MMS delays Cape Wind decision

Cape Wind Associates will have to wait one month longer for the Minerals Management Service's ruling on its 130 wind turbines proposed for Nantucket Sound.

Minerals Management Service spokesman Nicholas Pardi said last week that the federal agency is likely to issue Cape Wind's Final Environmental Impact Statement by the end of January 2009.

"It's just a matter of getting the best possible information and [Thursday] we got the results of the Coast Guard study," said Pardi. "We're reviewing the findings and the options, but we no longer anticipate publishing the FEIS by end of the year."

Pardi said that the Coast Guard will submit its final recommendation to the MMS on the impacts of the wind farm on vessel radar navigation systems no later than Jan. 15. He added that this delay has nothing to do with Minnesota Representative James L. Oberstar's call for a 30-day public comment period on the Coast Guard radar study.

Oberstar, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which supervises the U.S. Coast Guard, fired off a request to Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen back in September and again on Dec. 9 imploring him to re-read the Coast Guard study of the impacts of the wind farm on vessel navigation radar.

Regardless, Cape Wind doesn't appear concerned.

"We don't know yet, we don't know what the impact is, we haven't heard from MMS about what they're going to do," said Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers. "We're hoping that they're going to move forward and release the FEIS. The Coast Guard can continue to write a record of conditions and terms of a lease."

Two senators from New Mexico on Thursday confirmed Rodgers' assertion. Democrat Jeff Bingaman, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and Pete V. Domenici, the committee's leading Republican, sent a letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and Randall Luthi, director of the Minerals Management Service, telling them to ignore Congressman's Oberstar's efforts because MMS already has all the information required by law for navigational safety parameters. I