Amid an escalating political climate around the controversial Cape Wind project, the Martha's Vineyard Commission decided last week to finally step into the fray.
While commission members were clear they would not take a position on the project itself, they unanimously agreed to take up as a cause the inadequate regulatory framework for permitting offshore wind farms.
Top federal environmental agencies found fundamental flaws in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers review of the controversial Cape Wind project, the Gazette has learned.
Responding to an early version of the Army Corps draft environmental impact statement, the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Mineral Management Service all questioned the objectivity of the Army Corps analysis.
Army Corps of Engineers Releases Long-Awaited Environmental Report for Controversial Cape Wind Plan
The controversial Cape Wind project vaulted back into the news this week with the long-awaited release of a draft environmental impact statement from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
After three years of deliberation and months of anticipation, the environmental report found that the wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound would have economic and air quality benefits but little or no long-term negative impacts.
The leading critics of the 170-turbine offshore wind farm proposed for the shallow waters of Horseshoe Shoal made their way across Nantucket Sound to rally Vineyard opposition to the project.
"I've seen grocery stores take longer to get permitting in front of the Cape Cod Commission than it took for Cape Wind to get [a data tower permit] from the Army Corps of Engineers," said Isaac Rosen, executive director of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, to less than a dozen officials at the all-Island selectmen's meeting Wednesday night.
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.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this week gave Cape Wind Associates a green light to erect a single 197-foot-tall monitoring station in the shallows of Nantucket Sound.
The permit grants the private energy company permission to build just a single structure for collecting wind and water data - information that will further aid in state and federal environmental review of a proposed offshore wind farm. But the would-be developer of what is potentially the first such farm in the United States interprets permission from the Army Corps as a monumental hurdle.
