Cape & Islands News

Boch & The Vineyard still at odds

^{_{Ernie Boch built such an extravagant trophy home overlooking Edgartown Harbor that his relationship with the town has remained bumpy even after his death.}}

Vineyard Haven Boch Property Is Centerpiece of Future Plan
Tisbury officials hope to resolve the long-running conflicts between the town and the Boch family that have stymied productive use of the parcel

This I believe

The Vision, not the View
Arrayed against this vision are many good, gifted and privileged people who use their influence, financial wherewithal, and political connections to try to scuttle the first off shore wind farm in the nation

By Bill Eddy, Falmouth 

In 1967, when I was twenty-one, I attended a party on Martha’s Vineyard where the band I was helping to manage was asked to play. For two hours I sat on a couch listening to the music, watching the people and occasionally scratching the neck of an English Springer Spaniel named Freckles. On the other side of Freckles sat Robert F. Kennedy, his owner. From time to time the two of us shared our thoughts about the music, about our lives, where we were headed.

A year later, on June 5th, 1968, Senator Robert Kennedy was shot.

Two months later, following my graduation from Yale, I moved to East Harlem in New York City. A group of laity and clergy had formed an organization called “The 100 Worst Buildings of New York City.” I joined their efforts. Our mission was simple: to restore the heat and hot water in buildings abandoned by their owners. Our goal was clear: to empower the tenants living in these buildings to take the buildings over and to restore them, to begin the rebuilding of their neighborhoods and their lives. The success of the work depended on the cooperation of committed people living in the buildings, people from many churches and synagogues, private developers, bankers, city, state and federal officials, even members of some street gangs. But mainly the effort was driven by the hopes and dreams of the least advantaged compelling the rest of us to listen and to act.

Now, almost thirty years later, as a parish priest, I look back and trace the beginnings of a career dedicated to a type of social change that evolves over time, a blending, if you will, of the urgency that arises within a political and social framework coupled with the patience and persistence of a spiritually driven vision. Words attributed to King Solomon, as found in the Book of Proverbs, have always held meaning for me: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

The vision I first received came through a man I sat with once while listening to a band at a home on Martha’s Vineyard. The vision as it has evolved has been shaped by the many thousands of people I have met along the way, mainly people in churches and community groups who have dedicated their lives to bringing about social change.

I now work with several hundred people to help build a wind farm off the shores of Cape Cod, the place where I live. In my mind’s eye I look out over Nantucket Sound and picture a flotilla of tall ships, their masts faintly etched on the edge of the horizon. The wind farm, when built, will absolutely and definitively change the way we live and how we view our world and ourselves.

The wind farm will have as much right to be on Nantucket Sound as any cruise ship lying off Oak Bluffs or any fishing boat plying the waters off Hyannis. Navigating in and around the wind farm will present less of a challenge than going through Woods Hole or docking in Vineyard Haven or visiting the beautiful harbors of Cotuit and Osterville. Birds will fly around it, and the fishing will still be good, perhaps even better. But most of all, it will be producing our power.

Arrayed against this vision are many good, gifted and privileged people who use their influence, financial wherewithal, and political connections to try to scuttle the first off shore wind farm in the nation. They mainly fear the view of a wind farm off their shores. They also fear the change such a project represents, even when many of them know, deep down, that this would be a change for the good on every level. They, who in the larger world are often the masters and agents of change, fear being changed themselves. Ironically, the fears, the lies and the distortions that they have spread have in fact caused them to become, themselves, spiritually paralyzed, distanced from their own values. They say, “We are for environmental responsibility, for wind farms even, but not here.”

Perhaps to justify their aversion to change, even change for the better and for the common good, I often hear sentiments like this: “I look out over the waters of Nantucket Sound. So much has changed in my life. So much has been lost. But this view remains unchanging. It is, for me, a source of peace.”

