Accelerated tree cutting at the Port of Albany, with its own ambitious expansion plans, may have imperiled its federal grant for a new manufacturing plant for offshore wind equipment, and federal agencies are raising concerns that could jeopardize critical approvals for the project.

State officials, including Gov. Kathy Hochul who attended an event earlier this year heralding the Port of Albany project, and offshore wind boosters continue to express confidence that the state will secure significant jobs, investments and a slice of the burgeoning offshore wind supply chain. But all of the uncertainty is raising new questions about whether the dueling port projects will reach the scope sought by developers.

“The investments that I see in our state are durable,” NYSERDA president and CEO Doreen Harris said in an interview with POLITICO. “That is probably the most critical part — that we have enduring investments that will serve not only the achievement of our goal, but the investments that other states are making as well.”

The state continues to invest in the industry: About $300 million is available for ports and other manufacturing hubs as part of a recently announced competition for new wind projects.

Part of the state’s big bet on offshore wind centers around the Hudson River and its a historic shipping corridor still used to transport goods — mainly petroleum products — the 150 miles from New York City to Albany and back again.

The Port of Coeymans and the Port of Albany are both in advanced stages of permitting their projects, but environmentalists and neighbors are logging objections — pitting the state’s goal of getting at the forefront of the industry versus the potential negative impact to the Hudson River’s fragile recovery from decades of overuse and pollution.

“We’ve had 20 years of this creeping expansion,” Barbara Heinzen, a Coeymans resident, said.

Port of Coeymans pivots

The 125-acre Port of Coeymans is located about 15 miles south of Albany and is owned by Carver Companies, which operates construction, asphalt, quarries and waste facilities there. The company is headed by Carver Laraway, an Altamont businessman who purchased the port about 20 years ago and has steadily expanded operations in the area.

From the river, it’s a bustling operation: On a humid day in early August, one barge gets loaded up with sandy material from a machine emblazoned with the Port of Coeymans written in blocky white letters. Another barge is unloaded with an excavator clawing up material and dropping it into a waiting truck.

As the company continues to expand, it built a nearby industrial park to the dismay of some neighbors.

One of those neighbors is Heinzen, who bought a house and land along the Hannacroix Creek in 2011. She had no idea an industrial port was so close when she purchased it with plans to do ecological restoration.

Carver Companies businesses have been fined by the DEC for various environmental violations, That includes multiple fines for violations at its mines, a 2016 fine for expanding the waste recycling business and a 2018 fine for illegally stored road salt at the port.

But that hasn’t slowed the port’s ambitious plans to grow.

The expanded port would include the construction of “blades, nacelles, monopiles” and other components for offshore wind projects, although no tenant to make those has been identified. The project includes building a new high-load bearing 400-foot concrete wharf with a steel bulkhead.

That would require the removal of trestles that were used to build the new Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge in the Hudson Valley — spindly, rusty-looking piers that jut out into the river toward the northern end of the port. The port would also need to do new dredging to increase the depth of the Hudson River and allow bigger ships to load and unload.

While the trestles were temporarily permitted for the Cuomo bridge project, Carver argued they could support building wind farm parts in the future if they get permanent approval from the DEC.

On shore, a major regrading of the site would require the removal of 1 million cubic yards of earth and material — enough to fill 303 Olympic swimming pools — to make room for new buildings, including concrete batch plants.

The only publicly disclosed tenant for the port — others may depend on the recently announced third solicitation for offshore wind projects — is a foundation component for the Sunrise Windan 880 MW project 30 miles off the shore of Montauk Point on Long Island that is expected to open by 2025.

The $86 million spending by Ørsted and Eversource, the developers of Sunrise Wind, is expected to employ about 115 workers at the Coeymans port where Riggs Distler, a Saugerties, Ulster County energy manufacturer, will construct the foundation components for the wind farm.

“That’s where they’re pouring the concrete foundations and putting it all together,” said Jennifer Garvey, head of New York market strategy for Ørsted, the Denmark-based energy giant.

Garvey said there’s no need for site improvements at the Port of Coeymans for Sunrise. Preparations on the foundation components will start in late fall and work will start in early 2023. She said an additional berth would help support the project.

