A threat to island tourism?

With the days ticking down to summer, marking Block Island’s busiest time of year for tourism and commerce, a delayed $107 million utility project has some local businesses worried the island will not be ready for this year’s tide of tourists.

National Grid PLC, Rhode Island’s largest utility company, is in the process of installing a 20-mile-long undersea power cable that, once finished, would deliver high-speed Internet and electricity to and from Block Island. But the project has hit some road bumps, chiefly on Scarborough Beach in Narragansett, where some drilling has taken longer than expected.

“We hope to be finished with that in the next several days,” David D. Graves, National Grid spokesman, said on May 2.

The delays, however, forced the utility last month to ask New Shoreham for an extension of time to allow the company to work on a section of the Fred Benson Town Beach and its parking area through the end of June, instead of the previously agreed-upon date of May 15.

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Business owners worry such an extension could deter tourists.

Many of the town’s businesses heavily rely on revenue generated during its relatively abbreviated high season, which runs from July 4 through the end of August.

But Jessica K. Willi, executive director of the Block Island Tourism Council, says an extension would have only affected about 75 feet of beach and wouldn’t impact the beach pavilion – where beachgoers can buy food.

“Block Island has 20 miles of beaches,” she said, pointedly. “I can’t see that people who have already booked hotels, or houses, are going to be affected.”

The utility project in question is a part of a larger system, designed to carry power from Deepwater Wind LLC’s 30-megawatt offshore-wind project – slated to come online this year – to the mainland through Block Island. Power from the turbines is expected to meet about 90 percent of Block Island’s demand and about 1 percent of Rhode Island’s.

In exchange for the extension of time, National Grid said Block Island officials last month asked the utility to pay “a large sum” of money in exchange for approving the request. National Grid denied that request and said in a statement it was “for purposes some of which we know to be unrelated to the project.”

Town Council members and Town Manager Nancy O. Dodge did not immediately respond to requests for comment. On May 3, National Grid dropped its requested time extension and said it would be able to do the work on time by utilizing an extra seven-day window for work in the original agreement.

National Grid spokesman David D. Graves told Providence Business News on May 4 the payment requested by town officials was something “as a regulated utility, we could not justify to our regulators or our customers.” •

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