Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit environmental organization dedicated to the long-term preservation of Nantucket Sound. Alliance membership includes many dedicated environmental and business professionals who have long ties to the Cape. Allies include some local towns, Chambers of Commerce, several environmental groups, many fishing and recreation groups, and prominent public figures including Governor Mitt Romney, Senator Ted Kennedy, Attorney General Tom Reilly and Congressman Bill Delahunt.

History

The Alliance was formed in 2001 in response to a proposal to build a 130 turbine wind farm in Nantucket Sound by Cape Wind.

Position

The stated goal of the Alliance is to protect Nantucket Sound in perpetuity through conservation, environmental action, and opposition to inappropriate industrial or commercial development that would threaten or negatively alter the coastal ecosystem. The Alliance supports formal designation of Nantucket Sound as a marine protected area.

The Alliance supports wind power as an energy source, and promotes many forms of renewables. However, the organization is opposed the proposed wind power plant in Nantucket Sound due to potential adverse economic and environmental impacts, as well as the lack of an appropriate review and permitting process and the absence of federal guidelines for offshore wind energy development.

Specific reasons the Alliance is critical of the Cape Wind project include:

1. Public Trust violation The proposed plant represents seizure of 24 square miles of public trust lands in Nantucket Sound by a private for-profit venture, with no discussion or permission from the state and federal agencies that serve as the guardians of public trust and no associated payment.

2. Economic Impact The project is a net cost to the public in terms of subsidies and tax credits and poses calculable economic losses in business, taxes, and property values for Cape Cod, and potentially Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. These costs greatly offset the developer’s potential best case electric bill savings scenario of 10 cents per month per residence.

3. Environmental harm Nantucket Sound is a well-recognized rich ecological resource area that qualifies for and deserves federal protected status. A power plant in the midst of this sensitive ecosystem could degrade or destroy vital habitat for birds, fish and other marine life, and pose a serious threat to the near-shore fishing industry.

4. Aesthetic pollution The wind energy plant is an expansive industrial complex of 130 wind turbines, each 417 feet tall with a nacelle larger than a school bus (48 feet) and a rotor sweep area significantly larger than a Boeing 747 Jet (340 feet). Each turbine will have four flashing lights, for a total of 520 flashing red and amber lights, and the corners of the complex will be marked with fog horns. This will cause visual, noise and light pollution.

5. Safety hazard The project poses a potential danger to air and sea navigation, and to the thousands of recreational boaters and commercial fishermen that use Nantucket Sound for leisure or their livelihood. The project is directly adjacent to a major shipping lane which serves as an alternative route to the Cape Cod Canal. One of the many vessels to travel through this area is an oil barge that regularly visits Nantucket. If a barge were to run into trouble and drift into the turbines with the prevailing southwest winds, the result could be an environmental disaster.

6. Technical constraints Southeastern Massachusetts is an electricity exporter. Nantucket Sound is a poor location for a new power generation facility given documented congestion problems for grid connections.

See also

• Cape Wind
• US Army Corps of Engineers
• Wind Over Water

External links

• Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound
• Cape Wind Project Page
• Draft Environmental Impact Statement - Produced by the US Army Corps of Engineers
• Comments on the DEIS - Nearly 5,000 Written Comments
• Windstop.org anti-wind project group
• Clean power Now pro-wind project group
• OffshoreWind.net- Offshore Wind energy information
• Wind Over Water - a documentary film about the Cape Wind Project by Ole Tangen Jr.