It will be interesting to see what Obama's decision is here. I see Scott Brown is also against it. This is very similar to the NIMBY constituency where I live in CA. We have 2000-3000 gallons of oil a day naturally seeping out offshore at Coal Oil Point, but no one, Rep or Dem, wants to allow drilling there.
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/28/interior-department-poised-annouce-decision-controversial-offshore-wind-farm/Interior Department Poised to Annouce Decision on Controversial Offshore Wind Farm
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is headed to Boston Wednesday to make an announcement about a controversial wind farm project on Cape Cod that could put the Obama administration at odds with one of the president's biggest supporters: the Kennedy family.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is headed to Boston Wednesday to make an announcement about a controversial wind farm project on Cape Cod that could put the Obama administration at odds with one of the president's biggest supporters: the Kennedy family.
Salazar will announce whether the wind farm project off the coast of Cape Cod will see the light of day -- or be gone with the wind. His decision will affect thousands of residents, local businesses and tourists who flock to the seashore paradise each summer -- and likely determine the fate of other such offshore wind farms in states from New York to Michigan.
The Cape Wind project, which would be built five miles off shore, has already created a bipartisan jumble that's pitting environmentalists and lawmakers against each other on both sides of the dispute over the 130 planned turbines -- whose windmill arms would extend over 400 feet above the water.
The offshore wind farm, nine years in the planning, has been blasted by critics like the Kennedys as an "economic boondoggle" that will cost taxpayers billions, hurt commercial fishing and pose a danger to wildlife along a pristine stretch of the Nantucket Sound.
Members of the Kennedy family, including environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., have been leading opponents of the project, claiming taxpayers already hit with the highest energy costs in the nation will be forced to pay double the price of a land-based wind system.
"It's a boondoggle of the worst kind," Robert Kennedy said in an interview Tuesday with FoxNews.com. "It's going to cost the people of Massachusetts $4 billion over the next 20 years in extra costs."
His uncle contested the proposal up until his death last August, arguing the turbines would spoil the seascape viewed from the waters he once sailed and from the family's six-acre Hyannis Port compound.
"We're the windiest country on earth and we have lots and lots of land" on which to build wind farms, the younger Kennedy said. "Americans don’t want to pay 27 cents a kilowatt hour for energy."
Kennedy's opposition is also shared by Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., and Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., who penned a joint letter last week to Salazar, asking him to bring together all "stakeholders" of the project to reach a consensus decision on the project. An "up or down" decision, they wrote, would result in years of legal battles over its development.
"It is the American people who are providing the public space for this project and it is the American people who are being asked to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to the developers," wrote Brown and Delahunt. "The people most affected should have a seat at the table on this project."
Critics, like Delahunt and Brown, say they are not opposed to offshore wind farms but favor building them in deeper waters, like in Germany and Scotland.
But the offshore wind farm, which would be the first in the nation and which would cost an estimated $1 billion to construct, has been heralded by several environmental agencies and six East Coast governors as a breakthrough in alternative energy production.
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick as well as governors in Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware each support the project. On Tuesday, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., told a group of veterans that he would back the wind farm if it is approved by Salazar this week.
The ocean winds along the eastern sea board are among the strongest in North America, proponents say, and the project would be a critical step in developing clean sources of energy and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
"It’s the Saudi Arabia of wind," said Amy Kempe, press secretary for Rhode Island Gov. Donald Carcieri. "So long as due diligence is done, something tells me that fish can swim around [turbines] just as cattle can move around them on the plains."
Some environmental groups have also expressed a plethora of concerns over the project -- from effects on marine life and the local economy to potential public safety hazards and risks to air traffic control and a disturbance to sacred tribal land.
Audra Parker, president and CEO of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, said at least three endangered species inhabit the waters eyed for development, including North Atlantic right whales and two bird species, which could be adversely affected by the building.
Parker also claimed that fishing boats and commuter ferries in the sound -- one of the busiest waterways in the country -- could come dangerously close to the turbines’ spinning blades, particularly during stormy weather conditions.
The Humane Society of the United States is calling for a more adequate review of Cape Wind's impact on the environment, according to Sharon Young, the society's marine issues field director. And the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, an independent government agency, has also said the department should "not approve the project," claiming that the "indirect and direct effects" of the turbines would "be pervasive, destructive, and, in the instance of seabed construction, permanent."
Officials at Cape Wind, which is headed by Energy Management Co., said the plan has been subjected to nine years of thorough regulatory review on the state and federal level.
"This project has undergone the closest scrutiny and by all measures has shown the benefits outweigh the [negative] impacts," added Robert Keough, spokesman for the Massachusetts Office of Energy and Environment Affairs.
Supporters of the wind farm continually cite a February study conducted by the Charles River Associates, employed by the project's developers, which suggests Cape Wind could save $4.6 billion in energy costs over the next 25 years.
Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rogers said the "visual impact is driving most of the opposition to the project" -- a claim Kennedy and others say they reject.
"Some people like the way wind turbines look, others do not," Rogers said in an interview.
