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.

A new state ocean management plan will likely leave control over the size of renewable energy projects in state waters in the hands of regional planning authorities such as the Cape Cod Commission and Martha's Vineyard Commission. In a letter sent yesterday ...Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Ian Bowles agreed to change the draft plan released in July.

When the Pilgrims arrived in America, it was the Wampanoag who greeted them peacefully so the newcomers could escape religious persecution. Now the tribe is having to fight for their own religious freedoms. The Wampanoag, also known as "The People of the First Light", have delayed the construction of America's first offshore wind farm, reports Associated Press. The Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag practice sacred religious rituals which they say require an unblocked view of the horizon, in particular, the sunrise.

Voters will consider ways to save money and the environment during the town's 13-article special town meeting Thursday. If voters sign on, the town will pursue building two wind turbines on town-owned land, placing large solar panels on the elementary school roof and placing a "solar garden" of panels at the transfer station. The special town meeting is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.

From a blustery perch over a Cape Cod beach, Chuckie Green gestures toward a stretch of horizon where he says construction of the nation's first offshore wind farm would destroy his Indian tribe's religion. The Wampanoag - the tribe that welcomed the Pilgrims in the 17th century and known as "The People of the First Light" - practice sacred rituals requiring an unblocked view of the sunrise. That view won't exist once 130 turbines, each over 400 feet tall, are built several miles from shore in Nantucket Sound, visible to Wampanoag in Mashpee and on Martha's Vineyard.

Cape Wind Associates LLC faces yet another hurdle in its eight-year quest to build a wind farm in Nantucket Sound. A decision on whether to list Nantucket Sound on the National Register of Historic Places is now in the hands of the National Park Service. A ruling to list the Sound would not automatically kill Cape Wind's proposed wind farm, but it could lead to delays in the project's construction, as the project would be forced to meet new requirements.

Despite significant opposition in Western Massachusetts, state environmental affairs secretary Ian Bowles is pushing hard to get a controversial wind-turbine law passed before the legislative session ends on Nov. 18. The bill could benefit a wind-energy firm, recently relocated to Boston, whose chief executive helped co-author the proposed law and whose financial backers have close ties to the Obama administration.

Harvard inked a deal yesterday to purchase 10 percent of annual electricity consumed on its Cambridge and Allston campuses from a leading wind provider in New England. This agreement, in which Harvard will acquire over 30 million kilowatt-hours of renewable energy, slates the University to become the largest institutional buyer of wind power in the region, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. ...Harvard will purchase 50 percent of the energy produced from First Wind's soon-to-be constructed wind farm in northern Maine for the next 15 years.

A company that builds upscale vacation condos has brought at least a temporary halt to the Brodie Mountain wind turbine project in the Berkshires, in which the town has a 6 percent stake. Texas-based Silverleaf Resorts was recently granted an injunction in connection with a lawsuit it filed two years ago, alleging that a permit for an access road to the project had expired.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his department will "hopefully" decide by the end of the year whether to approve plans for what may be the nation's first offshore wind farm along the coast of Massachusetts. The Interior Department is working toward an "expeditious conclusion" of the approvals needed for Cape Wind in Nantucket Sound, Salazar said today. "We'll have a final decision to be made hopefully by the end of this year," he said.

Two weeks ago, Patriot Renewables LLC told the Savoy Selectmen that it intends to build an eight-turbine wind farm in the mountain town. On Tuesday, the company set its sights on Adams as well. Todd Presson, chief operating officer of Patriot Renewables of Quincy, met with Town Administrator Jonathan Butler to inform him that the company is in the "very entry level" stages of expanding the project across the border into Adams.