June 21, 2013
Massachusetts

Town, Alliance slam Coast Guard

Written by Patriot Staff | Barnstable Patriot | June 20, 2013 | www.barnstablepatriot.com

The Town of Barnstable, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility have put the U.S. Coast Guard in the dock along with the Federal Aviation Administration.

That’s dock as in the part of the courtroom where the accused sits.

The Guard’s review of the Cape Wind project “failed to address safety concerns about radar interference and failed to establish buffer zones between turbines and navigation channels,” according to a press statement based on a brief filed in federal court.

Specifics include the Guard’s determination that the wind turbines would have a moderate impact on navigational safety, despite its findings of significant adverse impact on vessels’ ability to locate other ships in the area; that the quarter-mile distance of the buffer zone between the array and shipping channels has been found inadequate elsewhere by the Guard; and that buffer zones were not imposed because of the financial impact to Cape Wind of the resulting reduction in the number of turbines.

In a press release that started out with a slap for “coal billionaire Bill Koch,” the Alliance’s “chair and biggest funder,” Cape Wind dismissed the suit as “bogus and specious arguments to protect billionaires’ views… Opponents have a long history of vilifying agencies that, after careful and comprehensive review, approved Cape Wind. This is just the latest example.”

The company says there are “no documented cases of pleasure boats, fishing boats, cargo ships or ferries running into an offshore wind turbine” within one of the 55 offshore wind farms built in Europe over the last score of years.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2013/06/21/town-alliance-slam-coast-guard/