In an extraordinary display of unity, the Vineyard’s six towns, the Dukes County Commission and Martha’s Vineyard Commission have formed an unbroken front to oppose state plans to permit huge commercial wind-farming operations in Vineyard waters.

They will do it through a moratorium on all large-scale wind power developments on the Island and in surrounding waters, which will come into force in two weeks’ time.

Last night the MVC agreed to set a vote for Oct. 1 on whether to accept a nomination for a District of Critical Planning Concern (DCPC) that will apply to almost the entire land mass of the Island, as well as surrounding waters up to three miles offshore.

But the vote is only a formality. At its meeting last night the commission considered doing it straight away, eventually deciding on legal advice to wait a fortnight only to be sure there were no unintended consequences of the ban, and to give all six Island towns time to formally record their opposition to the state plan.

Already three towns — Chilmark, Tisbury and Oak Bluffs — as well as the county commission have sought a DCPC nomination.

Tisbury and Oak Bluffs called on the MVC to make the nomination. Chilmark went further, submitting its own nomination for a DCPC to cover all “the lands and waters of the towns of Dukes County, with the exception of the Indian Common Lands.”

There is little doubt the other three towns will follow suit. At a fired-up meeting of all the Island’s selectmen on Wednesday night — also attended by representatives from the MVC, Dukes County Commission and Cape and Islands Rep. Timothy Madden — no one objected to the idea.

The move comes in response to provision made in the state’s draft Oceans Management Plan to build up to 166 wind turbines in waters as close as three miles from the southwest corner of the Island.

The draft plan, released at the end of June, proposes to permit such large-scale wind farms in just two per cent of state waters, all within a few miles of the Vineyard. Seven other areas within Massachusetts waters, apparently equally suitable for large-scale wind generation, were ruled out, for what Island officials believe were purely political reasons.

As Chilmark selectman J.B. Riggs Parker, who has been a driving force in the resistance to the state plan, put it to the Gazette yesterday: “It was clearly that the Island lacked political clout.

“We have 800 voters in Chilmark. Aquinnah has less. The Boston bureaucrats aren’t impressed by those kinds of numbers. They never have been.

“So we have to seek other protections.”

And the Island’s principal protection from unwanted development has for 35 years been the special planning powers contained in the legislation which set up the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, allowing it designate DCPCs and set regulations over all forms of development, in association with the Island towns.

In an impassioned speech at Wednesday might’s meeting, Mr. Parker said it was those powers which had done most to protect the Vineyard from outside threats in the past, and it was time for the commission to flex its muscles again.

“I submit to you that the Island is threatened tonight,” he told the gathering.

The oceans plan sets aside two areas, one around Noman’s Land, and the other off the Elizabeth islands. The potential impact of the state plan on the Vineyard would be vastly greater than the controversial Cape Wind proposal in Nantucket Sound.

Not only would development be much larger in scale — 25 per cent bigger in the number of turbines and 50 per cent bigger in generating capacity — but it would be much closer to the Island.

At its closest point, the Cape Wind project would be more than nine miles away. Under the state plan, turbines could be as little as three miles from the Island’s southwest shore between Squibnocket and Gay Head.

As in the case of Cape Wind, the draft state plan provides for the installation of 3.6 megawatt turbines, standing on pylons some 250 feet tall and with blades rising some 440 feet above the water at the top of their rotation.

Last night the commission not only considered the question of a DCPC, but also other lines of opposition to the state plan which might be put when state officials come to the Island for a hearing on the draft plan at the Katharine Cornell Theatre this coming Wednesday night. The last in a series of state-sponsored hearings on the plan, and the only one on the Vineyard, the hearing begins at 6 p.m.

The commission has identified eight areas of particular concern, among them the fact that the plan seems to take no account of scenic values, that it did not adequately address the potential threat to bird life, that while it said projects should provide a direct economic benefit to affected communities, it did not do enough to quantify such benefits, and that it had not considered the potential use of adjacent federal waters, farther from land.

Nor did the plan appear to give any consideration to the views of the Wampanoag tribe.

And perhaps most importantly, it was not clear how much influence local communities would have on decisions about the siting of wind generators.

The concern arises indirectly from the Oceans Plan, which allows the prospect of energy developments, and energy developments are province of the state Energy Facilities Siting Board.

That board is a powerful agency which has already shown its willingness to override other regional planning bodies, as it did when the MVC’s sister body, the Cape Cod Commission, was in conflict with Cape Wind.

While those at last night’s meeting accepted the reality that the EFSB would be the ultimate arbiter of large-scale energy projects, they want assurances that there will be a meaningful consultative process first, that the MVC should be the primary decision maker about projects, with the siting board only able to overrule arbitrary or capricious decisions.

Paradoxically, the prospect that the MVC could lose its power to regulate big energy developments became one of the strongest arguments for using that power now.

Mr. Parker urged the commission to quickly enact a DCPC, “to make sure your jurisdiction is not lightly done away with.

“By doing it now and not waiting until someone deigns to gives you a concession, you’re saying, ‘look, we’re going to do our job’”.

It was a matter of “laying down a marker” for the state officials to see the MVC was determined and all the towns were behind it, Mr. Parker said.

His theme was picked up by Tisbury selectman Tristan Israel, who urged the commission to take advantage of what he called “an extraordinary moment of unanimity” on the Island, and send a message to the state.

“Here’s an Island where we don’t agree on anything,” Mr. Israel said. “But here we agree.”