Vineyard Commissioners Urge U.S. Army Corps: Put Cape Wind on Hold

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.

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Defense Department Cites Potential Radar Interference from Wind Farms

Pentagon officials are calling for additional studies to determine whether the proposed wind farm in Nantucket Sound would impair a crucial missile detection radar system located on Cape Cod.

In a special congressional report released last week, the U.S. Department of Defense found that wind turbines located within the line of sight of military radar can adversely affect its ability to track aircraft and other aerial objects. The results were based largely on military tests conducted by the U.S. Air Force and United Kingdom Ministry of Defence between 2002 and 2005.

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Debate Drags on Over Cape Wind
Mike Seccombe

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.

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Debate Intensifies Before Island Wind Farm Forum

More than 3,200 written submissions have been received in response to the draft environmental impact statement on the Cape Wind project, and the federal Minerals Management Service has been forced to extend the deadline for comment by a month so yet more can be made.

The original 60-day period for comment was to have ended on March 20, but now will run until April 21.

Cape Wind has proposed building 130 wind turbines on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound. The company has said that the wind farm could generate up to 420 megawatts of power.

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Island Asked to Join Federal-State Task Force on Big Wind
Mike Seccombe

A major wind turbine development near the Vineyard is at best a stopgap measure, and the real energy future lies in federal waters, state energy and environmental officials told Islanders this week.

“The state’s interest, long-term is not in state water,” Deerin Babb-Brott, one of the senior bureaucrats driving the state oceans plan, told local community leaders at a public meeting at the regional high school Wednesday night. The interest is in federal water, at the extreme limit of visibility, or completely over the horizon, he said.

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Wind Development Crosses State Lines
Peter Brannen

In the effort to develop wind energy in the ocean between Block Island and Aquinnah, Massachusetts will follow the lead of the Ocean State.

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Federal Offshore Energy Plans Dwarf Cape Wind
Mike Seccombe

Federal authorities plan to open up almost 4,000 square nautical miles of ocean near the Vineyard for potential wind power generation.

A draft Request for Interest (RFI) map presented to a renewable energy task force meeting of state, local and federal representatives on Wednesday identifies a vast arc of ocean, extending from the Rhode Island border, southwest of the Island, across to the south of the Vineyard and Nantucket, then running north and east to the entrance to Nantucket Sound.

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Guide to Federal Wind Sites: Follow the Money
Richard Knabel

U.S. Department of the Interior Secre tary Ken Salazar made a big point of saying recently that wind development had to be done right and in the “right places.” No one can disagree with those sentiments, and they were certainly issued for public consumption. However, the Minerals Management Service (MMS), which is under his control, doesn’t seem to have heard him, or perhaps just tuned him out.

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Wind Rules: Making Up Is Hard to Do
Jim Hickey

A large group of Island planning and conservation officials gathered last week to debate what is expected to be a central dilemma in the months and years to come: how to allow and regulate large-scale wind turbines on the Vineyard while still protecting the Island’s unique culture, environment and economy.

Widely considered one of the most beautiful and fragile places in the state with delicate ecosystems, fishing grounds and habitats for rare and endangered species, the Vineyard also has some of the best wind conditions in New England.

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Vineyard Fishermen Sue in U.S. Court to Block Cape Wind Associates
Mark Alan Lovewell

Like David against Goliath, the Martha’s Vineyard/Dukes County Fishermen’s Association and a well-known Menemsha draggerman last week filed a lawsuit in federal court against the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, claiming that the giant wind farm planned by Cape Wind Associates for Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound threatens to put Island fishermen who work the shoal, including squidders and conchers, out of business for good.

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