Strange Allies Battle Wind Farm

Oct 18 - Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

Six miles offshore in Cape Cod's Nantucket Sound, Cape Wind Associates proposes to build the nation's first offshore wind farm - - 130 wind turbines, each with propellers 440 feet high -- in these federal waters.

That plan has sparked a five-year fight against the project, bringing together some strange allies. Lame-duck Republican governor Mitt Romney has found common ground with Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy; the International Wildlife Coalition is on board with the Nantucket Chamber of Commerce; and the Cape Cod & Islands Association of Realtors is with the Wampanoag Tribal Council.

Opponents offer a long and varied litany of objections. Birders fear the spinning turbine blades will threaten avian life. Fishermen say the 24-square-mile array of windmills on Horseshoe Shoal will stifle a productive fishing ground. The Massachusetts Historic Commission says Cape Wind will have an "adverse effect" on 15 historically significant sites -- among them the Kennedy Compound in Barnstable. Most recently, opponents say the wind farm is a national security threat, since the turbines could, in theory, interfere with military radar.

Concern for wildlife, seafood and historic buildings notwithstanding, the real knock on wind power here and elsewhere has been that it produces too little energy to justify the effort and expense. But in recent years windmill technology has evolved, with improvements in turbine efficiency and longevity. The Cape Wind project promises as much as 454 megawatts of power, enough juice to meet 75 percent of Cape Cod's electricity needs.

There are dozens of environmental and labor organizations, both local and national, endorsing the project. Safe, clean and abundant energy, they say, is the payoff. Cape Wind may have gotten a boost when the Democratic gubernatorial candidate Patrick Deval endorsed the project. He won his party's primary (and did well in the Cape Cod area) and is now facing off against Republican Lt. Governor Kerry Healy, who's opposed to Cape Wind. The fate of the project could very well be decided in the November election.

"Every benefit and impact is being evaluated," says Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers. "At the end of the day the project will be found to be in the public interest." He claims, and there's much evidence to back him up, that local residents care less for real environmental impacts than they do about alterations in the look of their "backyard," as if federal waters are theirs. "Some people will say it looks horrible. Some people will say it looks cool," says Rodgers.

If not here, then where? Robert Kennedy Jr., one of the nation's foremost environmentalists, has proposed the site be moved further offshore, out of sight. That proposition got a little steam recently when Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced new research showing that floating, tethered turbines situated well offshore are technically -- and fiscally -- possible. Paul Sclavounos, an MIT professor of mechanical engineering and naval architecture, is developing plans for a bigger array of floating turbines off the southeast coast of the Cape.

There are many advantages to such a plan. For one, the wind blows harder and longer offshore. But, says Sclavounos, "the primary innovation is you can assemble the turbines at a shipyard, then tow them to a pre-installed mooring offshore." This would greatly reduce the expense of maintenance crews at sea.

How far out would the floating windmills need to be to be unseen from the shore? "The answer to that question," says Sclavounos, "assuming the Earth is round and not flat, is about 20 miles."

Cape Wind estimates that their turbines will last about 20 years, after which the company has promised to pay for their removal. Of course, 20 years may seem like a very long time to these moneyed denizens of Cape Cod, and a compromise may not be an easy sell. They'll need to be convinced that Cape Wind is a short-term solution until bigger wind arrays can be built further out to sea.

"It would be nice to see Cape Wind go forward because it might help the offshore wind industry kick off, which would be good for us," says Sclavounos. "The wind is out there, and it's free. It's just a matter of capturing it."