Dec 3 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Patrick Cassidy Cape Cod Times, Hyannis, Mass.


The authors of a 2005 survey on the proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm have released results from a new poll that shows a shift of local attitudes in favor of the project.

The University of Delaware survey results, released yesterday, indicate that more residents of the Cape and Islands now support Cape Wind than oppose it.

A poll conducted four years ago by the same researchers from the university's Center for Carbon-free Power Integration, found 56 percent of respondents were opposed to Cape Wind's plan to build 130 wind turbines in the Sound. The more recent poll showed a reversal of attitudes, with 57 percent of respondents now in favor of the project.

"This certainly is in line with the impressions I've had talking with people," Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers said.

The state and federal review process, which has found the project to have more benefits than detriments, likely played a large role in the shift, Rodgers said.

The survey's questions did not show any apparent bias and the methodology used is "clearly described and justified," Michael Elasmer director of the Communication Research Center at Boston University, wrote in an e-mail to the Times after reviewing the survey results.

Although he had criticized a 2007 poll with similar results performed by the Opinion Research Corporation, Elasmer stated that the University of Delaware survey appeared unbiased.

"It is refreshing to see advanced analytic methods being applied to a timely topic," Elasmer wrote.

Opponents of Cape Wind disagreed, citing simulations of the wind turbines they believe are inaccurate and the omission from the survey of potential effects of the wind farm.

"Their questions totally fail to address the tribal issues, the aviation issues, the results of an oil spill," said Audra Parker, executive director of the main anti-Cape Wind group, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.

The survey's authors stand by their simulations and results, said Jeremy Firestone, associate professor of marine policy at the university.

The simulations were done by an independent company and the survey was paid for by a roughly $160,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Firestone said.

Other people have said the simulations show the turbines more clearly than they would appear, Firestone said. The survey questions were substantively the same as those in the 2005 survey with different results, he said.

Results were weighted to reflect the general population and researchers were careful with the wording of the questions to avoid bias, he said.

"Over the years ... the developers wish the prior results had come out different and now the Alliance wishes these results were different," he said.

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