Is this what we mean by peace? Or is this sentiment really nostalgia, that most seductive of emotions that attempts to replace a challenging and present reality with an imagined past and a more comforting, private future? The real world is changing before our eyes: waters are rising, storm winds are intensifying, nations are reeling, whole communities are lying in disarray. Across the world people are anxious about their lives and about their common future. Who can afford to retreat to a place in one’s mind where all seems unchanged, under control, as it once maybe was?

Long ago, Robert F. Kennedy sought the truth about things. As a result he possessed the capacity to change his mind. He changed his mind about a war in southeast Asia. He changed his focus from working exclusively within and for the more secure and stable groups of a political establishment to working within broad movements of people seeking justice and inclusion and a better society for everyone.

It is thus with a sense of gratitude and not nostalgia that I think back to a summer’s night so long ago. I would like to think that were I to sit again with Robert F. Kennedy he would be quietly pleased to know how deeply within the hearts of so many thousands of people here on Cape Cod and across the Commonwealth we have taken on his way of viewing the world, most especially now, and in the very place where not only he and I, but so many others, once briefly met. His vision still represents an ongoing legacy to a whole generation of people. Why should the promise of his legacy not lie within our sight?

To build this wind farm, in Nantucket Sound, now, would seem as a profile in courage on the ocean’s edge.

William Eddy, an Episcopal priest, lives in Falmouth and works in Weymouth. He is the president of Cape & Islands Self-Reliance and a founding member of Clean Power Now.

He built his first wind generator in 1976 to celebrate the bicentennial of the nation.

Rhode Island's US Senator weighs in on Cape Wind

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Lincoln Chafee (on right) sent a letter to four Senate colleagues urging them to reject a proposal to impose a 1.5-nautical mile restrictive zone on offshore energy production. The addition of this provision in the Coast Guard reauthorization bill would essentially terminate an ongoing pollution-free, renewable wind energy project off the coast of New England.

Mr. Chafee, a Republican, sent the following is the text of the letter sent to Senators Ted Stevens (R-AK), and Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science And Transportation (CST), as well as to Senators Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Chairman and Ranking Member CST’s Subcommittee on Fisheries and the Coast Guard. All four Senators are members of the Coast Guard Reauthorization Conference Committee, which is tasked with reconciling the differences between the Senate and House versions of the reauthorization legislation:

Dear Senators:

I urge you, as members of Coast Guard Reauthorization Conference Committee, to reject the proposed language that would impose a 1.5-nautical mile restrictive zone on offshore energy production. This provision, if added, will be devastating to an ongoing renewable wind energy project that is very valuable to Rhode Island and to greater New England. I encourage you instead to address concerns about maritime navigational safety in future legislation.

With the recent increase in conventional energy prices, wind energy generation is a promising option to provide much needed electricity supply to the New England transmission grid. Additional renewable electricity supply is crucial as providers strive to maintain reliable electric service at reasonable costs to consumers, while meeting incrementally rising renewable portfolio standards (RPS). Rhode Island raised its RPS to 16 percent of retail sales by the end of 2019. The project will provide up to 450 megawatts of renewable electricity generation annually, enough to meet the demands of Cape Cod and the islands, and thereby reducing strain on the grid and subsequently reducing electricity cost in surrounding areas.

Indeed, the addition of offshore wind energy for New England will not only yield an increase in supply, but will also improve air quality. Wind energy is a non-polluting, clean energy that will reduce greenhouse gas and other air pollutant emissions across New England. Initial reports, comparing traditional fossil fuel electricity generation to wind generation, estimate that the project will eliminate approximately 880,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions in New England. Carbon dioxide is considered the number one greenhouse gas contributing to global warming.

Finally, it has been proposed that the project’s assembly and staging area would be located in Rhode Island at the Quonset Business Park. This phase of the project would create 600 to 1,000 jobs and spur new economic development opportunities for the state and region.

I urge that the proposed language be deleted from the final legislation and instead be debated in an open process at a future time.

Thank you for your kind attention to this matter.

Wampanoags promise casino if slots are approved

The Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe of Martha’s Vineyard will assert a right to build a resort casino under Indian gaming law if Massachusetts legalizes slot machines at the state’s four race tracks, the tribe’s chairman said.

