Read the initial post on Marathonpundit...
See the response:
I'm curious about your use of the word "NIMBY" because the Cape Wind project that you uphold so ardently is sited in unprotected Federal waters in the heart of Nantucket Sound. I would hardly call that area Ted's or RFK's backyard, that is public trust land that is being taken by a private developer in his for-profit venture. That's everybody's backyard being destroyed by the installation of 130 turbines and a 10-story transformer sub-station.
Few people realize Nantucket Sound is the only place in the continental United States where protected state waters surround unprotected federal waters. This is significant because our inner coastal water way (Nantucket Sound, which is traversed by 3 million people annually) is managed like the outer continental shelf. Opposition to Cape Wind does not mean that people are anti-environmental - it means that some of us believe that there are better ways to manage our ocean and wind resources by siting turbines in areas the will not need to be dredged to allow installation, in areas that are not heavily used by our commercial fishing fleet, in areas away from the ferry routes and shipping lanes...the list goes on.
As I mentioned before, Massachusetts residents have inherited a donut hole of unprotected waters. Most people don't know that all of Nantucket Sound was once protected from industrial development as Cape and Islands State Ocean Sanctuary. This was undone in the 80's when the federal government took back waters outside of the 3-mile state limit as part of Supreme Court case that involved a number of states in the Northeast - Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland and others. This legislation cannot be undone, and has left our coastal waters unprotected and susceptible to utility scale projects such as Cape Wind.
Lest we forget Nantucket Sound has twice been nominated as a National Marine Ocean Sanctuary.
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