By
STAFF WRITER
It will be at least a year before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will be ready to make a permit decision on the offshore wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound.

Adams also disclosed that the Army Corps has added more locations - specifically Boston and New Bedford harbors - to the 14 land and sea-based locations being considered in its alternative site analysis.

Those were among the additional sites the Association to Preserve Cape Cod recommended the Corps consider.

The Army Corps' time frame will put the decision-making on the country's first offshore wind farm in the middle of the 2004 presidential campaign.

James Gordon, president of Cape Wind, said he welcomed the expanded national exposure his project might get during the presidential campaign.

Noting there is increasing talk of serious natural gas supply problems, Gordon said, "There is overwhelming bipartisan support for bringing in more renewable energy into the mix.

"The more national attention this project gets, the stronger the consensus will be that Cape Wind is the right project to do," he predicted.

"More national attention doesn't worry us. There is a deep reservoir of support for clean energy and for American energy independence," Gordon said.

"Any time the government exercises caution when we're talking about the private use of a public resource, all citizens should applaud," said Isaac Rosen, executive director of the alliance.

Rosen also said he hoped the delay will give the alliance and others a chance to lobby federal legislators for new regulations that would govern all offshore commercial developments, energy-related or otherwise.

"Hopefully, the deliberateness with which the Corps is moving forward will give us the opportunity to make the case for much-needed protections," Rosen said.

"It's pretty clear that whether it's an offshore wind energy plant, and offshore casino or an offshore liquid natural gas facility, we have this entirely new wave of development on our hands that we as a nation are ill-equipped to understand," Rosen said.

"We are trying to be very deliberate. The alternative analysis is a very important piece," Adams said, agreeing with others who have called it "the heart" of the environmental review process.

Obtaining accurate, up-to-date information on offshore wind farms is difficult, Adams said. Unlike road construction, where there are recognized standards for construction, "for offshore wind there are no standards, and we are having trouble determining what is the state of the art," she said.

The Army Corps has asked its consulting firm, Bioengineering of Salem, to select six leading professionals in the offshore wind energy field to act as the peer review group.

Among the members are representatives from European wind interests including Jos Beurskens, vice president of the European Wind Energy Association; Carolyn Heeps, environmental policy manager for marine estates within the Crown Estate of Great Britain, which oversees offshore wind farm development; James Manwell, head of the Renewable Energy Research Lab at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst; a representative from the Long Island Power Authority, now reviewing offshore wind proposals for its customers; and others.

The 24-square-mile area in Horseshoe Shoal apparently best suits the construction requirements for an offshore wind farm. Of the 14 land- and sea-based sites initially evaluated by the Corps, the Horseshoe Shoal site was the only one that met all criteria.

Adams said some people questioned those criteria, and at a meeting in March some openly wondered why the criteria appeared to be "tailor-made" for Cape Wind's preferred site on Horseshoe Shoal.

Gordon has emphasized that the location met the criteria his engineering team developed after lengthy research into European offshore wind development.

"It wasn't an arbitrary decision. It took lots of research and traveling to figure out what works," Gordon said, adding that he welcomed input from firms such as Garrad Hassan, calling it "probably the premier wind energy consultant in the world.

"They don't pose any problems for us. I want people to be satisfied that our criteria is sound," Gordon said.

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, a Cape-based coalition of towns, businesses, fishing groups and local chambers of commerce, is a staunch foe of the proposal.

Rosen, on the other hand, called the Corps' decision to add the peer review team into the process "a big deal." He added that any modification to the current review regulations, which the alliance has repeatedly called inadequate, would be welcome.

In addition to getting more information on offshore sites, Adams said the Corps is taking a close, hard look at the Massachusetts Military Reservation on the Cape.

"We wanted to sort out the issues there. Is land really available out there? We didn't want to assume that since the military was there, that would preclude wind farms. The information on all that is just coming together," she said.

Also ongoing are Cape Wind's avian studies, now nearing the second full year of data collection. Adams said at least two years of data will be required. Some groups, such as the Massachusetts Audubon Society and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, argue a minimum of three years is needed.

(Published: July 14, 2003)