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President Trump says his policies will usher in a new age of American manufacturing. But in one New England town that voted for him, Trump's hostility to offshore wind has tanked a company's plans to build a new factory. From our member station, The Public's Radio, Ben Berke has the story.
BEN BERKE, BYLINE: Lloyd Mendes lives in the Brayton Point neighborhood of Somerset, Massachusetts - a place where pristine nature rubs up against big industry.
LLOYD MENDES: We have osprey here. We have red-winged blackbirds. A beautiful place here. Even though it's next to a power plant. Here, hold on. Let me get my coat on.
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BERKE: Mendes takes me hiking along the beach in the salt marsh near the old Brayton Point Power Plant. The plant was the biggest employer in town before it closed in 2017. Most of it's been demolished, leaving behind 200 dusty acres of land with deep water access. This real estate eventually caught the attention of an Italian company that manufactures undersea cables for offshore wind farms. Mendes spent many late nights in town meetings vetting a proposal the company put forward.
MENDES: They were going to buy 47 acres, and they were going to put a huge factory there. It was a great deal. I totally supported it.
BERKE: The Prysmian Group's cable factory would have created at least 150 new manufacturing jobs across the water from Fall River, a city of 95,000 people that used to be filled with textile and apparel factories. From the top floor of Fall River's government center, Mayor Paul Coogan has a view of the waterfront, where Prysmian was planning its factory.
PAUL COOGAN: It's sad. I can see it from here, and I can only imagine the number of people that went to work there from Fall River.
BERKE: The disappointment comes with a twist of irony. President Trump won Fall River this November. It was the first time in a hundred years the city voted Republican. Then just a few weeks later, Prysmian canceled its plans to build the cable factory. The company declined an interview request and said, in a prepared statement, that Prysmian is aligning manufacturing capacity with changing market demands. Politicians who represent the area, like Democratic Congressman Jake Auchincloss, blame Trump for Prysmian's sudden shift in outlook, even though the company didn't mention the president.
JAKE AUCHINCLOSS: Prysmian won't do it, but there's no question that Trump's moratorium had a decisive impact on Prysmian's decision.
BERKE: Trump strongly favors fossil fuels like oil and natural gas. On his first day in office, he issued an executive order banning future leases of federal waters to offshore wind developers. Elizabeth Wilson teaches environmental studies at Dartmouth College. She says international manufacturers won't build American factories unless they can count on lots of domestic offshore wind projects getting built. Wilson says Trump is not only refusing to approve new projects, he's threatening wind farms that were already under development.
ELIZABETH WILSON: That level of political uncertainty does not provide a stable investment climate for companies to build significantly large manufacturing facilities.
BERKE: The economic impact could extend far beyond New England. Costa Samaras is a former adviser in the Biden administration who now researches energy innovation at Carnegie Mellon University. He says there are plans to build or expand at least 23 American factories to manufacture offshore wind components.
COSTA SAMARAS: And a lot of that is at risk.
BERKE: Samaras says many of these 23 factories represent huge investments in cities that lost their founding industries.
SAMARAS: When we talk about billions of dollars or number of factories, we got to remember that these are people - people's jobs, people's livelihoods, people's communities.
BERKE: In Somerset, Prysmian's factory could have pulled the town out of a hard financial situation. Somerset lost half its property tax revenue when the power plant closed. And with offshore wind development paused under President Trump, it's unclear when the town will recover.
For NPR News in Fall River, I'm Ben Berke.
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