It's a first of its kind for the US and our state.

A regional environmental review of offshore wind energy development from multiple projects in waters off the Jersey coastline.

The areas are being evaluated as a group because they're so close to one another and the government is hoping to speed up the process to get the projects going After the offshore wind industry hit a lot of economic turbulence causing delays and cancellations.

Ted Goldberg reports.

People packed into a Toms River hotel to hear about offshore wind from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management or BOEM and have BOEM hear from them.

If there's anything that we're missing, there's any additional data that we should be considering, if there are any additional mitigation measures that we could be considering.

BOEM is about eight months from releasing an environmental impact statement regarding these six offshore wind projects in what's known as the New York Bight.

Bowen says these sites could create enough energy to power more than 2 million homes.

As you might imagine, the busiest part of this open house was the comment station.

We got a lot of interest from all a variety of stakeholders, and we want to hear from.

Everyone who wrote that we're destroying the ocean for a technology that's going to be obsolete in ten years.

Claire Morrison was one of many people to come and protest offshore wind.

Despite explanations from BOEM, she's not convinced that these projects are safe to people and wildlife.

And she's not alone.

Go to these Facebook sites all over the world.

That's the easiest thing in the world to do.

You will hear what people are actually suffering from in these areas, not to mention, of course, the sea life, you know, washing up.

If I said you were going to kill the whales, the dolphins and the marine mammals and they didn't listen, they called us crazy.

Well, guess what happened?

BOEM admits that construction noises could hurt the fishing industry, but argues that not pursuing offshore wind will exacerbate climate change and hurt the ocean more.

Fourth generation fisherman Gus Lovgren doesn't see it that way.

Now we're out there and we're seeing the absolute industrialization and destruction of our oceans.

We're out there catching dead fish left and right.

Environmental groups generally agree with BOEM and say that pursuing offshore wind energy would be a boon for New Jersey.

For health, economy jobs and just making New Jersey a leader in the country for a new industry.

One of the things that we want to do we're focusing on is making sure that there's fact based scientific information about, you know, what offshore wind means.

A Monmouth poll from last summer showed most people in New Jersey support offshore wind energy, but it's gone from a wide consensus to a smaller majority over the last year.

James Thompson with the League of Conservation Voters says the issue is people not being informed or being misinformed.

The fossil fuel industry has been leading the way in providing disinformation and, you know, basically just lying to people about the facts.

The Republicans ran an anti clean energy, anti electrification campaign that did not work because in reality, New Jerseyans do respond to clean energy.

So I think it was more of a political situation that we were experiencing last year.

While most green groups back these plans for offshore wind, clean ocean action does not.

So this is a map of the current plans just for the northeast region in our New York, New Jersey shore.

Executive director Cindy Zipf says the current proposal calls for too many wind farms and that BOEM should start on a smaller scale.

What these are is a massive jungle really of concrete and steel.

No, you know, we're not opposed to the idea of wind, but at this scale and at this speed and with this scope and magnitude, you know, it's just too much, too fast.

If you want BOEM to hear what you think, they're taking public comments until February 26th in Toms River.

I'm Ted Goldberg.

NJ Spotlight News.