• Challenge: Empire’s team was chosen to be a consultant to promote LIPA’s Jones Beach project and assist with public, elected official, and media engagement.

Solution:  As part of these initiatives, Empire executives frequently traveled to Washington D.C. for meetings with officials from the U.S. Department of the Interior and LIPA’s outside consultants.  Through these meetings our team was able to convince Department officials of the importance of recruiting new staff to review the Jones Beach project separately from the Cape Wind project, which had consumed an inordinate amount of the staff’s time.  Additionally, to support this project staff met with various environmental and community groups, chambers of commerce, and elected officials to enlist their support at two public hearings to discuss the wind project.  At these hearings proponents of the project outnumbered the opponents, a successful mobilization of grassroots and other stakeholder groups.

Result:  Regrettably, the project was eventually scuttled because of costs, but our initiatives moved the project much closer to development.