Cape Wind

In a letter sent to its membership in early April 2009, APCC announced that after careful review, its board of directors and staff have determined that the Cape Wind Final Environmental Impact Statement is "comprehensive and fair, and that its conclusions are essentially sound and scientifically justified."

Below is the content of that letter.

To our APCC members,

I want to update you about the status of our review of the proposal by Cape Wind LLC to build a wind farm in Nantucket Sound.

For its forty years of existence, APCC has been guided by its mission to “foster policies and programs that promote the preservation of the natural resources of Cape Cod through scientific, educational, and civic activities.” Thus APCC has participated in every step of the regulatory review of Cape Wind since the project was first proposed in 2001.

We had two goals: 1) that a comprehensive process be created to guide development of all offshore renewable energy, and 2) that the process should include a rigorous evaluation of the risks posed by the Cape Wind project. The latter would allow a fair and scientifically defensible conclusion about whether this project posed a risk to the Cape Cod environment.

In January 2009, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) released its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) on the proposed wind farm. After review of this document, and the several drafts that preceded it, the board of directors and staff of APCC conclude that the EIS is comprehensive and fair and that its conclusions are essentially sound and scientifically justified. We find the potential environmental effects on habitats and species from the proposed construction, operation, and decommissioning of this wind farm to be acceptable.

We do not conclude that there will be no environmental impacts from this project. But it is our judgment that the benefits of increasing the local production of renewable energy will outweigh any environmental harm and the perceived threat to our region’s character. This conclusion is supported by a steady stream of new scientific evidence that indicates climate change is occurring even more rapidly than previously predicted. Cape Cod will be among those areas first affected by rising sea levels. The seabirds that winter in Nantucket Sound will be among the creatures most threatened by a rapidly warming Arctic.

There are no simple or quick solutions to this global crisis. Instead, resolving this critical problem will require making many hard choices, and implementing a multitude of large and small solutions over many decades in many places. Although Cape Wind's direct contribution to reducing climate change will be small and hard to detect, allowing Cape Wind to proceed sets an example for making many other hard choices.

The time is overdue for the country as a whole, and the northeast in particular, to begin in earnest to develop widespread alternatives to the use of fossil fuels. Wind energy is the most developed of those alternative technologies, and arguably the most suited to Cape Cod. While Nantucket Sound may not have been our first choice as a project site, we have to start somewhere.

There is still much work to be done. We believe that an independent scientific advisory board must be created to watch over Cape Wind to make sure that any environmental concerns are addressed during all stages of project development, operation, and decommissioning. APCC will continue to monitor and review the project.

We thank you for your generous support.