The final report of data gathered during months of meetings of stakeholders and consultants on the assumptions underlying the proposed Cape Wind turbine farm in Nantucket Sound carries good news for the proponents and expresses questions critics say remain unanswered.
"Since we first announced our project, there have been charges that there would be no local power benefit, that we would raise electric prices, that electricity would not be used here," said Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers. "Every one of those has been refuted by the most knowledgeable experts that have no connection to our project that were brought in before the stakeholder process by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative."
For Isaac Rosen, executive director of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the process and report came too late.
"The frustration a lot of us felt was that we were talking about information and studies while the permitting process was ridiculously far along," he said. "It would have made more sense to have sat around a table as people in the community, as regulators and developers and advocacy organizations and not been under the gun by a project that we feel should not even be reviewed."
Greg Watson, the MTC vice president who served as convener of the meetings on the planned 130-turbine wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal off Barnstable, said his agency had set out "not looking for answers or drawing conclusions, (but) to clarify questions."
Highlights cited in a press statement by MTC included confirmation that energy produced by the wind farm "would flow to and be consumed on Cape Cod" and that it would "in effect, displace the amount of energy consumed from the Canal Plant in Sandwich." The agency cautioned, however, that, due to the intermittent nature of wind power, the project would not result in the closing of the plant.
"Every time we produce power, the most expensive pollution-producing plant elsewhere in the system can be shut off," Rodgers said. "That reduces wholesale electric prices in New England, and our project will reduce the cost of renewable portfolio standards for Massachusetts electric consumers."
Rodgers, who said that the anticipated visual impact of the towers remains the principal concern of the public, was pleased that the report cited "little discrepancy" between the company's projection and that of the opposition.
"Many conversations start with something else and come back to the visuals and the esthetics," he said.
The MTC report notes that how the towers would look at night, with aircraft warning lights engaged, remains unknown. Rodgers said that information would be available before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completes its draft environmental impact statement on the project sometime this year.
Rosen said the process gave "fairly short shrift to one of the most important issues," that of jurisdiction over the project.
"We don't know the consequences of setting a precedent that is giving a public resource to a private developer in the absence of law and regulations that protect the environment and the public interest," he said.
"People raised the issue where they perceived shortcomings in the Army Corps, what it can and can't do with regard to planning, and processing competitive bids," Watson said. "I think the Corps acknowledges that, too. There was certainly agreement that we needed to look at some kind of comprehensive planning for use of the ocean for renewable energy."
"There's little question that the Army Corps of Engineers has the statutory authority to be doing the review at the national level," said Rodgers, "and while there are those who continue to call for a different review process, the one that's in place involves the National Environmental Policy Act, the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act, and a more comprehensive project review process than any coal, oil or natural gas plant in New England ever had to go through to get approved."
Rodgers said MTC "has played a very constructive role, and I think they can continue to do that."
"I don't see an awful lot for them to do on this project," said Rosen. "I'd love for them to get involved in the land-based municipal initiatives that are in formative states around the Cape. That's where expertise and community process are needed."
Watson said his board would like to continue as an "honest broker. If another niche does emerge, we'll be there to fill it. We'll wait and see what happens when the draft EIS is released."
Copies of the report in CD ROM format are available at the Collaborative's Hyannis office at 396 Main Street, second floor. Requests may be e-mailed to [email protected], and the report is available on-line at www.masstech.org/offshore