Cape Wind Farm

What is your opinion of the Cape Wind proposal?

  • I'm in favor of it.

    Votes: 101 87.8%

  • I'm against it.

    Votes: 13 11.3%

  • I don't care.

    Votes: 1 0.9%
  • Total voters
    115
briv

briv

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inside_foulwind.jpg

I was surprised there wasn't already a thread on this, so I decided to add one. I put this thread in this section because I wasn't really sure where to put it. Though it will not be located in Boston, it is an important issue with regional implications, and thus effects the city as well.

For those who don't already know, Cape Wind is proposing to locate 130 wind turbines off the coast of Cape Cod in the Nantucket Sound. If completed, it would become the first offshore wind farm in the U.S.

The proposal is currently the focus of an epic, multi-year battle between clean energy advocates and those who believe that the wind farm would spoil one of Massachusetts' greatest treasures--Cape Cod and the Nantucket Sound. It has been the subject of countless studies, news articles, op-eds, and essays, many of which can found with a quick Google search.

More information can be found on Cape Wind's site: http://www.capewind.org/index.php

For those seeking the opponents' view, a good place to start is Save Our Sound's site here: http://www.saveoursound.org/

So, what do you think about the Cape Wind proposal?
 
A very good friend of mine that has been in the electric power distribution industry for over a decade has recently said that the technology has sufficiently progressed with photovoltalic cells and with wind turbines that an ambitious (perhaps currently-unrealistic) plan that would place enormous amounts of solar panels in the arid southwest and equally large amounts of wind turbines in areas of the conuntry prone to high wind could generate enough electricity to meet our domestic usage.

Surely a mammoth undertaking in every conceivable aspect, but equally as intriguing that we might be able to use renewable energy to fuel our power grids . . .
 
I am 100% for this project. It will be a great step in the right direction for environmental sustainability. This gives MA the chance to have the first offshore wind farm in the country.
 
100% for a wind project here, but only after there is a serious bidding process and not an insider-job like we have now.

Also, I would like the turbines to be configured to look like gigantic middle-fingers pointing directly at the "pro-environment, but not in my backyard" Kennedy compound. You can't be for renewable energy, against ANWAR drilling, and then say you're against wind farms if they happen to be in your back yard.
 
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Why do they light the windmill off Freeport Street? I can understand the IBEW wanting people to see one in action, but lighting it at night seems a little counter-productive.
 
Scott said:
lighting it at night seems a little counter-productive.
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haha good point. and they're at least going to need some nautical lights on these to prevent ships from hitting them, although I doubt those will need much energy at all compared to the spotlight on the IBEW one.
 
Given 500 years, even the most industrial feature on the landscape attains all the charm of yesteryear.

consuega.jpg


Joe Kennedy XXXVII will thank us.
 
I can just imagine the movies in 500 years, Don Quixote meets Baywatch.
 
From Friday's Metro:

The Metro said:
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New survey rouses Cape Wind debate

Figures show support for project, detractors call results ?misleading?

A big wind coming

Environmental and labor groups delivered thousands of signed postcards to U.S. Rep. Edward Markey?s office yesterday, urging he and Sen. John Kerry to support Cape Wind. Also, Wendy Williams, author of ?Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics and the Battle for America?s Energy Future on Nantucket Sound,? conducted a reading in Brookline.



BOSTON. A survey released Thursday shows increased public support for the proposed Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound, but also drew criticism from opponents, calling the figures ?misleading.?

The clashes come ahead of the next round of public hearings, slated for next week in Hyannis, Nantucket, Martha?s Vineyard and Boston.

Drawing on a favorable Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) released in January by the Minerals Management Service, the project ? which would put 130 wind turbines in a 25 square-mile area of the sound ? is gaining support statewide, according to numbers released by the Civil Society Institute (CSI).

Of 1,203 state residents polled, 87 percent ? including 77 percent on the Cape and Islands ? said they ?are more likely to support Cape Wind? after learning of the EIS, which labeled 109 of 118 categories of potential impact as ?negligible? or ?minor.?

Overall, 86 percent said they support the project, up from 84 percent last year and 81 percent in 2006. On the Cape and Islands, support grew from 61 percent in October to 74 percent.

?The clear trend line discredits the notion that there is any sizable public opposition to Cape Wind,? CSI President Pam Solo said.

Opponents have shrugged aside such talk, calling the numbers inconsistent with previous polls and town votes conducted on the Cape and Islands.

