The incompetence of the U.S. Minerals Management Service, which issued on Monday a favorable preliminary review of the controversial wind factory on Nantucket Sound, is breathtaking.

As predicted, the federal agency has failed to seriously consider realistic alternatives.

"The Draft Environmental Impact Statement considered all reasonable alternatives to the proposed action...," according to the MMS.

Nonsense.

In fact, the agency claims it analyzed seven alternatives in detail, but three of them — a smaller configuration, phased development, a condensed array of the turbines — all involve the proposed site at Horseshoe Shoal. Another "alternative" involves the proposed site. How is that an alternative to the developer's proposal? A fifth alternative is no wind farm at all.

That means MMS took nearly two years to seriously consider just two alternative sites — Monomoy Shoals and south of Tuckernuck Island.

And those reviews were poorly done.

Several sites, including those off Cape Ann and Boston, were prematurely eliminated. Hundreds of others from Rhode Island to the Canadian border were not even considered.

The MMS report said the alternative sites were chosen "based upon their potential to meet the basic purpose and need to utilize offshore wind resources to provide electricity to the New England Power Pool."

But some of the sites chosen, such as one in water as deep as 650 feet and another 19 miles off Portland, Maine, were as unrealistic as proposing that the best alternative to alleviating traffic on Cape Cod is to fill in the Cape Cod Canal. The MMS set up straw-men arguments to avoid the difficult but necessary work to identify appropriate offshore wind farm sites.

In fact, MMS continues to focus on the preferred site of Cape Wind — a site chosen by the developer without any public involvement.

Rodney Cluck, the MMS project manager reviewing the Cape Wind project, said last March that alternative sites for Cape Wind were chosen in consultation with state agencies, from public comments received in the regulatory process, and in consideration of various siting criteria, such as water depth, wind velocity, and proximity to grid.

But MMS failed to ask the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Massachusetts Coastal Zone Management Office and other experts to recommend no-development zones.

MMS eliminated several alternative sites because of water depth, the height of extreme storm waves, or the cost to the developer. But MMS failed to fully consider the experience of countries wading into deeper water.

The German government, for example, and the country's energy companies have launched a deep-water wind park project, which is aimed at overcoming many of today's economic problems.

In addition, unlike the U.S., the German government has zoned its coast for future wind farms, and most of the designated areas are in deeper waters.

Despite progress overseas, of the seven alternative sites identified during Cape Wind's review process, the MMS only considered two shallow-water sites off Massachusetts. And once again, one of them — Monomoy Shoals — was unrealistic from the get-go. That site is only 3.1 miles from Monomoy Island, a federally designated wildlife refuge. The site is also close to the shipping channel that leads into Nantucket Sound.

The final environmental impact analysis, due out in the fall, must include a much more credible and complete analysis of alternative sites.