“Although the existing port facilities can physically accommodate Sunrise Wind’s project needs, the project will be subject to the first come, first serve berthing schedule at the dock where we must also continue to serve other customers,” Sydney Kane, a spokesperson for the Port of Coeymans, said.

Kane declined to elaborate on what other specific components would be manufactured in Coeymans. She said there are multiple agreements in place and cited non-disclosure agreements with the companies involved.

Shifting plans at the ports

Plans at the Coeymans site have gone through at least two iterations. Initially, Equinor — a Norway-based company that won one of the state’s first offshore wind contracts — had planned to build gravity-based foundations for the project at the port.

The offshore wind developers ultimately dropped that proposal. The company has instead focused on port projects at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal and at the Port of Albany.

The final permit still includes concrete batch plants to support the offshore wind industry if and when contracts are procured. The type of foundation being considered for offshore wind turbines would have less impact on wildlife because it avoids the percussive pile driving to anchor the towering turbines to the ocean floor, instead using gravity to hold the tower and blades in place.

A letter dated May 2021 from the port to the DEC says an unnamed company planning to do tower manufacturing had withdrawn, meaning a Title V air permit — which is subject to a separate, rigorous review and would have to be more deeply scrutinized due to the emissions limits in the state’s climate law — would not be needed.

Heinzen said she’s concerned that the offshore wind project will also allow Carver to expand its waste handling at the port.

“They’re planning to have a very major expansion of their ability to handle traffic at the port, and that’s alarming because while they may have needed some of those changes under Equinor, I don’t think the current proposal is nearly as demanding,” Heinzen said.

The permit application states there would be no increase in construction and demolition debris handled at the port. The company is proposing to relocate some of the debris handling to a new barge repair building on the site, a metal-sided gray structure with two huge overhead doors.

Endangered sturgeon

One of the biggest environmental concerns laid out in back-and-forth with the DEC about the project is aboit the endangered sturgeon in the Hudson River. The sturgeon are a prehistoric-looking fish which can grow 14 feet long and were overfished in the 1990s.

Dredging to deepen the water will eliminate the potential habitat for sturgeon and other creatures. Noise and stirred-up sediment from in-water construction work also poses a risk.

In a bid to address the issue, the port has agreed to continue acoustical monitoring of sturgeon in the area for five years. To compensate for the lost habitat for Atlantic and shortnose sturgeon, Carver has pledged to fund 1.8 acres of habitat restoration at the Schodack Island State Park across the river.

The move would address how side channels at Schodack Island were previously filled in with dredged material from the Hudson River that were part of the large-scale dredging that turned the river into a key shipping channel.

As a result, the DEC issued a key findings statement Aug. 8, concluding that all negative environmental impacts had been minimized and mitigated “to the maximum extent practicable.”

Kane said the port expected a final approval in the coming days. The Army Corps of Engineers is also conducting a federal review of the project.

Port of Albany expansion

Roughly 15 miles north up the Hudson River, past wooded areas and waterfront residences, nestled next to a gas power plant, another port project which promises to employ about 550 union workers making offshore wind towers has hit its own delays and environmental concerns.

Equinor, which holds most of the offshore wind contracts in New York with an assist from BP, is leveraging the Port of Albany’s first major expansion since it was developed in the late 1920s. The new 80-acre expansion is primarily on Beacon Island, a spit of land composed of material dredged from the Hudson River over decades and some fly ash dumped from the former coal power plant nearby that now runs on gas.

It’s not an island anymore, with tributaries having been filled in. John Lipscomb, Riverkeeper’s boat captain, said the Hudson River of today is unrecognizable compared to historic nautical charts, which was speckled with islands and meandering channels and tributaries.

The river used to have a depth as low as six feet in the Albany area, but it is now a federal navigation channel with a mean depth of 33 feet due to the dredging and filling of the side channel concentrating its flow and tidal current.

The accumulated human impacts along the Hudson River over centuries destroyed 4,000 acres of aquatic habitat, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.

For Lipscomb, the history of river’s degradation makes the tree cutting and other impacts of the port projects that much more concerning.

“If this was a virgin river… but this river is an old, old, old person that is not that well,” Lipscomb said. “The same project inflicted on an old, old river has a different impact.”

