Wind Farms vs. Fishermen
Tom Fote believed the Jersey Coast Anglers Association was doing the right thing about 15 years ago when it supported the idea of bringing wind power to New Jersey.
Fote has been the association’s legislative director since 1992, always on the front lines to protect the rights of the state’s recreational fishermen.
He’s existed deep in the thorny thicket of meetings, business interests and political arm-twisting that come with discussions about renewable energy. Back when people started talking about wind farms off the Jersey Shore, he says, the top-of-mind concern among fishermen was coal-fired plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio. They were spewing pollution, contaminating New Jersey’s lakes and rivers with all the fish that lived in them. Renewable wind power sure sounded better than that.
It also sounded better than the talk at the time about building nuclear plants as an energy alternative to coal, Fote says. The folks pushing nuclear had a plan for preventing algal blooms in the pipework of their state-of-the-art facilities: using pesticides and chlorides as cleaning agents, and then flushing them into New Jersey’s waterways. Again, Fote says, renewable wind
