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.

With Cape Wind hoping to break ground in the coming years and a huge new swath of ocean opened for wind farm development south of the Vineyard, the impact of turbine noise on fisheries is still poorly understood.

“The long-term impacts of these wind farms are just totally unknown,” said Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution biologist Scott Gallagher this week.

As the federal government presses ahead with plans to develop wind farms on a 1,300-square-mile plot of ocean south of the Vineyard, on Monday night the Island had its turn to have a say about it.

Representatives from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, accompanied by members of the Gov. Deval Patrick administration and Cape and Islands Rep. Timothy Madden, came to the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven Monday to solicit public comment as part of a call for information announced on Feb. 6.

The state’s highest court this week rejected a wide-ranging challenge to a power contract between Cape Wind Associates and the utility National Grid.

In a pair of decisions, the Supreme Judicial Court sided with the state Department of Public Utilities, which last year approved the contract calling for Cape Wind to sell 50 per cent of the wind project’s power to the large utility that serves millions of consumers in Massachusetts and three other northeast states.

Let’s face it, there are few pursuits more quixotic than that of journalistic objectivity. The preview screening of the documentary movie Cape Spin: An American Power Struggle in Oak Bluffs on Tuesday night provided a perfect illustration of the point.

For 84 minutes, the film explored the issues involved in the controversial Cape Wind development. Then for another hour or so its makers were subjected by audience members to a torrent of claims and counterclaims about their objectivity.

The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) has filed a lawsuit to try to block the development of the Cape Wind project on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound.

In a statement issued Friday, the tribe announced the tribal government had authorized the long-threatened lawsuit against the Department of the Interior‘s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, which has approved the 130-turbine wind farm.

Wind, tides and sun are intense subjects for discussion on the Island these days and it’s not all talk about the weather. Alternative energy projects are under way on so many fronts, both private and public, that it is sometimes hard to keep track of them all. But the Vineyard is moving ahead on three projects independently to generate electricity for its own needs, beginning with wind farms.

More than nine years after plans for a huge wind farm in Nantucket Sound were first revealed, the final regulatory approvals for Cape Wind have been granted.

The exhaustive review process began in 2001. It ended last Friday, with granting by the Environmental Protection Agency of a permit relating to potential effects on air quality of emissions from vessels engaged in operations to do with construction and operation of the 130-turbine development on Horseshoe Shoal.

With Rhode Island Sound now looming as the next frontier for wind development near the Vineyard, the Ocean State’s Gov. Donald Carcieri summed up his state’s energy policy this month with a single phrase: “Spin, baby, spin!”

Wind developers pressed ahead on two fronts this week, as two new players entered the fray with proposals to develop wind farms in waters west of the Vineyard and Cape Wind put the final touches on a deal to sell electricity to National Grid.