The federal government held its first public meeting Tuesday evening on a plan to erect wind energy turbines off the coast of Ocean City, and even though the proposal has generated controversy in Maryland’s No. 1 tourist town for years, only one person testified against it. The three-hour virtual scoping meeting, convened by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Offshore Energy Management (BOEM), was the federal government’s first public hearing on US Wind’s plan to build up to 121 turbines that would generate enough electricity to power 285,000 homes from wind energy by 2026. The meeting was an early step in a federal environmental review process that is likely to take two years.
