Oceanport Mayor Jay Coffey was not immediately available for comment.
In a 2014 menhaden fish kill in the Shark River, several tons of menhaden were collected by local public works from Neptune and Belmar, volunteers and even prison inmates. The fish were brought to the Monmouth County landfill in Tinton Falls.
That kill was said to be caused by oxygen deprivation due to low river water levels that were caused in some part by sand deposited by superstorm Sandy that exasperated existing shoaling conditions on the river. The channels have since been dredged.
The menhaden die-off this spring is different. The fish are diseased and the dead fish are appearing in several tributaries of the Shrewsbury and Navesink rivers.
The developer of New Jersey s first offshore wind farm plans to run the project s power lines under Island Beach State Park, across Barnegat Bay and connect to the electrical grid at the former Oyster Creek nuclear plant, according to plans submitted to the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
Ørsted, the Danish power company that is proposing to build 98 wind turbines southwest of Atlantic City, has applied to the bureau to construct an offshore wind farm powerful enough to supply electricity to half a million homes.
If approved, wind farm construction would involve tunneling under Island Beach State Park and laying power lines under the auxiliary parking lot of Swimming Area 2. From there, the power lines would run southwest under the bottom of Barnegat Bay and connect to the grid at the former Oyster Creek nuclear power plant, which ceased generating electricity in 2019.