East Providence wind turbine staging port misses deadline, but developer says it's still viable
The developer of a planned East Providence offshore wind turbine port has missed a deadline to claim $35 million in federal pandemic money, but says the project is still happening.
State lawmakers last summer set a Feb. 1 deadline for the South Quay marine terminal to secure "sufficient matching funds" as a condition to tap into $35 million in American Rescue Plans in the state budget.
That didn't happen.
The organization that manages the Port of Providence took over what was then a languishing South Quay project last fall, but has not had time to advance the project to a stage where it can commit to funding it in time to satisfy the timeline in the budget.
"This is complex work and it must be done in a particular order," Bill Fischer, a spokesman for ProvPort, the public-private partnership pursuing South Quay wrote in an email. "While a great deal of development work occurred prior to ProvPort signing the lease, the project was only partially designed at approximately 30%. That said, we believe this is a viable project and we are fully committed to it."
Federal deadline looming
The Feb. 1 deadline in the state budget was written in part to make sure Rhode Island spends the $35 million budgeted for South Quay – on the turbine staging project or something else – before a federal deadline to use up American Rescue Plan money.
The funds have to be dedicated to a specific purpose by the end of this year and spent by the end of 2026 or it will be sent back to Washington.
More: Hundreds of millions in federal pandemic money is still unspent in RI. What comes next?
Fischer said ProvPort is working with Gov. Dan McKee's Commerce Corporation to "determine a timeline that could comply with federal regulations" to use the federal Rescue Plan funds.
"What we are not committed to is over promising on a project timeline that may not comport to federal timing guidelines around ARPA funding or jeopardize precious federal funding," Fischer wrote. "We have submitted a sound and realistic timeline to Commerce that lays out a multi-year effort to design, permit, market and construct a marine terminal that is supported by SSA’s extensive port development experience."
The South Quay project emerged at the end of 2021 as a way to capitalize on the wind farm construction boom and use 33 acres of land that the Providence and Worcester Railroad created with fill within the Providence River but never used.
The initial phase of the project was estimated to cost $70 million and included dredging, building a steel bulkhead, construction of a 550-foot dock and an 18-acre laydown area where pieces of turbines can be delivered by sea.
The $35 million for South Quay first made it into the budget in 2022 and McKee held a "groundbreaking" for the project that September, despite not having identified at least half of the money needed to complete it and with no drawn up detailed plans.
Now what?
With the federal deadline to commit Rescue Plan funds coming at the end of the year, the decision on what to do with the $35 million ticketed for South Quay will now likely be made by General Assembly leaders putting together the budget for the year starting July 1.
“I am aware the deadline has been missed and a request has not been made to extend it," House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi said in an email regarding the future of South Quay. "The partnership has requested a meeting in the near future to outline what they believe is a path to move forward. I am keeping an open mind."
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: South Quay marine terminal misses critical funding deadline
