An Italian company has abandoned plans to build a factory in Somerset that would have supplied undersea cables to American offshore wind farms.
The proposed factory would have created between 200 and 350 manufacturing jobs at the site of an old coal fired power plant in Somerset’s Brayton Point neighborhood.
The Prysmian Group announced on Friday that it is abandoning plans for the factory, after spending three years in a fight to secure permits and a tax break from the town and fend off lawsuits from neighbors. In a prepared statement, the company said it is aligning its manufacturing capacity with market demand.
Local leaders said Pres. Donald Trump’s hostility towards the offshore wind industry killed the project.
“Donald Trump has unraveled that promise of good jobs by threatening a moratorium on offshore wind, generating so much uncertainty that companies pull back investment,” said U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss.
Prysmian’s decision also dealt a blow to former Pres. Joe Biden, who hoped the factory would showcase the offshore wind industry’s potential to create manufacturing jobs and a vast new source of renewable energy.
Biden gave a speech on the site of Prysmian’s proposed factory in 2022, calling Brayton Point “the frontier of new energy in America.”
But a group of neighbors in Brayton Point fought Prysmian at every step of the regulatory process, slowing the development process significantly.
Ken Fiola, an economic development consultant in nearby Fall River, said the project died from 1,000 paper cuts.
“Ultimately, there were enough paper cuts to delay the project,” Fiola said, “and then when Trump came in with a new emphasis on energy, I think that was the final nail in the coffin.”
Patricia Haddad, a former state representative who represented Somerset for 24 years before losing re-election this fall, said the future of Brayton Point is now uncertain.
The 300-acre waterfront site remains zoned for industrial use, making it one of the largest available sites with deepwater access in the northeast United States.
“Unfortunately a small group of people that included the newly elected representative worked very hard against it,” said Haddad, a Democrat, referring to Republican state Rep. Justin Thurber. “It’s a shame because the rest of the town and the region are going to suffer.”
Credit: Economic Development Administration.
Somerset, a town of 19,000 people, had expected an influx of over $10 million in annual tax revenue once Prysmian’s factory was fully up and running — a tenfold increase over what the current property owner pays.
Somerset used to have two coal-fired power plants operating within its seven square miles, which provided a huge share of the town’s tax revenue and its largest source of employment. Both of those plants closed during the 2010s.
“We’re not growing the tax base, and ultimately that’s going to be a significant problem for people who want to stay in this town,” said Haddad. “Somerset is hurting. I mean, really hurting.”
Haddad said Prysmian will now have to manufacture cable for future offshore wind projects at overseas plants in Italy and Finland, as well as a domestic factory in Texas.
