Sneak Attack on Wind Farm

THE LATEST sneak attempt to block the wind farm off Cape Cod is an amendment that opponents want to attach to a funding bill for the Coast Guard. By banning any wind turbines within 1.5 nautical miles of a shipping lane or ferry route, it would kill the Cape Wind project, part of which is 1,500 feet from shipping channels. If project opponents succeed in attaching the clause to the conference committee report on the bill, both houses of Congress should reject the report.
Article Tools

Like an invisible torpedo, the amendment is attacking the wind farm without a hearing in either chamber. If there had been hearings, members of Congress would know that offshore oil rigs are permitted within 500 feet of shipping channels in US waters and that wind turbines in Copenhagen harbor are within a quarter mile of shipping lanes that get vastly more traffic than the Nantucket Sound site proposed for the Cape wind farm. At Nysted, south of Copenhagen, the biggest offshore wind farm in the world sits 1 mile from one of the busiest shipping channels in Europe, used by 60,000 ships a year.