Tracking the Cape Wind Debate

For over six years, America has been keenly monitoring the progress of what has come to be known as the Cape Wind project, the proposal by a private developer to build the nation's first offshore wind farm in the waters of Nantucket Sound, off the coast of Massachusetts near Cape Cod.

At this point, Erika, and in the name of full disclosure, I should state that in addition to being Executive Campaigner for Solar Nation (under which guise you may have seen other submissions of mine to REW.com), I am a founding member and director of Clean Power Now, a 10,000-member grass roots group that has supported the Cape Wind project for the last five years. What follows, however, is my unbiased account of last week's four hearings, which took place in various locations around Massachussetts. 

Last week, the project was brought a step closer to being either permitted or rejected, as the Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) held a series of public hearings to gather comments on the proposal from elected officials and members of the public. And the hearings — in Yarmouth, Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard and Boston, Massachusetts — encapsulated all the passion, emotion and drama that has come to characterize this marathon affair.

Cape Wind was first proposed by its parent company, Energy Management Inc., in late 2001. The proposal attracted a hurricane of opposition from Cape Codders even before any details of the proposal were made public. In more measured fashion, it attracted support from a small but growing number of elected officials and citizens intrigued by the potential value of the renewable energy project.

From the very beginning, the battle over Cape Wind has raged like a wind storm over Cape Cod, with its effects felt throughout the country as would-be wind developers wait to see whether the imperative of clean energy can overcome local opposition, political pressure, and moneyed interests. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a favorable 4,000-page Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) and held their own slate of public hearings three years ago, before the permitting task was passed to MMS. The seemingly interminable wait has been punctuated by occasional bursts of political activity, as various U.S. senators and representatives have attempted, unsuccessfully, to introduce legislation that would have the effect of killing Cape Wind.

In January, the MMS issued its own DEIS, which was — like the Army Corps' — highly favorable to the project. Of 116 parameters measured, 106 were deemed to have "negligible to minor" adverse effect on the environment; of the remaining ten, nine were categorized as "minor to moderate," and just one was listed as 'major.' This was the visual impact on boaters within a few hundred feet of the turbine towers.

The publication of the MMS DEIS started a public comment process, including the four public hearings in Massachusetts. Monday's hearing was advertised with a 6pm start time, with sign-up for would-be speakers starting an hour earlier. It was symptomatic of the intensity of the six-year-long debate that activists for both sides started to arrive by 3pm to line up to speak. By 4pm, the area outside the school contained sign-carrying adherents of both pro- and anti- factions, TV news satellite trucks and reporters from local and regional media as well as a robust contingent of local police officers clearly worried that the large, partisan signs would be used in ways that would constitute a disturbance of the peace.

By 6pm, several hundred people had taken their seats in the auditorium, a figure that was to swell to about one thousand over the course of the evening. Over two hundred had signed up to address the MMS panel for a maximum of three minutes each. First, however, local elected officials were given the opportunity to speak, and of the twenty who did, some eighteen spoke against the project or expressed deep reservations. Their concerns, which were echoed during the long evening by many citizen speakers, included fishing, aesthetics, navigation, oil spill dangers, emergency response, and effects on wildlife.

By 6pm, several hundred people had taken their seats in the auditorium, a figure that was to swell to about one thousand over the course of the evening. (Photo Credit: Cape Cod Today)

When it was the turn of citizens to speak, it became clear that Cape Wind symbolized something much larger than a state or regional issue. Among the first speakers were former coal miners from Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia. They had made the journey to Massachusetts at the expense of Clean Power Now to highlight the fact that mountaintop removal in their home states was destroying their health in the name of fossil fuel-derived energy. Their presence was significant, since many of the backers and executives of the organized opposition to Cape Wind have made their money in fossil fuel industries.

As the evening wore on, speakers opposing the project seemed to outnumber proponents by a 2-1 or 3-1 margin. The same issues-visual impact, navigation, and effect on wildlife-resurfaced time and time again from opponents, whose overall theme could be captured with the phrase "I'm in favor of wind energy, but not in Nantucket Sound." Backers of the project pointed to arguments such as global warming mitigation, local fossil fuel pollution, and the promise of job creation, while praising the MMS for its favorable review.

By midnight on Monday some one hundred speakers had voiced their opinion, and the representatives of the MMS, who had listened politely for six hours, retired to gather strength for the succeeding sessions. These were similar in nature, and often in intensity, with street theater and bizarrely costumed hucksters enlivening the long waits outside hearing venues. Both in Nantucket and in Martha's Vineyard, some sixty speakers took to the microphone, with a little over half of them opposed to the project. In the Boston hearing, where attendees favored the wind farm by a 4-3 margin, speakers included a group of students dressed as sheiks, whose satirical message was one of thanks to project opponents for keeping money flowing to oil states.

Two related developments showed signs of strategic' timing. The weekend before the hearings, Blue H USA announced a proposal to build 120 floating wind turbines in deep water 23 miles south of Martha's Vineyard. Cape Wind opponents pointed out that this would be a preferable project, being completely out of sight from Cape Cod, although no data was provided by the Blue H spokesperson at the Yarmouth hearing to show whether the deep-water project was economically feasible. And a few days prior to this announcement, the Civil Society Institute published a new poll of 1200 Massachusetts residents that showed as many as 87% of them support the wind farm project, including 77% on the Cape and Islands.

Following the public comment period, which has now been extended to mid-April, the MMS will perform any further evaluations deemed necessary, then publish a Final Environmental Impact Statement and a Record of Decision, probably in the winter of 2008/09.