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Key wind farm report to be delayed


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STAFF WRITER
A key federal report on the proposed offshore wind farm will not be released until later this month because high-ranking Army officials are reviewing the document.

The administrative review is responsible for the delay of the draft environmental impact statement, Army Corps officials confirmed yesterday.

Larry Rosenberg, spokesman for the Army Corps' New England District, which is conducting the environmental review, said the report "is being reviewed by our higher headquarters (the Department of the Army) in Washington."

Army Corps officials had set late August or early September for a release of the document. Rosenberg said such a review is part of a "normal coordination" prior to release of a draft environmental impact report.

Cape Wind Associates, of Boston and Yarmouthport, hopes to erect the nation's first offshore wind farm in a 24-square-mile area in Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound. The project is being reviewed by 17 regional, state and federal agencies.

Opponents of the project have pushed to halt the release of the DEIS until jurisdictional issues are settled.

Questions have been raised over the state-federal boundary line, which led Gov. Mitt Romney this week sent a letter calling on the Corps to delay the process.

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the local group opposed to the project, has made a similar request.

"Massachusetts law imposes significantly different prohibitions and review requirements from federal law," wrote Susan Nickerson, executive director for the Alliance.

Rosenberg said the boundary issue will have to be resolved, but the Corps' jurisdiction will not be changed. He said there is no need to halt the review.

Mark Rodgers, spokesman for Cape Wind, said the delay requests illustrated "a sense of desperation" by wind farm foes.

"They will grasp any straw to delay for the sake of delay the permitting process and keep years of scientific work and study out of the hands of the public," Rodgers said yesterday.

Meanwhile, project supporters are lobbying themselves.

In a letter sent yesterday to Corps District Engineer Col. Thomas Koning, the Conservation Law Foundation and 15 other environmental organizations urged the Corps to release the draft report without delay.

"The public needs this report to be released so that the debate on this important project can finally be based on science and facts rather than on speculation and innuendo," said Alan Nogee, with the Union of Concerned Scientists, one of the groups signing the letter.

Stakeholders in the debate also have lobbied state regulatory officials.

In separate letters sent at the end of August by Romney and state Sen. Robert O'Leary, D-Barnstable, both urged the state's Energy Facility Siting Board not to issue a final permit until two basic issues are resolved.

First, both noted, if state boundaries are moved farther out to sea, that could result in some turbines in the wind farm falling within state jurisdiction.

"Therefore, any action by the (board) on this proceeding should take into account the current uncertainty regarding Massachusetts' boundary," Romney wrote.

"The EFSB should either delay any further review of the Cape Wind project it until such time as the boundary issue can be resolved or should initiate a separate review of those portions of the project that would fall within state jurisdiction were the boundary to be expanded," the governor urged.

O'Leary also noted that the energy board's review, which so far has resulted in a tentative decision approving the cable connection from the off-shore project to shore, was too limited, and should consider the broad economic implications of the project before any final decision is reached.

"I'm a state official. I believe this project will have an impact on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts more than an impact on the nation. We're going to have to live with this, and they (the energy board) should have more of a say in it," O'Leary said, urging the board not to issue a final decision.

Tim Shevlin, executive director of the siting board, confirmed that the board's jurisdiction pertained only to the cable and its connection with the transmission system. He also said the "tentative decision" approving the connection essentially was only a staff recommendation to the voting board members.

The project currently is outside the state's three-mile territorial sea boundary, but maps used by Cape Wind do not show boundaries of the state's coastal waters as granted under the Submerged Lands Act.

That was confirmed by Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere in a letter to Susan Nickerson, executive director of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, a major foe of the wind farm.

But also in that letter, Lautenbacher said issues involving whether the project review should be halted, pending resolution of the boundary issue, "are within the jurisdiction of the Corps of Engineers and the Minerals Management Service," he wrote.

Water Cruickshank, deputy director of the Minerals Management service, said his agency will be talking to the state shortly to arrange for a survey to determine how rock outcroppings off the Cape's south coast may alter the state's three-mile limit out to sea. He said he hoped the survey could be conducted before the end of the year.

Regardless of how the boundary issue is resolved, Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers said that if the state boundary does include any wind turbines, the developer will simply re-adjust the arrangement, moving the offending turbines farther out and into federal waters.

(Published: September 9, 2004)

 

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