Audra Parker, director of strategic planning for Save our Sound, told Metro the survey uses ?extreme phrasing that trivializes our position and pushes the results.?

One such question, Parker said, highlights a supposed need for the project to generate ?clean, renewable alternative energy? while reducing the opponents? concerns to aesthetics, recreation and endangered birds.

According to Save our Sound, polls and town votes since 2004 have consistently shown more local residents opposed to the plan than in support of it.

Support has consistently been higher away from the Cape and Islands, Parker said, and Save our Sound expects similar results next week.

?We?re the ones who will bear the brunt of this project,? Parker said of Cape and Islands residents.

Tony Lee
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Who here voted against it and why?

Inquiring minds want to know...
 
I did. They're ugly and I'm simply not fazed enough by my energy costs to destroy Nantucket Sound and the property values of my friends on the islands and on Cape Cod. Besides, the Figawi would really suck if everyone started hitting shit. Self centered? yes. Do I care? no.
 
I don't see how it would 'destroy Nantucket Sound', and what's so bad about lowering property values?
 
kmp1284 said:
I did. They're ugly and I'm simply not fazed enough by my energy costs to destroy Nantucket Sound and the property values of my friends on the islands and on Cape Cod. Besides, the Figawi would really suck if everyone started hitting shit. Self centered? yes. Do I care? no.
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Teddy? Is that you?
 
Walter Cronkite decided that he'd been misled and retracted his endorsement of the anti-Cape Wind group.
 
Whether one is of the opinion that these structures are ugly is just that, an opinion.

My opinion is that they are graceful and a pleasure to look at.

The three (four if you count the dinky one by the IBEW building) that are visable as you fly into/out of Logan--depending on the runway you are taking off/landing on--add to the experience so far as I am concerned.

What should matter is not something so subjective, but rather the opportunity to develop and utilize renewable energy. Not just for lighting streets, homes and businesses, but also to meet what will likely be a growing (perhaps hopefully exploding) demand for energy to charge electric vehicles--these are coming and coming soon (several companies are very close to rolling out significant numbers of them within a few years if things go well).

Anybody out there pay for home heating oil lately? How 'bout natural gas for that matter . . . those prices been going down at all? Didn't think so.

Call me crazy but with oil over 107.00 a barrel (and climbing) and it costing me over 50.00 (likewise climbing) to fill the tank of my 2001 Taurus, I am all for ANYTHING remotely viable as an option for fuel (especially if it would, even to a small degree, stick it up the *ss of all the ridiculously wealthy morons who have accumulated such a fortune only by being born on land that has a ton of easily accessible oil beneath it).

Think about it . . . does it make more sense to (a) continue down the road we are on with oil, (b) look for other ways to get oil--such as digging down deep into sand pits in northern Canada for a very crude form of it, or (c) focus a fair amount of effort on creating a new infrastructure of energy generation that will not pollute and never run out that is on our 'land' and not some other nation (especially if that nation--or at least it's leaders/government is a collective douchebag)?

With all this in mind, does it not seem a bit petty to try and put a halt to a project like Cape Wind because you think it is 'ugly', or it will somehow bring about the extinction of some seabirds (???), or because it will potentially reduce property value (as an aside, there are several wind farms--on land anyway--in the U.S., does anyone know of any valid and reliable statistics the demonstrate what happened to the property values of residential parcels in view of these as a direct result of their construction?) . . .

Personally, I would think the opposite--the same way a house in Quincy on a hill with a view of the skyline of Boston (and a few windmills) costs a lot more than a similar house on a hill that faces towards the southwest.
 
Just noticed it recently.

It is up in the Revere-area . . . not too far from the racing track (I am less familiar with the North Shore than I am Boston-proper or the South Shore).

I will be flying back later today (and out again tomorrow) and will try and better locate it.
 
Ron Newman said:
I know about the two in Hull, but where is the third one?
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It just went up, Ron. It's in the Mill Creek area of Chelsea, close to the Revere Beach Parkway. I noticed it for the first time on Sunday morning while diving home on Rt. 1A. It's significantly larger (well over 100' tall) than IBEW turbine, but smaller than those proposed off-shore. I believe it's located on the proposed site diesel-fired power plant that Chelsea, Revere, and East Boston have been fighting for two years.
 
That new windmill may be in Chelsea. It is just accross the water from East Boston as you drive up 1A by the gas tanks.

The construction cranes were still there this weekend, so it isn't in operation yet.
 
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