Offshore Wind Farm Opposed By Massachusetts NIMBYs

The U.S. Court of Appeals on Friday revoked a previous "no hazard" determination by the FAA concerning the proposed Cape Wind offshore wind farm, saying that the FAA failed to consider the very real dangers and risks to the operations and safety of the 400,000 flights that transit Nantucket Sound each year.

According to the Cape Wind website, the project would be "America’s first offshore wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound. Miles from the nearest shore, 130 wind turbines will gracefully harness the wind to produce up to 420 megawatts of clean, renewable energy. In average winds, Cape Wind will provide three quarters of the Cape and Islands electricity needs."

But the project has been opposed from its inception by people who do not want the massive wind turbines placed in Nantucket Sound.

"This represents a major setback for an already struggling project," said Audra Parker, president and CEO of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. "The decision is further reason for the Patrick Administration to stop its attempts to force the state's second largest electric utility, NStar, to purchase energy from a project that will never be built."

As a result of today's decision, Cape Wind cannot begin construction or proceed with the project. The FAA case is the first of multiple federal lawsuits challenging this poorly sited and expensive project and is just the tip of the iceberg of the problems the courts will consider relative to the Nantucket Sound location.

"It is time for Cape Wind and the Department of Interior to relocate this project to another site that will not only protect Nantucket Sound, but allow properly sited offshore wind development in a timely way," said Parker. "After ten years, Cape Wind continues to face legal and financial challenges, while better and cheaper forms of green energy are widely available. The free market has shown little or no interest in Cape Wind, the federal government has refused to issue a loan guarantee for the project, and now a federal court has dealt Cape Wind a major setback in rejecting the FAA's determination."

In a statement on the Cape Wind website, Communications Director Mark Rogers said “The FAA has reviewed Cape Wind for eight years and repeatedly determined that Cape Wind did not pose a hazard to air navigation. The essence of today’s court ruling is that the FAA needs to better explain its Determination of No Hazard. We are confident that after the FAA does this, that their decision will stand and we do not foresee any impact on the project’s schedule in moving forward. Really, today’s court decision doesn’t change things very much because our existing Determination of No Hazard (the 3rd we have received since we started with this project) was set to expire in just 90 days and we were going to have to re-apply at that time anyway, this lets us begin that process sooner.”

FMI: www.saveoursound.org, www.capewind.org/index.php