From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Thu Jul 25 2002 - 03:10:17 MDT
Here again, technology is never "good enough" or clean enough. I wonder what
produces such mentalities, and their mindset?
July 25, 2002
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20020725-13738152.htm
Planning to reap the wind
HYANNIS, Mass. (AP) — James Gordon envisions a line of wind towers off
the southern coast of Cape Cod, like a stand of Norway pines in the middle of
the sea, quietly producing clean, renewable electricity.
Opponents see a much uglier image: Rows of turbines surrounded by
construction barges and maintenance platforms corrupting their ocean views
and dwarfing their pleasure boats.
Both portrayals have made their way to public hearings as the developer
Cape Wind Associates attempts to win regulatory approval for the first
offshore wind farm in U.S. waters.
What Cape Wind has in mind is ambitious: a wind farm of 170 turbines,
each 263 feet tall and 423 feet from turbine tip to the water, between
one-third and one-half mile apart over 25 square miles of Nantucket Sound.
At its closest, the $700 million project would place turbine towers on
Horseshoe Shoal about four miles from Cape Cod, visible from land in clear
conditions.
"On clear days, they will appear like small masts on the horizon," the
company says.
The turbines would produce enough electricity to power more than half a
million homes — or enough electricity to offset up to 113 million gallons of
imported oil a year.
But opponents warn of bird kills, navigational hazards and the ruin of
productive fishing grounds if the wind farm is built. They say the wind farm
won't produce enough electricity or offer enough reliability to balance those
costs.
"What Cape Wind is proposing to do is industrialize Nantucket Sound on a
massive scale with no direct return to Cape Cod for that industrialization,"
said Wendy Northcross, chief executive of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce.
Mr. Gordon bristles at that characterization, calling it an "inaccurate
sound bite." He said the towers themselves will take up only two acres and
will look nothing like an industrial site.
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