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.

Enrollment at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School is expected to drop by 150 students — or about 20 per cent — over the next 10 years, according to a report from the New England School Development Council.

A dozen stunned West Tisbury property owners crowded the normally quiet town assessors meeting this week to question their assessments and tax bills, which have more than doubled this year.

The day outside was cold. A real winter northeaster was blowing in and the gray clouds above promised snow. The door to Vera Shorter’s Vineyard Haven home, however, was open.

She had just indulged in what is quite possibly her only vice she said as she spread a stack of ginger snaps on a plate. She braved the cold so her home would not smell like the cigarettes she cannot seem to give up. She would hate for the smoke to offend the guests who stop in from time to time.

Home foreclosure petitions were up sharply on the Island in 2007 over 2006.

A total of 69 homes were listed for foreclosure by ForeclosuresMass.com, a commonwealth reporting agency, for the 12 months ending Oct. 31, 2007, compared with 41 homes in the same period the year before. Island foreclosures averaged about 30 homes per year between 2003 to 2005, according to the same reporting company.

New General Manager

Scout Real Estate Capital has hired Thad Hyland, an award-winning hospitality industry veteran, to serve as general manager of the Harbor View Hotel & Resort and Kelley House in Edgartown. For the past dozen years, Hyland has worked as managing director of the legendary Ojai Valley Inn & Spa near Santa Barbara, Calif.

When a furnace burst, coating much of Edgartown’s library building in atomized oil at the beginning of December, director Felicia Cheney thought she and her staff would be in and out of emergency digs in the town hall selectmen’s meeting room within a fortnight.

But a drawn-out insurance claim process has left the books and artwork gathering dust on top of oil in the North Water street library for the seventh week, and the librarians have no definite end in sight.

Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation plans to appoint Adam Moore, a former land superintendent at the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank, as its new executive director.

Mr. Moore is currently executive director of the Connecticut Forest and Park Association, a position he has held since 2001. He oversees 800 miles of trails. During his tenure, Mr. Moore doubled the size of the staff, greatly increased annual giving, and became a national and statewide advocate for conservation.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has finally put beyond doubt the power of local officials to prevent developers from tearing down small houses on undersized lots and replacing them with McMansions.

Almost two and a half years after the state’s highest court deadlocked 3-3 in the case of Katama homeowners who wanted to double the size of their house on a substandard half-acre lot, the court came down decisively against such practices in an almost identical case involving a house in Norwell.

A 50-acre property in the Priester’s Pond area of West Tisbury has changed hands for $15 million.

The buyer is Claudia Miller, whose mainland place of residence and prior connection to the Vineyard, if any, are unknown. The land includes two houses, one that was built in the Berkshires in 1795 and brought to the Vineyard in 1987.

The property, which has frontage on both Priester’s and Crosby ponds, includes one of the oldest farms on the Vineyard. The other house on the tract, the Luce Athearn House, is even older, dating to 1714.