These letters, and a host of others addressing the Cape Wind facility proposed for Nantucket Sound, were published in the Mar 6, 2008 edition of the Cape Cod Times. The Minerals Management Service, a division of the Department of Interior, has released the draft environmental impact statement of the proposed project. Other letters can be accessed by clicking on the link at the bottom of this page.

Most of us in New England deplore the misuse of federal farm subsidies by large agricultural interests in the Midwest. But a lot of the same people are cheerleaders for the Cape Wind project, which will receive massive subsidies - not only from the federal government, but from the state as well.

The money for these subsidies will, of course, come from you and me, through our federal taxes and from add-ons by the state to our electric bills.

If the wind farm is built as planned, the developer could get about $30 million per year in federal tax credits, and $50 million a year in Massachusetts "green credits." If these subsidies were not available, the Cape Wind farm would not be built.

If a wind farm were going to solve our energy problems, one could argue that all this was worth it. But the Cape Wind proposal is only a drop in the bucket, to produce only about one-quarter of the energy of just one medium-size fossil or nuclear plant.

These "renewable" power sources are not even close to economical, and they are kept alive only by millions in government subsidies.

 

Web link: http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section...