But a new proposal for a deep-water, off-shore wind farm answers all the skeptics' objections and, in addition to its environmental benefits, could be an economic boon to southeastern Massachusetts. Blue H USA LLC has recently installed the world's first deep-water windmill off the coast of Italy and now wants to bring that technology to the South Coast, which has been referred to as the Saudi Arabia of wind energy because of its dependable North Atlantic winds. Rather than fight critics, Blue H has embraced their concerns and worked to satisfy them, maximizing the positives of the technology while minimizing the perceived negatives. The solution? Locate the turbines out to sea on floating - but stabilized - platforms similar to oil rigs, far away from any people or animals.

The [New England] region's power system has had a long history of dependability, but electricity costs have been an issue for businesses and residents for decades. As the region plans ahead, New England's policymakers face a series of decisions that will have an abiding impact on our energy future. ...Economic, reliability and environmental goals are not always perfectly aligned when it comes to electricity generation and transmission. Whatever path policymakers choose to take will require trade-offs. How New England officials balance these sometimes conflicting goals will demonstrate our priorities, impact the regional economy and determine which objectives we can realistically achieve.

Wind energy opponents often rattle off a litany of objections: Windmills aren't aesthetically pleasing (a notion many dispute); they pose a danger to migrating birds; they're noisy; they're inefficient and expensive. But a new proposal for a deep-water, off-shore wind farm answers all the skeptics' objections and, in addition to its environmental benefits, could be an economic boon to Fall River. Blue H USA LLC has recently installed the world's first deep-water windmill off the coast of Italy and now wants to bring that technology to the SouthCoast ...It turns out answering the critics is actually a benefit to the technology, as 90 percent of the potential energy from wind is well offshore in deep water.

The Zoning Board of Appeals made some important decisions last month (April 17th) based on verbal assurances from the developers. ...The skyline of our city is at stake, the protection of neighbors from catastrophe and the potential of wind energy to be a key part of the future economy of our city. Both our architectural legacy and wind energy are among the most important assets that we own as a city and that we share with each other. They are, in a sense, like our commons. We should have proof, before we give them away, that they will be used to their best advantage.

The Environmental Policy Act signed into law in 2005 called upon the secretary of the interior to promulgate regulations by May 5, 2006 to site offshore renewable energy projects. And still there is no regulatory process under which the Cape Wind precedent-setting proposal for alternative use of the submerged public land, Nantucket Sound, is being reviewed. Therefore, the reviewing agencies are incapable of providing our/their informed consent regarding the Cape Wind application ...The Cape Wind project is being reviewed within the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). ...Absent standards and rules that will apply to the Cape Wind permit review, the public and agencies are denied meaningful participation in this NEPA process.

I think the first letter written by state Division of Marine Fisheries director Paul Diodati regarding Cape Wind, dated Feb. 20, that recaps many of the fishing industry's concerns, should be given more weight than the second version. I think observation of the president of Massachusetts Fishermen's Partnership, Ed Barrett, regarding the long arm of Deval is spot-on, as Patrick has demonstrated a propensity to change laws if necessary to help his friends overcome obstacles. Deval raised eyebrows when he recommended changes to Chapter 91 to accommodate Cape Wind.

There is nothing "laughable" about the biological significance of avian mortalities by wind turbines. As Donald Michael Fry, Ph.D., director of pesticides and birds program of the American Bird Conservancy testified to Chairwoman Bordello and members of the House Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans during the Oversight Hearing "Gone with the Wind: Impacts of Wind Turbines on Birds and Bats" on May 1, 2007: "While the actual number of birds killed by wind turbines is unknown, estimates have been made in the range of 30,000 to 60,000 per year at the current level of wind development."

The United South and Eastern Tribes, an organization of 25 federally recognized Indian tribes in 12 states, has joined with the Wampanoag of Gay Head (Aquinnah) in their opposition to the wind factory on Nantucket Sound. The board of directors of the organization called upon the U.S. Minerals Management Service, which is reviewing the Cape Wind application, to "respect the Traditional, Cultural, Spiritual and Religious beliefs of the Wampanoag People and preserve the spiritual integrity and sanctity of the eastern horizon, vista and horizon viewshed; and to deny the permitting of such a devastatingly and destructive experiment, which will adversely affect and destroy the essence of tranquility, sanctity and spirituality of this sacred place for all time."

I respectfully disagree with Councilor George's conclusions regarding the Emerson Avenue wind turbine project and the Gloucester Zoning Ordinance criteria. First, Section 5.22.3(c) clearly states that the location must minimize "adverse visual" impacts. The City Council certainly had visual impacts in mind, or they would not have approved including the word "visual." Additionally, the applicant has not met all the criteria, because they are unable to meet the setback requirements. They are seeking an exception to the current law. If they truly met all the criteria, a waiver would not be necessary.

The recent Planning Board vote against recommending a citizens petition (Article 29) permitting the erection of wind turbines in Harvard was a correct decision. It was clear that the board was not against wind turbines, but that any bylaw be developed with consideration to existing bylaws, abutters rights, impact on the town and strike a balance between a property owner's rights and all other parties. The Planning Board is in the best position to accomplish this after thorough research, input from the entire community and consistency with our current bylaws.