Tree clearing controversy

Earlier this year, the Port of Albany secured a limited waiver from the DEC to clear vegetation, including mature trees to keep the project on schedule without impacting bats. But federal regulators do not appear to have been kept up to date, according to a letter in June from the EPA to the US. Army Corps of Engineers that cites news reports of the tree cuttings.

The issues are posing potential problems for the $29.5 million in port infrastructure tentatively awarded in January by the federal Department of Transportation. And some federal regulators are calling for the permit to be rejected.

The site appears desolate from the river, a mostly cleared tract with one stretch of shoreline still hosting a thin stand — about three trunks deep — of trees. Permits for the project require a 2.8 acre vegetation buffer along about 1,700 feet of Hudson River shoreline.

Massive pieces for offshore wind towers would be positioned behind the trees to shield them from view, reducing the visual impacts.

Orange netted plastic fencing and black barriers to hold back runoff and mounds of wood chips can be seen from the water. Blue and white signs with the Port of Albany logo are staked at intervals.

An immature bald eagle flies off from a stand of trees near the mouth of the Normans Kill that are likely to be cut down if work on the 500-foot wharf where ships will berth for loading moves forward. The tributary borders the Beacon Island site to its north, and a bridge would span it to connect another building and provide a route for the steel and other materials for the factory buildings.

Piloting down the Normans Kill, Lipscomb said he’s concerned about the lack of mature trees left on the southern side of the stream. Local zoning promotes a 100-foot buffer along this important tributary of the Hudson River.

“All these protections were in place — and they all had to fail,” Lipscomb said. “We seem to compromise our values. It’s not about wind. It’s about politically popular projects.”

A blue heron startles and flies ahead of Lipscomb’s patrol boat, and the screech of a red-tailed hawk sounds from the trees — cottonwoods, black locust, willows — on the opposite bank. Idle construction equipment sits on the Beacon Island side, stamped with the construction company’s logo — “We Move the Earth.”

Port of Albany officials say no cutting took place within about an 85 feet of the Normans Kill, and there weren’t many trees close to the stream. Both a final DEC permit and federal approvals are still pending.

The contract for the $29 million award from the federal Department of Transportation has not been finalized. The deadline to finish NYSERDA’s award of $40 million has been extended from June 1 to Aug. 31, according to the agency’s response to a public records request.

NYSERDA’s commitment is a relatively small slice of the more than $350 million investment in the tower manufacturing facility, Harris, the agency’s CEO, said. Harris said NYSERDA is monitoring the project for potential delays.

“To the extent that the port development is delayed, it will potentially impact the extent to which the Equinor projects can utilize the port for towers,” she said. “That is really the question at hand — is how many of the towers are delivered through the Port of Albany?”

Residents of Glenmont near the site have filed a lawsuit over the port expansion, citing a lack of analysis of visual impacts to their homes and property as well as potential disturbances from the noise and traffic. Port officials point to a lengthy review process by the town of Bethlehem that included many changes to the site to limit impacts.

Federal agency concerns

Besides approval from the DEC, which is still pending, the Albany port project needs the sign off from the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps is coordinating with other federal agencies as part of the review process that began when the port submitted for approvals in 2021.

The EPA raised concerns about the project’s impact on aquatic vegetation and wetlands in a June letter and recommended denial of the permit. The National Marine Fisheries Service also has taken issue with the project, and in a July letter requested more time for its review so it can get additional information about alternatives to its proposed location.

The Albany port plans to fund its own an acre of new aquatic habitat that would support sturgeon at the Schodack Island State Park site, according to the DEC’s project notice, and is also working with the Army Corps for additional mitigation.

It also told the federal agencies this month that the manufacturing buildings have been sized as small and are proposed for locations to impact as few acres of wetlands as possible.

The back and forth over approvals has pushed the project well behind the schedule outlined to the federal government in the grant application, which envisioned the sign offs in April 2022 and construction completed by December 2023.

Substantial completion of the project is still expected by the end of the year to align with Equinor’s schedule, according to the Albany port.

Rich Hendrick, the general manager of the port, said he was confident the project would be able to move forward — even if the federal funding was no longer available. He said union labor would be able to keep the schedule on track, as well.

“Even if there’s a delay, they’re going to pick it up. If we were standing here in 2023, I’d start to be nervous,” Hendrick said. “We’re just waiting for the reviews to be completed.”