Cape Wind, the controversial 130-turbine project slated for construction on Horseshoe Shoal, cleared its final regulatory hurdle this week when the Federal Aviation Administration determined that the project would not pose a hazard to aviation.
On the drawing board for 10 years, Cape Wind is planned to be the country’s largest offshore wind farm, covering 50 square miles in Nantucket Sound.
Cape Wind, the controversial 130 turbine project slated for construction in Nantucket Sound, announced last week that it will purchase property in Falmouth Harbor for its operations headquarters.
Meanwhile, the wind farm’s opposition continued its fight against the project in court.
Opponents to Wind Farm Mount Suit to Block Tower in Nantucket Sound
By MANDY LOCKE
Offshore wind farm opponents took their case to federal court Friday
- urging the U.S. district court to overturn the United States
Army Corps of Engineers's approval of a 197-foot monitoring tower
to be erected by private energy developer Cape Wind Associates in the
shallows of Nantucket Sound.
Some 61 per cent of residents of Cape Cod and the Islands favor the Cape Wind project, according to a major new scientific survey of 501 residents.
So said the press release put out yesterday by the Civil Society Institute, which describes itself as a nonprofit and nonpartisan think tank in Newton. The release made it look like a decisive verdict in favor of the wind power project, delivered in the court of public opinion.
Setting up another potential roadblock for the offshore wind farm proposed in Nantucket Sound, the town of Barnstable and two groups of Cape Cod citizens last week filed notices of intent to sue the state’s top environmental official for his endorsement of the project.
The three separate notices serve as formal appeals of the certificate signed last month by Massachusetts Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Ian Bowles, who found that developers of the Cape Wind project had fulfilled their environmental review requirements on the state level.
A forum bringing together those for and against the controversial Cape Wind electricity project drew more than 120 people to the Katharine Cornell Theatre on Thursday night and generated far more light than heat.
The forum, organized under the auspices of the Vineyard Haven library lecture and workshop series, was intended to establish a factual basis for further discussion of the project rather than encourage debate, and by that measure can be counted a signal success.
A staff report released by the Cape Cod Commission this week gives a decidedly mixed review to the controversial plan by Cape Wind Associates to build 130 wind turbines on Horseshoe Shoal. The report finds that Cape Wind’s plan to connect the turbines to land in West Yarmouth through underwater electricity transmission lines meets only eight of 32 performance standards set by the commission.
In general, the staff report concluded, a good deal more information is needed in order to satisfy the requirements of the commission.
America’s first major offshore wind power generation project, Cape Wind, has cleared a key hurdle after a comprehensive federal environmental study found it would have no lasting major adverse impacts on wildlife, navigation, fishing, tourism or recreation.
The draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) by the Minerals Management Service, running to almost 2,000 pages, will now be subject to a process of community consultation, but if no major new concerns surface, federal approval of the $1 billion project appears likely by around the end of the year.
A few things became quite clear at Wednesday night’s public hearing on the draft environmental impact statement on the Cape Wind project.
The first was that about twice as many Vineyarders, assuming those who attended are broadly representative of Island opinion, oppose the project as support it.
In a recent piece published in this newspaper, Glenn Wattley made misleading statements about wind power and Cape Wind that I would like to address. Mr. Wattley is chief executive officer of the organization that formed solely to oppose Cape Wind, he has a background working in the coal industry, and he incorrectly argues that wind cannot help reduce our use of oil.
