lab after the company was forced to dig up an old oil spill under Front Street and the beach, a remnant of the decades the port shipped out oil, piped to the Coast from the Central Valley. When Unocal’s Avila operations ended, the pier was donated to Cal Poly.
The City Council report from the City Manager, said needed harbor facilities include berths for “service operations vessels, crew transfer vessels, warehouses, offices, and storage yards.”
This would be at least the third such study of ports as the State Lands Commission (2021) and the REACH (Regional Economic Action Coalition, 2022), a private non-profit group that studies economic development for SLO and Santa Barbara Counties (including the space port, OSW and battery storage projects), have also done port feasibility studies.
The OSW will essentially need three sizes of work boats — giant (300+ meters) boats to tow the wind set the moorings and tow the 800-foot tall turbines and set them up. This kind of boat will also be needed to bury the hundreds of transmission cables in the seafloor that will bring the power ashore to connect with the state power grid.
The State Lands Commission report said none of the local ports could meet the needs of the deep-water manufacturing facility, but might, with millions in improvements, be used for the crew boats and supplying the midsized maintenance vessels, which are expected to moor offshore when not on working site.
Indeed, both the REACH and State Lands studies seemed to prefer the Diablo Canyon Harbor, a manmade port that safeguards the intake structure for the nuclear power plant’s seawater cooling system.
“If feasible,” Kimball said, “the study would determine how the infrastructure sites can be best sited in each location and recommend next steps accordingly.”
The County in 2021 got a $1 million grant from the State (via Caltrans) to do this study. According to Kimball’s report, the City’s share of that would be $127,000, which the City was able to also get a grant for.
The County hired Matt MacDonald, a consulting firm, to do the study.
Under the agreement with the County the scope of work includes:
• Hire a consultant to complete a technical analysis pertaining to topics related to offshore wind development, including infrastructure, workforce development,
environmental matters in San Luis Obispo County;
• Develop a communication and community engagement strategy for promoting the Study and related
offshore wind matters; and,
• Provide County administrative resources to accomplish the aforementioned scopes of work, including internal staff resources and external consultant resources.
Mott MacDonald is a global, engineering, management and development company, according to its website.
The study comes as the City of Morro Bay is searching for a new Harbor Director. The job description has been changed for that position, focusing more on economic development of the town’s waterfront areas. The offshore wind farms and their potential use of the harbor for maintenance and supplying the bigger work boats estimated it could cost upwards of $50 million to make Morro Bay Harbor usable.
