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.

The commission will ask the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to set aside the Cape Wind proposal until the federal government adopts a comprehensive ocean management policy. The commission will also offer to help Sens. John Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy and Cong. William Delahunt accomplish the goal.

"I'm suggesting we offer to be foot soldiers," MVC chairman Linda Sibley said last Thursday night. "We should send a letter to Kerry, Kennedy and Delahunt saying that we're willing to do whatever they see as important. We're willing to do the leg work."

Commission members considered reviewing the Cape Wind project as if it was a development of regional impact (DRI), but ultimately decided that the benefits and detriments of the project would be impossible to weigh absent an adequate regulatory process.

"It would be a travesty to let this go without being properly vetted, and it can't be properly vetted until a system is in place," commission member Douglas Sederholm said.

"What concerns me is that right now we have a technical organization [Army Corps] making what should be a political decision," commission member Mimi Davisson said. "To delve into the technical details is premature."

The absence of a comprehensive ocean policy has been a banner issue since the private developer Cape Wind Associates first proposed building a wind farm in federal waters off Nantucket Sound more than three years ago.

But with less than a month left in the Corps public comment period following the release of its draft environmental impact statement, calls for a better regulatory framework are heating up.

Also last week, Cape and Islands state legislators Robert O'Leary and Eric T. Turkington authored a joint letter with five other members of the Cape delegation, calling on Gov. Mitt Romney to place a moratorium on the development and permitting of offshore wind farms until a statewide ocean management plan is enacted.

The letter urged Governor Romney to follow the example of New Jersey acting governor Richard Codey, who in December issued an executive order putting a 15-month freeze on permitting for offshore wind farms.

Governor Romney, who has said he will oppose the wind farm with every legal means available to him and has repeatedly asked the White House for a similar moratorium on the federal level, has not yet responded to the letter.

The need for a consistent comprehensive policy to consider offshore renewable energy projects is widely acknowledged by both supporters and opponents of the Cape Wind project.

Whether the recent steps taken by the commission and Cape delegation will have any impact on the project, however, is another matter.

Army Corps spokesman Larry Rosenberg said the Corps has no authority to halt its review of a project unless the applicant withdraws the proposal or a new federal law is enacted that affects its regulatory jurisdiction.

"And as far I know there's no legislation moving forward that would do that," Mr. Rosenberg said yesterday.

On the state level, Senator O'Leary last month filed legislation to design an ocean resources management plan under the oversight of the state secretary of environmental affairs. But the plan would only encompass state waters, and would have no effect on the Cape Wind project, which is proposed for federal waters more than three miles offshore.

A spokesman in the governor's office said the same about the Cape delegation's request for a moratorium, although Senator O'Leary maintains that an executive order from the Massachusetts governor would affect the various state permits that Cape Wind must secure before the Corps can sign off on the overall project.

The state energy facilities siting board, appointed by Governor Romney, is currently reviewing Cape Wind's application for the transmission lines that will connect the wind farm to the mainland by passing through state waters. In November the board voted 5-1 to delay an expected vote on the permit so it could review the Corps draft environmental impact statement.

Before the Corps can issue a final permit, the state Department of Environmental Protection must also issue a series of water-related certificates; the state coastal zone management office must find that the project does not affect surrounding state waters, and secretary of environmental affairs Ellen Herzfelder must declare that the final environmental impact statement is adequate.

At the public hearing held by the Corps on the Vineyard in December, Mrs. Herzfelder emphasized the need for a better regulatory system. She urged the Corps to adopt better planning for federal waters and increase coordination with states for comprehensive ocean management.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Herzfelder's predecessor Susan Tierney recently threw her support to the Cape Wind project. The secretary of environmental affairs under former Gov. William Weld, Mrs. Tierney was appointed by Mrs. Herzfelder in June 2003 as chairman of the Ocean Management Task Force, on which Senator O'Leary also served.

Mrs. Tierney said she was undecided on the project until she read the Corps draft impact statement, which she later called one of the most thorough she had ever seen.

Others, however, are less impressed by the Corps review.

At their meeting last week MVC members expressed a number of misgivings about the draft statement. An early version of the letter the commission intends to send to the Corps takes particular aim at the Corps review of key issues around the project, calling it weak, incomplete and lacking objectivity.

Commission member Megan Ottens-Sargent noted that while the bureau of land management is currently creating a programmatic policy to assess onshore wind farm proposals on federal lands under its jurisdiction, similar guidelines are not in the works for offshore proposals.

In fact, when Army Corps Col. Thomas Konig - who will eventually make the permitting decision on the Cape Wind proposal - testified before the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy in July 2002, he recommended that the federal government create such a policy.

"There are existing regulatory bodies that govern almost all ocean activity that extracts something from the ocean or seabed, but there is not a similar entity for non-extraction activities like wind energy projects," Colonel Konig said. "These activities also need a comprehensive policy that encompasses all facets to include licensing, permitting that the Corps does, and ownership issues on federal and/or state ocean bottom property."

The ocean policy commission submitted its final report to Congress and President Bush in September, calling for a comprehensive national ocean policy.

"Congress . . . should enact legislation to streamline the licensing of renewable energy facilities in U.S. waters, relying on an open, transparent process that accounts for state, local and public concerns. The legislation should include the principle that the oceans are a public resource and that the U.S. Treasury should receive a fair return from any use of that resource," the report's executive summary said.

The ocean policy commission was established by the Oceans Act of 2000, which then-President Bill Clinton signed into law at the West Chop Coast Guard Station, with a view of Nantucket Sound in the distance.

Supporters of the Cape Wind proposal have said waiting for additional federal policy would delay the much-needed benefits of renewable energy projects.

MVC members said last week, however, that the country would likely end up with more offshore wind farms if it developed a comprehensive policy than if it deals with each proposal on an ad hoc basis.

"Anything worth doing is worth doing right," Mrs. Sibley said. "Unless some of these issues are resolved, this project will be mired in legal battles for years. It might hold up the project longer than if we waited for a planning process, and that would harm future attempts to build offshore wind farms."