NP&EDC looking at alternate wind farm sites
Draft environmental impact statement is due out in March 2007
BY PETER B. BRACE
Although one of Governor-elect Deval Patrick’s thickest and widest campaign planks is his support for wind and other alternate forms of energy, most Nantucketers, along with the Nantucket Planning & Economic Development Commission, want Cape Wind to choose another site for its wind farm.

When Planning Director Andrew Vorce and Transportation Planner Michael Burns met with Patrick’s transportation transition team last Friday to discuss the new governor’s goals for solving transportation issues in the Commonwealth, Vorce learned that the Cape Wind project is going to be getting a lot of attention by the Patrick Administration in the near future.

“From the meeting, we’re sensing that there is going to be some movement on this issue,” Vorce said. “It’s well established on the record that the incoming governor supports alternative energy sources and as part of the Minerals Management Service (MMS) scoping process, there are alternative sites that we have recommended be further investigated.”

Vorce said he is asking the members of the Planning Commission to think about other possible sites for the wind farm — specifically one south and west of Tuckernuck Island — that make more sense than Nantucket Sound in terms of navigation and aesthetics. Armed with the commissioners’ comments, Vorce plans to attend a regional meeting in Boston on Jan. 10, hosted by MMS, on the development of the alternative energy and alternate use program on the Outer Continental Shelf. At this meeting, Vorce can share the NP&EDC’s ideas with the federal agency charged with reviewing and ruling on Cape Wind’s proposal.

Regional concerns about Cape Wind’s project

may also come from a working group on energy and environment, one of 15 designed by Patrick’s team to help develop an agenda for his new administration.

All this information is crucial to the MMS because it is in the process of producing the draft environmental impact statement for Cape Wind’s proposal. The MMS expects to release that report later this winter.

“Currently, we’re in the process of preparing the draft EIS and we expect it to be published in March of 2007,” said Nicolette Nye of media relations for the Minerals Management Service. “After we issue the draft EIS, we’ll be having public hearings. That will basically be the chance, after we release the DEIS, for the public to comment.”

Nye added that this public comment period runs 60 days after the DEIS is released, that MMS would hold public hearings around the Cape and Islands in May, file its final environmental impact statement in December 2007 and issue its final decision in February 2008.

Cape Wind is confident, now that Patrick is heading into the governor’s office, that its project will come out with a permit from MMS to build its wind farm and dodge attempts by its opponents to halt the project or move it further offshore.

“We certainly are pleased that Patrick will be seeing Cape Wind in the large context of becoming a cornerstone of renewable energy in later years,” said Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers.

MassAudubon, meanwhile, continues its ongoing monitoring of seabirds to fill gaps in its bird data in relation to the project. MassAudubon Ornithologist Simon Perkins is on Nantucket with U. S. Geological Survey research biologist Matthew Perry this week, banding and attaching tiny transmitters to sea ducks — called surf scoters — to track their flight patterns through and around Horseshoe Shoal.

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