The Senate overwhelming approved the slot machine proposal last fall, and it is widely expected to come up for a vote in the House as soon as March.

Tribal Chairman Donald Widdiss said the Aquinnah Wampanoag, which has hired the Boston lobbying firm of Donoghue, Barrett and Singal, is watching the House debate “very closely.”

“We’re presently a little more hopeful because it will get a hearing and be voted on this year,” Widdiss said. “So until we know what the parameters are, we are watching it closely. We have the people who are taking care of this kind of stuff letting us know and keeping us up to date. I’m sure we’ll weigh in during the hearing process.”

Read the rest of this I&Q story here, and comment below.
Read previous story on local approval of a casino here.

David Vieira may run against Matt Patrick, again

Falmouth-Town Moderator Considers Run For State Representative

According to this week's Falmouth Enterprise, David T. Vieira, who is in his eighth year serving as Falmouth Town Moderator, is considering a run against incumbant State Representitive Matt Patrick, also of Falmouth in the Third Barnstable District.

Mr. Vieira, who is a Republican, ran once before against Mr. Patrick, who is a Democrat  in 2000, and lost.

Cape Cod Hospital could lose $750,000 in new Health Care bill

By Steve LeBlanc, Boston Globe

BOSTON --The state Senate is set to debate a dramatically scaled-back version of a health care reform bill Tuesday, a move supporters say could break a legislative logjam and avert the loss of hundreds of millions in federal dollars.

Senate President Robert Travaglini unveiled the bill Monday. Health care advocates immediately criticized the bill, saying Travaglini was moving too fast.

Travaglini's move is the first public acknowledgment of what has become increasingly clear on Beacon Hill -- the inability of House and Senate negotiators to reach common ground on two very different, and ambitious, health care reform bills approved by both chambers last year.

Gone are many of the highlights of those two bills, including provisions mandating all individuals have health insurance and requiring employers provide insurance or face a health care payroll tax.

Travaglini's bill also avoids any expansion of Medicaid and drops other initiatives in the original Senate bill, including $25 million for screening programs, a health care quality assessment program, and a statewide infection control program.

Travaglini said he still hopes for a compromise on the more ambitious bills, but said the state needs to act now or face the loss of $385 million in federal Medicaid dollars.

The bill tries to do the minimum needed to satisfy federal overseers by letting individuals buy private health insurance plans on a pretax basis and creating a program to offer subsidies to help low-income people get insurance.

Overall, the plan will help about 305,000 of the state's estimated more than half a million uninsured individuals afford insurance, he said...

Romney's Health and Human Services Secretary Timothy Murphy released a list Monday showing how much money dozens of hospitals and community health centers in Massachusetts would lose if a bill isn't approved in time.

Mass General Hospital in Boston could lose $10.3 million. Baystate Medical Center in Springfield could lose the $6.3 million. Cape Cod Hospital could lose $750,000...

Read the rest of this Globe story here, and comment below.

Sneak Attack on Cape Wind

Editorial, Tuesday, February 28, 2006 

Sneak Attack on Cape Wind
The benefits of this project are enormous in terms of local air pollution, global warming and other problems associated with the burning of fossil fuels

Any serious effort to deal with global warming and oil dependency is going to outrage somebody. Whether it is a proposal to import liquefied natural gas to reduce the use of a dirtier fuel like coal or to build a nuclear plant for the same reason, someone in the neighborhood is going to scream.

So it is with an ambitious proposal called Cape Wind, a large wind farm that a Massachusetts energy company wants to build off Cape Cod, about six miles from shore. The proposal involves constructing 130 giant turbines whose windmill arms would reach 400 feet above the water. They would be visible, though barely so, on the distant horizon.

The benefits of this project are enormous in terms of local air pollution, global warming and other problems associated with the burning of fossil fuels. Cape Wind would displace 113 million gallons of oil per year (or 570,000 tons of coal, or 10 billion cubic feet of natural gas), while generating three-fourths of the energy needs of the Cape, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. It has the support of residents, regional newspapers and just about every major environmental organization in America.

