Hill: Confident of Outcome After 9 Years of Review, All Questions Answered; 86 Percent of State Residents Support Nation's First Wind Park, Including Many Stakeholders Not at Salazar Meeting.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On the eve of a meeting Wednesday (January 13, 2009) on the Cape Wind clean energy project with U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Clean Power Now Executive Director Barbara Hill issued the following statement:
"The long-delayed start to the Cape Wind project is now within sight.
After nine years of painstaking and transparent review and extensive public participation under the auspices of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Minerals Management Service, the verdict is clear: Federal environmental impact reviews have all concluded that the Cape Wind project will provide significant public interest benefits in terms of clean energy with what are only minor to negligible impacts.
We commend Secretary Salazar for avoiding further delays by convening this meeting in order to move Cape Wind to a final decision point. With the Salazar-imposed deadline of March 1st to conclude the ongoing Section 106 consultation under the National Historic Preservation Act, a favorable Record of Decision for Cape Wind should follow shortly after this week's meeting.
I want to emphasize that the nature of the Section 106 consultation process is such that it is necessarily 'stacked' and not representative of the significant public support that Cape Wind has to build the project on Horseshoe Shoals in Nantucket Sound.
As such, Secretary Salazar will not be hearing at the meeting from the many tens of thousands of Cape Wind supporters including: the 86 percent of Massachusetts residents who favor Cape Wind (see link to survey results below); MA Climate Action Network; Cape & Islands Self Reliance; Clean Water Action; Environmental League of Massachusetts; Civil Society Institute; TheCLEAN.org; American Lung Association - Massachusetts Chapter; Cape Clean Air; Boston Urban Asthma Coalition; Greenpeace; Conservation Law Foundation; Natural Resources Defense Council; Union of Concerned Scientists; Healthlink and many others. (See a link to a fuller list of supporters below.)
Moving ahead on Cape Wind will send a powerful and unmistakable message that the United States is no longer content to lag behind the rest of the world in using wind power to create new jobs, foster energy independence and reduce this nation's carbon footprint.
Cape Wind will concretely advance the Obama Administration's stated objectives in addressing the challenges of climate change while promoting energy security and economic development. Following this lengthy and rigorous review, approval of the Cape Wind project also will send a critical message to the clean energy sector and will help lay the strongest possible foundation for offshore wind energy development in the United States."
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
Cape Wind is poised to be the United States' first offshore wind park. The project involves 130 wind turbine towers in Horseshoe Shoals, a shallow area in the federal waters of Nantucket Sound, and would produce enough clean power for 75 percent of the Cape & Islands energy needs.
1 comment:
SAVE NANTUCKET SOUND, RELOCATE THE CAPE WIND PROJECT TO A DEEP WATER VENUE
As a colonial-rooted Cape Cod native who firmly believes in the sanctity of our maritime heritage, I am writing to ardently express my steadfast support for the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. Based upon sensible logic, data and reasoning, I am also conversely opposed to the controversial Cape Wind Project which seeks to despoil and rob us of the pristine nautical legacy bestowed by our forefathers. As a result of the likely profound damaging regional financial, ecological and public safety consequences Cape Wind would wrought upon us all, it should not be allowed to proceed forward to fruition.
The project poses a cogent danger to essential air and sea navigation. Siting the project in Nantucket Sound is a breach of the public trust. Contrary to their sham claims, the cost of the electricity which the project will produce would not be cheap or competitive. It would be an unbearable fiscal burden hoisted upon us without our sanction or consent. Furthermore, it will represent a deleterious local economic blow by it's absconding of undeserved taxpayer-funded subsidies, forced real estate devaluations, and lost revenues from commercial and tourism activities. The proposed one hundred thirty wind turbines will perpetually cause unsightly visual contamination and distressing noise pollution. Finally, Cape Wind will unnecessarily endanger a critical marine and wildlife habitat.
Off-shore deep water wind has surfaced as a cost-effective and technologically feasible option in lieu of the Nantucket Sound situated Cape Wind Project. Cape Wind has chosen a location which possesses countless expenses as well as hazards to public safety, the marine environment, and the local economy. Deeper-water sites offer more powerful winds and the advantages of clean renewable energy without surrendering the irreplaceable natural beauty of Nantucket Sound.
More distantly sited off-shore locations guarantee the advantages of clean wind power without many of the harmful effects of close-shore siting. Furthermore, there would be little harmful impact upon air and marine navigational safety and local tourist-based economies.
In 2007, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) estimated a total off-shore wind energy resource of over 1000 GW. The potential for deep water locations greater than 30 m (or 100 feet) is enormous. Approximately ninety percent of the off-shore wind potential in the United States resides in deep water.
With the aforesaid thoughtful rationales in mind, along with the inherently unfair and inequitable nature of the proposed Cape Wind Project itself, it must not become a reality which will forever doom our children and grandchildren to a ghastly socially inhumane legacy.
Ron Beaty
West Barnstable, MA
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