From the very beginning of the federal review process, now in the neighborhood of six years, the only thing more stunning that the vitriolic personal comments about Kennedy and others or the similar comments made by anti Cape Wind agents against Cape Wind supporters has been the utter and seemingly not-to- be-overcome incompetence of two major federal agencies. First there was the Army of Engineers in our hall of shame and now the Minerals Management Service. In my opinion the outrage caused by their incompetence should be shared equally by both sides of this debate. Jim Gordon should be purple with rage that he has been forced to spend probably $10 million more than he should have because the USACE review was shoddy enough to allow Cape Wind opponents to argue successfully for review by another agency. Gordon's opposition should be boiling mad that the USACE review was so sloppily done that it could not be used to kill the Horseshoe Shoal siting. Now, we have an even more amateurish effort by the Minerals Management Service, which flagrantly violated federal law in several key regards.

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.

Buried deeply in the recently released federal report on Cape Wind is a whopping admission that Cape Wind's power would be two to three times current wholesale prices in the area. Perhaps in an attempt to make the outrageous cost of Cape Wind seem more reasonable, Canevari quotes current wholesale electricity prices ranging from $60 to $160 per megawatt hour (MWh). But according to ISO New England, the group that operates the electricity grid in New England, the average wholesale price was $66 per MWh over the last two years in southeastern Massachusetts. At the $122 per MWh projected in the federal report, the electricity produced by Cape Wind would be more than double the going rate.

Last week, however, the Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a version of the Ocean Management Act which I believe was a Trojan horse to slip through a massive change in the Ocean Sanctuaries Act without public input and without a public hearing. ...The change in the Ocean Sanctuaries Act appears to be an attempt to assist one project proposed by Patriot Renewables to construct 120 wind turbines in Buzzards Bay. Back in 2006, the Secretary of Environmental Affairs ruled that the large scale wind farm proposed by Patriot Renewables is not permitted under the Ocean Sanctuaries Act.

For years, residents of Cape Cod and the Islands have been promised that the Cape Wind project would lower their electricity rates. Remember: "The Wind is Free?" Apparently this is no longer true since Cape Wind has stopped promising to save us money on electricity. ...The snapshot of savings was based on the practice of selling electricity into the wholesale spot market. Cape Wind used a study that projects the cost of fossil fuels versus allegedly free wind. This study was biased because it looked at only benefits and not the relevant costs. Furthermore, it became obsolete just months after it was done. Yet, Cape Wind still uses the spot market model and La Capra Study as justification for its long-held claim of lowering our electric bills.

The long-awaited Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) on the Cape Wind application to place 130 wind turbines in the waters of Nantucket Sound is finally out. ...Although the MMS DEIS seems to clear the way for Cape Wind to build its Nantucket Sound wind farm, CapeCodToday.com will be printing remarks made by experts in the wind-energy/finance fields that identify many serious flaws in the DEIS and in the methods and information used to paint a healthy picture of the Cape Wind project. MMS's own peer review raises serious questions about how MMS arrived at the conclusions their report contains.

The federal draft report on Cape Wind tries to evaluate the impacts of this massive project. Most issues are classified as minor, ignoring local sentiment. ...The transfer of over $1 billion from taxpayers' hard-earned money to the developer is also a major issue for taxpayers. Let's look at the impacts of this industrial scale project through the eyes of the affected and not the eyes of strangers living far from the Cape and isolated from its impacts. Locals need to speak up now before it's too late.

Do you remember open-book tests, the ones where you could look up the answers to the questions? Those are the kind of tests that Cape Wind has passed. Here are some questions that weren't on the test. What right do you have to build an energy plant in what amounts to an ocean sanctuary? How can you describe the Nantucket Sound project as the harbinger of more offshore energy installations when the Draft Environmental Impact Statement listed so many problems with alternative sites? Why should the project's impact on cultural resources such as Barnstable's historic districts be left unaddressed until some post-approval negotiation over mitigation? How can a state agency charged to overturn the decisions of state and local agencies (if these actions would threaten the provision of adequate and appropriate power supplies) reject a regional regulatory commission's judgment? How, indeed, when the state Legislature that created both decreed that the commission's actions could be challenged only in the courts?

Is the Massachusetts Audubon Society, with a mission to protect birds, selling them out for a contract worth over 7,000,000 dollars to monitor their deaths? ...The saga of the Massachusetts Audubon Society and the Cape Wind project continues with the January 14, 2008 release of the MMS Draft Environmental Impact Statement and Massachusetts Audubon's lack of follow through on its Challenge to Cape Wind and its permitting agencies, to "Get it right." According to a story written by reporter Beth Delay of the Boston Globe on January 15, 2008, just one day after the DEIS release, Jack Clarke, director of public policy and government relations for the Massachusetts Audubon Society is satisfied that the MMS Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the Cape Wind project has addressed the groups concerns, ""They (MMS) have done an adequate and thorough job of reviewing the potential environmental impacts with regard to avian life" he said." It would seem Mr. Clarke has conveniently forgotten "The Mass Audubon Challenge" clearly stated publicly in the media.

The smugness with which the two abutters opposing the Hyannis Country Gardens wind turbine were met at a recent meeting by some planning board members and non-abutters was, to me, insulting.