Article reprinted in its entirety from SNL Financial, with permission.

Click here to view this interview by Henry Blodget of Business Insider of Cape Wind President Jim Gordon

A Wampanoag (WAHM'-pah-nog) Indian tribe from Massachusetts is supporting a proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm opposed by two tribes closer to the project.

The Pocasset Wampanoag chairman George Spring Buffalo wrote to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who is considering the 130-turbine Cape Wind project.  ...He said Cape Wind fits a vision for energy "produced in harmony with nature."
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Click here to read this Associated Press article in Business Week

Click here to read a related article in the Cape Cod Times

Click here to read a related article in Cape Cod Today that contains the text of Chairman George Spring Buffalo's letter

Two prominent members of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) say there is no historical basis to support claims by tribe leaders that a wind farm in Nantucket Sound would interfere with important cultural ceremonies based on the rising of the sun in the east. They say the claims are fiction.

Tribe member Jeffrey Madison, in a February 9 letter sent to Ken Salazar, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior, supported by a statement signed by eight members of the tribe including Beverly Wright, a tribal council member and former five-term chairman of the tribe, disputed the tribe's claim about the cultural value of the Cape Wind site.
Note: Click here to read this article in the Martha's Vineyard Times

The already twisted Nantucket Sound wind farm saga just got a bit stranger: A Wampanoag tribal member says it is “fabricated cosmology’’ that his tribe performs sun ceremonies that need an unobstructed view of the Sound - as the tribe has claimed in a campaign to halt the energy project off Cape Cod.

But the tribe member made the allegation only after his law firm was recently hired by the developers of the Cape Wind project.

Jeffrey Madison, a Martha’s Vineyard lawyer, wrote in a Feb. 9 letter to US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that his father and grandfather were both tribe medicine men. “I am stating to you with complete honesty and knowledge that I never participated in, witnessed, or even heard of a sacred spot on the horizon that is relevant to any Aquinnah Wampanoag culture, history or ceremony. Nor did I see, or hear, either my father or grandfather conduct such ceremony,’’ he wrote.

Madison also submitted a petition to Salazar with eight signatures of other Wampanoag tribe members, saying they did not believe the wind turbines would “materially interfere with any significant cultural activity.’’
Note: Click here to read this article in the Boston Globe

The developer of the proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm released a study yesterday that claims the project would save $4.6 billion in New England's wholesale electric costs over 25 years.

The nine-page report by Charles River Associates found that if Cape Wind were built the total cost of electricity paid by utilities in the region would be $185 million less on average each year. In 2008, the total wholesale cost of electricity in New England was $12 billion, according to Independent System Operator New England, the organization that manages the region's wholesale electricity market.
Note: Click here to read this Cape Cod Times article

...The venture stands as a critical test of whether the Obama administration, which views investing in renewable energy as key to reviving the economy and combating climate change, can launch the clean-energy revolution it has promised voters.

Ian Bowles, the Massachusetts energy and environmental affairs secretary, called the Cape Wind project "symbolic of America's struggle with clean energy. Its symbolism has risen above the number of megawatts."

Both sides agree that this offshore wind project, which would be the first in the United States and would furnish about 75 percent of Cape Cod's energy, shows just how hard it will be to construct wind farms off America's coasts.   "The tortured history of Cape Wind is not just a not-in-my-backyard story of fisherman and wealthy people on the Cape," said Michael Moynihan, director of the Green Project at NDN, a centrist think tank. "It is emblematic of the difficulty of getting wind online, anywhere in America, with a system designed a century ago that is frankly hostile to renewable energy."
Note: Click here to read this article in the Washington Post

Click here to listen to WBUR segment that aired during Morning Edition on February 5, includes Cape resident Bill Eddy who speaks from the heart in support of Cape Wind

Click here to listen to WBUR's Radio Boston program of Feburary 5, most of the hour devoted to Cape Wind including Massachusetts Secretary of Energy & Environment Ian Bowles and Cape Wind Communications Director Mark Rodgers as well as WBUR reporter Curt Nickisch who reports on his experience of offshore and onshore wind turbines in Denmark

Click here to listen to February 6 segment on Cape Wind on the NPR Program Living On Earth, includes Cape Wind President Jim Gordon

...Salazar announced no conclusions yesterday about the advisability of locating the wind farm in the scenic Sound, but his visit to the Wampanoag and the area underscores just how high-stakes the Cape Wind farm has become to the Obama administration, which is hoping to accelerate renewable energy efforts and show the world it is serious about fighting manmade climate change. If completed, the project’s developers say it will supply, on average, the equivalent of 75 percent of the energy needs of Cape Cod and the Islands.

For opponents and supporters of the wind farm, the day appeared as a kind of last stand after a nine-year permitting saga. About 60 demonstrators waved signs for and against the project as Salazar’s boat docked an hour late in Woods Hole.
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Click here to read this article in the Boston Globe

Cape Cod and the Islands have a long and important history with wind power. Not only did the first European settlers arrive on Cape Cod from the wind powering their sails but when they got here and realized how windy it was they began erecting windmills to pump water from the ground and to grind grain. During the American Revolutionary War the British cut off salt supplies (important for preserving fish and meat) and the Continental Congress called on patriots to make their own salt. It was on Cape Cod that people first tried using windmills on the shoreline of Nantucket Sound to paddle saltwater onto land that would later dry leaving behind the salt. This method proved so successful that in the early nineteenth century Cape Cod became the salt production capital of the country and Cape Cod and the Islands became inundated with salt works with over one thousand working windmills, particularly on and near the shoreline of Nantucket Sound. Certainly the historic view from many of these historic properties included nearby windmills, far more visible than distant offshore wind turbines would be.  [Return back]