August 31, 2006
Massachusetts

Healey, Leading Dems Clash Over Cape Wind Farm

www.thebostonchannel.com

Lt. Gov. Urges Coast Guard To Reject Plan

BOSTON – The issue of wind farms has created a lot of turbulence in the 2006 race for governor.

NewsCenter 5’s Amalia Barreda reported that Republican Kerry Healey took aim at her Democratic rivals while blasting plans to build a wind farm in the waters off the Cape Cod coast.

A small, but boisterous, crowd greeted the lieutenant governor at a Hyannis Beach Thursday morning. The crowd was in favor of the Cape Wind project that Healey had come to denounce.

“This project is not about clean air or reducing emissions or even generating more power. It is about buckling in to the special interests and allowing a private developer to take ocean resources for their own profit,” Healey said.

Healey took aim at the two Democratic candidates, Deval Patrick and Chris Gabrieli, accusing them of giving dishonest information to the voters about the project.

“The point here is that Deval Patrick and Chris Gabrieli don’t have the courage to admit that this project is more damaging to the economy here on the Cape and the ecology on the Cape than it is good for the environment,” Healey said.

“On balance, I think this project is good for us from an energy point of view, an environmental point of view and an economic point of view on its own merits. But beyond that, I think it’s a very important symbol of the kind of economy we can cultivate, the kind of industry we can cultivate here in Massachusetts around alternative or renewable energy,” Patrick said.

“We have to have more electricity. The world is going to double and triple their use of electricity by 2050. And Massachusetts is up against limits. We’re supposedly going to have rolling blackouts. So the people who are against the wind farm, what are they for?” Gabrieli said.

Healey said she doesn’t totally oppose wind energy. She said she favors much larger deep-water turbines that would be invisible from the shoreline. That is technology that she said is less than a decade away. But her opponents said it’s more like 10 to 15 years away.

“Why put something permanently on this beautiful landscape that we can never retrieve, we can never go back and take it away, when we can just wait a few more years and have better technology that does not obstruct our fishing industry, that does not impact our tourism or navigation?” Healey asked.

Healey said she was strongly urging the Coast Guard to reject the project.


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2006/08/31/healey-leading-dems-clash-over-cape-wind-farm/