Nevertheless, a group called the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound — which includes ordinary folk but is bankrolled by some very rich people with very nice views — has spent large sums lobbying against the project. The group has raised concerns about threats to marine and bird life, all of which are being addressed in environmental impact studies. But their biggest beef is about the sheer proximity of the turbines. Their preferred outcome is to wait until the technology is available to build wind farms much farther out to sea, a delay the country simply cannot afford.

Into this debate steps Don Young of Alaska, the Republican chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Mr. Young has fashioned an amendment that he apparently intends to attach to a financing bill for the Coast Guard when that bill reaches a Senate-House conference committee. Committee chairmen often act imperiously in this way, even though the amendment has never been debated by either house.

The amendment would ban the construction of wind turbines within 1.5 nautical miles of a shipping lane or ferry route. That would kill Cape Wind, parts of which would come within 1,500 feet of a ferry route. Mr. Young says he's concerned about safety. Yet offshore oil rigs are allowed within 500 feet of shipping in this country. And Mr. Young has no objection to a wind farm in Long Island Sound that would lie only 1.65 miles from shipping.

It's clear that Mr. Young's sole purpose is to kill Cape Wind. It's not clear why he wants to do this — Nantucket Sound, after all, is a long way from Alaska. Whatever his reasons, his colleagues in the House and Senate — reliable environmentalists like Olympia Snowe of Maine, for instance — cannot let him get away with it.

Cape Wind has been the subject of endless environmental reviews. We believe it should be approved. But if there are objections to be made, they should be made in the open and not by stealth.

The New York Times, February 28, 2006

WHOI will listen for earthquakes in Pacific

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod says it's getting ready to deploy 40 seismometers (see photos) on the East Pacific Rise, an underwater volcanic mountain system that's mostly off the west coast of South America.

The goal is to glean information that would be helpful in understanding earthquakes that hit heavily-populated areas like the Tsunami last year.

"We will be able to record large undersea earthquakes directly on top of the faults that generate them," Jeff McGuire, a WHOI researcher says in a release. "Although our test area is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, this technology will have broad application to other faults zones, including those of significant societal relevance such as the nearshore subduction zone off Oregon and Washington."

PHOTO: An ocean bottom seismometer (OBS) is deployed for earthquake studies. Click here or on the photo to enlarge.

 (The following is from the WHOI press release.)

New Instrumentation May Help Scientists Understand Earthquake Mechanics
$1 Million Grant from the W. M Keck Foundation Will Support the Project

Hundreds of earthquakes occur every day around the world, most of them underneath the oceans, while the vast majority of instruments used to record earthquakes are on land. As a result, advances in understanding basic earthquake processes have been limited by the available data. Scientists are improving this situation by developing an instrument that records both small and large earthquakes on the seafloor.

(PHOTO: John Collins (left) and Jeff McGuire with some of the OBSs at WHOI, part of the national OBS pool. The seismometer is the gray device at right.

Jeff McGuire and John Collins at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) plan to deploy 40 ocean bottom seismometers, or OBSs, on the ocean floor along the East Pacific Rise in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Their target area is a section of ocean about the size of the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined.

The instruments will use a pair of seismometers, one known as a broadband seismometer, the other as a strong-motion accelerometer, to record the ground movements from undersea earthquakes, just like seismic arrays on land. They will be placed on the Quebrada/Discovery/Gofar (QDG) transform fault system for one year starting in early 2007. This area is known to have large earthquakes, greater than magnitude 5, preceded by foreshocks, or small shocks around magnitude 3, in the last hour before a large rupture occurs. Current ocean bottom seismometers record moderate ground motions from nearby small earthquakes and can register the foreshocks, but do not have the range to record the main shocks, McGuire said.

