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Promise in the wind
Credit: By Herald Staff / Boston Herald | March 14, 2013 | bostonherald.com ~~
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Translate: FROM English | TO English
Cape Wind – which has touted its intention to boost the local economy – has basically pulled a bait and switch. The proposed $2.6 billion project jettisoned its local supplier for the massive steel foundations that will support the giant wind turbines slated for Nantucket Sound.
Cape Wind insists the foundations must be fabricated in Europe because no U.S. firm has the expertise to build them – despite a contention by a local supplier that it spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn how to do it right.
Carl C. Horstmann, president of Mass Tank, which signed a non-binding (as it turned out) letter of intent with Cape Wind for the project, made the disclosures in a letter to federal energy officials after his former business partners backed out of the deal.
“Cape Wind used our intended participation to garner public support,” Horstmann wrote. He thought “we were initiating a mutually beneficial business arrangement that would pay dividends to the state and the region.
“But now I can only conclude I was wrong and question Cape Wind’s commitment to Mass Tank and the local manufacturing jobs was ever made in good faith.”
Horstmann said the deal would have created 150 to 300 new jobs.
The point is that taxpayers, who are subsidizing this project, and ratepayers – who will pay the higher costs ad infinitum – at least counted on some payback for local businesses and workers.
More importantly, having broken one promise, what’s to keep Cape Wind from breaking the rest of them?
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