The state may be rethinking a plan to allow a wind turbine farm off Salisbury Beach after "additional data" revealed something that state coastline experts apparently didn't know - that there are lots of recreational boaters, and even a few lobstermen, who cruise off the coast. Salisbury officials were shocked to discover last week that a draft plan for siting wind turbines identified a zone 500 yards off the popular beach, where fishing and pleasure boats are a frequent sight, particularly on summer weekends.

Earlier this week, a City Council subcommittee held a meeting to finalize recommendations on much-debated rules surrounding the location of wind turbines. In a lightly attended meeting, they did just that. On Monday, however, they have to do it all over again. The culprit? A locked door. ...Though the meeting continued, the subcommittee had unintentionally violated the state's Open Meeting Law, meaning the meeting will have to be held again.

Salisbury officials have only recently become aware that 10 wind turbines could be built less than a quarter-mile off Salisbury Beach if the state's draft Ocean Management Plan were adopted. A serious concern of both Salisbury Selectman Jerry Klima and Planning Board Chairman Don Egan is that after only recently seeing a map showing the turbine area less than 1,500 feet from shore ..."I never saw anything like this before that from the state," Klima said yesterday.

Island officials differed over what was achieved at their meeting Friday with state Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian Bowles. A selectman from each Island town, as well as officials representing Dukes County, the Martha's Vineyard Commission (MVC), and the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay head (Aquinnah) attended the Boston session. But while they all heard the same message from Mr. Bowles, they brought home varying opinions about how much control the Island will have over large-scale wind power development in near-shore waters.

Two large masts have been cut down and a wind speed recorder stolen from the Flimby Hall Farm wind farm site. The masts were cut down last week, according to Maryport police. Samantha Crosby, West Energy's project manager for the Flimby site, said that the company believed the act was vandalism rather than a protest.

The Westport Alternative Energy Committee (AEC) has decided to hire an engineering consultant to conduct preliminary assessments of two parcels of town-owned land to determine if they would be suitable locations for a municipal wind turbine project. The AEC voted unanimously Thursday to ask Atlantic Design Engineers of Sandwich to look at two specific sites ...to gauge whether or not they would be suitable for a commercial-sized turbine installation.

The town will look at three locations as possibilities for a large wind turbine. Using $8,800 allocated to Newbury by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, the town's Alternative Energy Committee will retain a Beverly consulting firm to conduct three energy workshops and prepare an application to the Technology Collaborative for a full-scale feasibility study on three possible turbine sites.

Six thousand years ago, according to native legend and scientific calculation, Nantucket Sound was dry land, and people probably lived and hunted and fished there. Until global warming caused the sea to rise and cover the place. Ironically, the fact of that long-ago drowning now has become the basis of the latest challenge to the Cape Wind proposal to build a wind farm in Nantucket Sound. The big selling point of Cape Wind is that it would generate power without contributing to global warming, sea level rise and coastal flooding.

The November 5 decision by the Martha's Vineyard Commission to create a district of critical planning concern (DCPC) for wind energy projects across the Island, but excepting Edgartown, demonstrated unusual discretion on the part of the regional agency. Spreading, not restricting, its portfolio is the customary MVC practice. Several commission members were not happy about the exception, going so far as to suggest that heeding to the Edgartown selectmen's request that their town be left out of this particular DCPC was unwarranted. After all, their argument went, it was just three Edgartonians asking for the exception, not really the town.

The Cape's parade of wind power turbines has begun in earnest, as Harwich town meeting joined Wellfleet and Brewster fall town meetings Thursday night in authorizing the use of town land to build the towering turbines. Although the two parcels of town-owned land were relatively large at 72 acres for property off Westgate Road, and 19 acres off Headwaters Drive, setbacks to protect adjacent properties limited the possible number of turbines to just two.