McGuire and Collins have received a $1 million grant from The W. M. Keck Foundation to develop a new suite of OBSs capable of accurately recording both foreshocks and mainshocks. Ten will be built, to be used in conjunction with current instruments from the U.S. national Ocean Bottom Seismograph Instrument Pool or OBSIP, which supplies OBSs to researchers around the country for their research projects. WHOI and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography maintain and operate the pool.

(PHOTO: John Collins (left) and Jeff McGuire check an electronic data logger, which records seismic wave measurements, in the ocean bottom seismometer lab.

“This grant from the Keck Foundation has enabled us to take a major step forward,” McGuire said. “Together with existing pool instruments and ship time, both supported by the National Science Foundation, we will be able to record large undersea earthquakes directly on top of the faults that generate them. Although our test area is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, this technology will have broad application to other faults zones, including those of significant societal relevance such as the nearshore subduction zone off Oregon and Washington.”

Advances in electronics in the past five years or so, including electronics that require less battery power, have made a new generation of OBSs possible. While some parts of the new OBSs will be bought from commercial firms, other aspects of the instruments will be designed and built by WHOI scientists and engineers. The new generation OBS will be tested this summer and fall and prepared for deployment on the East Pacific Rise in water depths of 3,500 to 4,000 meters (about 11,500 to 14,000 feet).

The W.M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 in Los Angeles by William Myron Keck, founder of The Superior Oil Company, with the goal of providing far-reaching benefits for humanity. With assets of more than $1 billion, the Foundation is one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the nation. Supporting pioneering discoveries in science, engineering and medical research has been a mandate of the Keck Foundation for a half-century. By funding the work of leading researchers, the building of labs and research centers, and the purchase of sophisticated instruments, the Foundation lays the groundwork for breakthrough discoveries and new technologies that will save lives, provide innovative solutions and add immeasurably to our understanding of life on Earth and our place in the universe.

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, independent, not-for-profit corporation dedicated to research and higher education at the frontiers of ocean science. Located in the village of Woods Hole in Falmouth, MA, its primary mission is to understand the oceans and their interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate a basic understanding of the ocean's role in the changing global environment. Established in 1930 on a recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences, the Institution is organized into five departments, interdisciplinary institutes and a marine policy center, and conducts a joint graduate education program with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

See the WHOI release here.

 

Fossil fuel gluttony takes 33 acres of Cape Cod every year

Boston Globe Op Ed
Wind power with no direction

By Philip Warburg (right) and Susan Reid, Conservation Law Foundation

IN NEW ENGLAND and elsewhere, our fossil fuel gluttony is already taking its toll. Roughly 33 acres of Cape Cod's shoreline wash away each year due to sea level rise, and the rate of loss is accelerating. The estimated cost of damage from sea level rise over the next century tops $90 billion for metropolitan Boston alone.

Absent fundamental and prompt changes in local and global energy consumption, New England's natural heritage will witness devastating changes in the coming decades.

We cannot sit back and watch this devastation unfold. Significant technological advances have already brought clean, renewable, domestic energy resources within reach. Even the Bush administration sees renewable energy as a key to cutting our dependence on oil.

Massachusetts' political leadership should be eagerly leading the charge toward a renewable energy future. Back in 1997, the Bay State was one of the first in the nation to give marketable credits to power producers tapping such resources as wind and solar energy. Today, instead of giving us the bold leadership we need to get renewable energy projects built, Bay State political leaders are standing in the way of solutions.

The Cape Wind proposal presents us with a first-in-the nation utility-scale wind energy project off our shores, one that could provide up to 75 percent of Cape Cod's electricity supply while cutting both greenhouse gas emissions and costs to consumers. Renewable energy developers and concerned citizens throughout the country view this project as a barometer of the prospects for other domestic projects that would tap our abundant offshore wind resources. Yet several of our state's leading elected officials will not even allow the project a fair review.

Governor Mitt Romney has publicly opposed Cape Wind, proclaiming himself ready to do so using every tool at his disposal. As the top elected executive in Massachusetts, just whom is he purporting to represent? The citizens of Massachusetts, who support the project by a 6-to-1 ratio? Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey and Attorney General Thomas Reilly have also chosen to oppose the project rather than support a fair review.

