The color of money

The color of money

By Eileen McNamara, Globe Columnist, 4/20/2003

HYANNIS - The massive wind farm proposed for the middle of Nantucket Sound is not about being green. It's about seeing green.

Developers intent on erecting 130 steel windmills 417 feet high across 26 miles just off the coast of Cape Cod would have us believe they want to sink a fortune into the seabed to demonstrate their commitment to renewable energy. Millions in profits and tax incentives apparently are incidental.

The fishermen, town officials, and local environmentalists who met with Attorney General Thomas M. Reilly one morning last week aren't buying it, and neither is the state's chief law enforcement official.

''People are really being buffaloed at what this is all about,'' Reilly told a Town Hall crowd. ''I happen to be a big supporter of renewable energy, but that is not what this is about. This is about money.''

The merit of harnessing the power of the wind as a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels is not in dispute, but shouldn't the location of a wind farm be a decision for public policy makers, not private developers? Especially when the site is a natural and national treasure owned not by entrepreneurs but by everyone?

James Gordon and his Cape Wind Associates are sailing right past that question, through legal loopholes that leave uncertain which governmental agencies have jurisdiction over such an unprecedented enterprise. Gordon has managed to get a 200-foot test tower built off Hyannis without answering the most fundamental question of all: What right does a private citizen have to build a profit-making enterprise on land he doesn't own?

''This is nothing less than the theft of a national resource,'' says Isaac Rosen of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, which is challenging the authority of the US Army Corps of Engineers to grant permits for the project.

Reilly has filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of the Commonwealth, emphasizing the need for a more comprehensive review process. Unlike offshore oil drilling, there are no requirements for competitive bids and no guidelines about environmental or navigational impacts for offshore wind farms.

Governor Mitt Romney has said he opposes the project but has done nothing to block it. If there is ambivalence, it might have something to do with Douglas Foy, Romney's point man on the environment who until now worked for the Conservation Law Foundation, which has endorsed the wind farm.

Gordon's initial success has spawned copycat speculators up and down the East Coast pitching wind farms. The need for regulatory guidelines is as pressing in New Jersey as in Nantucket.

It is not just millionaire homeowners who worry about the impact of an energy plant smack in the center of Nantucket Sound. Shareen Davis and Ernest Eldredge fish the sound, as generations of their families have fished it before them, relying on migratory patterns that bring squid, scup, sea bass, blue fish, mackerel, and fluke into their commercial nets. Will vibrating towers change those patterns? The Audubon Society has the same question about the 500,000 migrating birds that pass over the sound each year.

Aviation and marine specialists worry about the navigation dangers of so many towers 417 feet high. The ceiling for small aircraft is 500 feet. What happens on an overcast day when a pilot makes a minor miscalculation? How will rescue crews get a helicopter safely through a field of windmill blades if a boat crashes into one of the 130 towers? These are serious questions that should be answered by impartial analysts, not by consultants hired by Cape Wind Associates to bolster their permit application.

Tuesday is Earth Day. Shareen Davis and Ernest Eldredge plan to mark it the way they do every year. They are going fishing on Nantucket Sound. Jim Gordon has plans that day, too. He is hosting a fund-raiser for his Beacon Hill neighbor, Senator John F. Kerry, the Democratic presidential aspirant.

Being green. Seeing green. Not the same thing at all.

Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. Her email is .