Another shot at a wind farm

The Block Island wind farm has new life. Both houses of the General Assembly passed a law this week that call for the Public Utilities Commission to revisit a modified power agreement between Deepwater Wind and National Grid for electricity to be generated by up to eight turbines within three miles of Block Island in state waters.

It's no secret that this legislation was created in a scramble after the PUC initially rejected the contract as too costly for the state's ratepayers. And the process was not always a picture of good government.

This newspaper is on record saying it could support an effort to tee up the Block Island project again as long as the proposed route didn't "make a mockery of the process."

The first version of this law would have put the contract decision in the hands of four governor-appointed agency heads and did not allow for appeal; it came very close to the "mockery" we feared.

The passed version, thankfully, gives the decision back to the PUC, where, as Sen. Susan Sosnowski said, "it belongs." The commission will have an expanded set of criteria with which to judge the new contract, which by law must be less expensive for the state's ratepayers than the one the PUC rejected. This is good news.

Still, this is by no means a slam dunk for the wind farm. The PUC is an autonomous quasi-judicial body that is not obligated to approve even this second contract. Only time will tell if this effort will prove more successful.