In Washington, Senator Edward M. Kennedy's longstanding vocal opposition to Cape Wind defies his lengthy track record as a supporter of sound energy policies. His unwillingness to look beyond local aesthetics to a broader view of sustainable energy solutions is deeply disappointing. Ironically, the very coastline whose vistas he seeks to preserve is on the front line of the battle against climate change -- a battle we will lose if we dare not advance projects like Cape Wind.

Most recently, Bay State citizens should all be alarmed by the failure of our congressional delegation to stand up to a very direct attack on the Cape Wind project by Representative Don Young of Alaska. Congressman Young is pushing for an amendment to the Coast Guard Reauthorization Act of 2005 that would cripple Cape Wind.

Introduced in conference committee to avoid debate on the House or Senate floor, the amendment would require the Coast Guard to prohibit offshore wind farms from being within 1 1/2 nautical miles of a shipping channel or ferry route.

Our elected officials in Washington must act swiftly to ensure that Cape Wind moves forward with its environmental review. Senator Kennedy and the rest of the Massachusetts congressional delegation should join Senator Kerry's 11th-hour call, this past Friday, to stop Congressman Young's abuse of the legislative process. We also look to the ongoing leadership of Senator Olympia Snowe from Maine, who should employ her critical role on the conference committee to further her legacy as a champion of renewable energy, rather than tolerating this misguided step backward.

To avert the ravages of climate change, we will need to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 75 to 85 percent in the coming decades. To meet that challenge here in Massachusetts, developing our offshore wind resources is a pragmatic first step. Taking that step calls for strong political leadership.

Philip Warburg is president and Susan Reid is a staff attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation.

This appeared in The Boston Globe on Monday, February 27, 2006

Keyspan sold, is NStar the next to go British

Deals spark buzz that NStar may be next
Firm would mesh well with British giant, analysts say

By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff | February 28, 2006

Is NStar next?

Just days after it said it would buy a 250,000-customer gas utility in Rhode Island, British energy giant National Grid PLC said yesterday it hopes to close a second deal that will bring 800,000 KeySpan Energy Delivery gas customers in Eastern Massachusetts into the National Grid corporate fold.

The two deals leave NStar looking more and more like the hole in National Grid's doughnut, fanning speculation that the Westwood-based electric and gas utility may be the next takeover target for an aggressively acquisitive National Grid.

''They certainly have NStar completely surrounded now," said Gary P. Sullivan, president of Local 369 of the Utility Workers Union of America, which represents about 1,900 NStar electric and gas workers.

NStar provides electric service to 1.1 million homes and businesses in Boston and 80 suburbs and natural gas to 300,000 customers in Eastern Massachusetts. NStar spokeswoman Caroline Allen said, ''We don't discuss speculation about merger and acquisition activity in our industry."

From Lowell to Worcester County to Cape Cod, NStar will closely overlap or abut a combined KeySpan-National Grid, which owns utilities formerly known as Boston Gas Co. and Massachusetts Electric Co. and extends to Long Island and western New York.

Asked whether National Grid is interested in buying NStar, National Grid USA chief executive Michael Jesanis declined to comment but added: ''Everybody wonders who's next. We will one day again expand, but we've got plenty to do over the next 12 months. There'll be time to think about the next expansion as it's appropriate."

With 2005 revenue of more than $3 billion and steadily growing profits, NStar is also under no immediate pressure to do a deal, industry executives say. Its chief executive, Thomas J. May, is 58.

How close a utility's chief executive is to retirement age -- KeySpan chief Robert B. Catell is 69 -- is often a surprisingly crucial determinant of whether it will agree to a takeover offer, said John Dingle, managing director of Navigant Consulting, a Chicago utility consulting firm...

Read the rest of this Globe story here, and comment below.

KeySpan sold to British company
National Grid PLC Agrees To $7.3 Billion Deal