Wind Farmer's Almanac

Greatest threat to Nantucket Sound? According to the Alliance, it's not Cape Wind -- it's Cape Cod

First question out of the box during Friday night's debate between Cape Wind's Mark Rodgers and Charles Vinick of the Alliance to Protect to Nantucket Sound, from Rodgers to Vinick -- what is the greatest ecological threat to Nantucket Sound?

Vinick's answer, at least the initial part, came as no surprise - that would be Cape Wind, he responded, "not because Cape Wind is going to degrade every aspect of our fisheries" or "challenge every aspect of the environment." But the project brings risks that are difficult to evaluate and quantify, he added.

Then Vinick got to the interesting part. There are other "major threats" to Nantucket Sound, he said, "and over a long period of time, they are going to be, I think in many ways, more serious" than Cape Wind. Vinick cited two specific examples - eutrophication, which is water pollution caused by excessive plant nutrients, and run-off, as from roads, golf courses, farms, homes and businesses.

These are "very, very serious long-term problems," Vinick said, and the Alliance is working to mitigate them through water testing and research in its "Soundkeeper" program initiated last summer.

But if eutrophication and runoff are "more serious" long-term threats to Nantucket Sound as Vinick asserted, or at least in "many ways," why wouldn't an organization seemingly dedicated to protecting the Sound focus on these problems instead of turning nearly all its attention and resources to thwarting an offshore wind farm?

For those inclined who think that Vinick's remarks were anomalous, consider that much the same thing was asserted in an op-ed in the Providence Journal last October written by the Alliance's Susan Nickerson, under the headline, "Striving to give Nantucket Sound special protection."

After detailing decades-long efforts to conserve land on the Cape and protect the region's sole source aquifer, Nickerson wrote that "80 percent of the 12 billion gallons of wastewater generated each year on Cape Cod discharges into the watershed of coastal embayments -- making the magnitude of the problem painfully apparent." (Nickerson cited the Cape Cod Commission as her source).

"Much of the stress on the ecosystems of the near-shore waters can be traced to the growth of resident and tourist populations," Nickerson wrote, "and the services that this burgeoning activity demands. Generally increased use of the lands next to and in the near-shore waters has occurred without the equal development of the infrastructure to support these activities. It almost goes without saying (emphasis added) that the impacts of human development on the coastal and marine ecosystems -- on water quality, habitat viability, and ecosystem health -- easily stress these systems beyond their capacity to cope."

"What we are seeing today is that stresses to near-shore waters are evidenced offshore, as well, and the whole of Nantucket Sound is coming under increased environmental pressure," Nickerson wrote. "For example, weir fishermen in the area have noticed increasing amounts of algae fouling offshore nets, a sign that excess nutrients in coastal waters let noxious algae proliferate."

Then Nickerson made a huge leap, one the Alliance has tried to pull off for years, and that Vinick attempted again in the debate.  "As an additional stress, our coastal waters are being scouted for their development potential, as rich resources exist in the offshore environment and comparitively little land is available or feasible for private exploitation by such industries as energy development and finfish and shellfish farming," Nickerson wrote. "Clearly, Nantucket Sound is not exempt from such speculation, and it is in the realm of offshore governance that many decisions about the future of the Sound will be dictated."

But anyone familiar with the Alliance knows that the "realm of offshore governance" sought by Nickerson and Vinick is simply code for -- whatever it takes to kill Cape Wind.  And that lofty realm they seek, with provisions including an attempt to ban offshore wind turbines within 1.5 miles of shipping lanes, a governor's veto in the hand of a staunch Cape Wind opponent, and federal stop-work orders on wind farms under construction in the Midwest -- does absolutely nothing to protect Nantucket Sound from, as Vinick said in the debate, "more serious" threats than Cape Wind.

If the Alliance were serious about protecting Nantucket Sound, beyond the figleaf of a Soundkeeper program funded with a miniscule fraction of their deep-pocketed donors' largesse, it could propose something which if ever enacted, would indisputably improve water quality in the Sound -- closing all the golf courses on the Cape and islands.

This would help Nantucket Sound and the water across the region as a whole, for that matter. Then again, it would also doom the Alliance's fund-raising.

(photo credit -- of golf carts, phototravels.net; of traffic-clogged Bourne Bridge, volpe.dot.gov)