Opponents of offshore floating wind project off the Coast of San Simeon are holding another informational rally and solidarity protest in their continuing fight “Save Our Ocean” against the industrialization of the Pacific.
REACT Alliance will fill Tidelands Park from 1-5 p.m. Saturday, July 26 for a chance to “dance, eat, drink, play and learn” about the proposed project here, as well as others being eyed up and down the Coast of California.
Local favorite Jill Knight will take the stage from 1:30-3 p.m. followed by the Zongo All Stars from 3:30-5. There will be food trucks, a beer and wine garden, a big premium raffle and a kid’s play zone, too.
Tickets are a minimum donation of $15 and available online through My805Tix.com. But according to REACT Alliance president, Mandy Davis, if folks can’t afford the donation, they will not be turned away.
The day includes a pre-event “Joyful Warrior Flotilla,” and participants are encouraged to bring their kayaks, canoes, paddle boards — basically anything that floats — and join the paddle parade down the Harbor to Tidelands.
Money raised will help support REACT Alliance’s work fighting the OSW projects, which Davis said is expanding its focus to the State of California’s plans to put wind turbines off the California Coast from Mexico to Oregon.
Davis said that unlike previous events and rallies they have sponsored, this time the money is really needed for the new fight, calling it a celebration of the ocean and a way to inform the public of the State’s plans.
She explained that while the Trump Administration’s Executive Order put a hold on the floating wind permits, that hasn’t slowed the State’s efforts with what she called Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “pet project.”
“Most people think offshore wind isn’t going to happen,” she said of the President’s EO. “That’s not the case. We still have to deal with the State and local support.”
The key for this phase of their battle is focusing on the support facilities — especially the deep-water port needed to assemble the components and act as the launching point to tow the turbines out for installation.
The California Energy Commission has been working on the State’s notion to put in OSW turbines close to shore in State controlled waters (inside 3 miles from shore). Davis said they’re talking about 4,500 square miles of seafloor. These turbines would be embedded into the seafloor in much shallower water, not floating in deep water like the federal projects.
That’s why the REACT Alliance folks continue to speak up at meetings before the Coastal Commission and even the SLO County Board of Supervisors, she said, which has a 3-2 majority of Supervisors who support the concept.
Part of that was a recent letter sent to the Department of Transportation arguing that a $500 million grant the DOT awarded to Humboldt Harbor District for its efforts to build a wind port, calling it a misappropriation of public funds. The claim is that the OSW-related harbor project isn’t a transportation project, which is what the grants are intended to fund.
“We’re changing our mission,” she said, “to include all of California, because if we just focus on the Central Coast and keep the big industrial port here out, it could still happen in Humboldt. They are 100-percent in favor of it.”
She called the Humboldt harbor project as being able to throw a major monkey wrench into the whole OSW industry. She said the OSW industry, “has to have that port, as it would be necessary for all the California projects.
At the Tidelands Park event on the 26th they will have several information booths on hand to help explain the seriousness of the plans the State is cooking up and to reinforce what they say is a fight to “Save Our Oceans.”
