Cape Cod Times
My View: reader commentary
By SUSAN NICKERSON

As I talked with friends and colleagues about my recent affiliation with the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, some were surprised I'd joined an organization that opposes the most talked-about wind-power project in the country. Where was my "green" card, they wondered, knowing I'd spent my career promoting protection of the Cape's unique environment.

The question is worthy of a serious response, and provides an opportunity to clarify the goals of the alliance.

Protecting the Cape's environment and our marine ecosystems requires asking some hard questions about this project, and compelling the developer to provide complete and transparent answers - a scenario that has yet to materialize. What is being proposed for Nantucket Sound is an industrial-scale development of unprecedented scope. That it is a wind power project has obscured some fundamental public-interest considerations.

Progressive action to protect open space, drinking water supplies and coastal ecosystems is not novel for longtime Cape Cod and islands residents. Federal, state and local governments, industry, commerce and the citizenry have collaborated, sometimes with great effort, to put measures in place to keep this special place distinctive, to preserve what is extraordinary about the region while maintaining its access as a destination to visit, live and work in.

Oddly, the protections we have worked to establish on land are largely irrelevant to the unexpected proposal to develop the first offshore wind energy plant in the United States, in Nantucket Sound. Because the developer has proposed this project in federal waters, most rules for state territory evidently don't apply to the offshore area known as Horseshoe Shoal.

From an environmental standpoint, the federal/state boundary designation is absurdly arbitrary. The entire Sound is integrally connected to the land. The fin-fishery and shell-fishery of the Sound, the birds that feed in and fly over the waters, the seals that breed nearby, the turtles that arrive from thousands of miles away and the occasional whales that pass through the area are part of a bioregion stretching from Buzzards Bay to Sankaty Head to Monomoy. State and federal regulators may stop and start at the three-mile limit, but the species that thrive in Nantucket Sound do not, and they deserve all the protection they would normally enjoy under state supervision.

Unfortunately, no coordinated management system is in place to protect the vast resources of Nantucket Sound. In sharp contrast to the landward reaches of the Cape and islands, no meaningful protections are in place beyond state waters offshore. But the potential negative impact of the Cape Wind power project on wildlife, recreation, navigation, fishing and shellfishing and aesthetics is astonishing.

The fate of approximately half the watery wilderness in our back yards is in the hands of the federal government, through U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has no experience with this type of project. The Army Corps has no plan or system in place for protection of environmental and economic interests, or for the public trust, in the face of impending offshore energy development along the Eastern Seaboard.

The analysis of the potential impact of the Nantucket Sound wind power plant is almost entirely in the hands of an energy speculator. The project developer is collecting, interpreting, and presenting all project data. These conditions must be rectified to protect the public interest before this project is permitted.

Nantucket Sound is in urgent need of long-term protection. While development of renewable energy sources is finally on the public agenda, we must put the groundwork in place so the unplanned, scattershot approach to land development, which we so deeply regret today, is not repeated on the water.

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound is concerned with the Cape Wind proposal and seeks establishment of coherent state and national policies on offshore wind energy development. What we do for Cape Cod and the islands now can perhaps pave the way for optimal development of wind resources beyond our immediate borders.

As the next frontier of speculative development unfolds, my pledge is to provide the offshore resources and wildlife of Nantucket Sound with no less than the kind of protections we have fought for, and established, on land.

Susan Nickerson, former executive director of the Association for the Preservation of Cape Cod, is environmental director for the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.

(Published: October 22, 2003)