Cape & Islands News

Challenges in Truro murder case... Court backs town to oust landscaper.. Plover problem persists... Museum closes... MORE

Lower Cape news of the week
June 30, 2006

Christopher McCowen, 34, is scheduled to go on trial for the 2002 murder of Truro resident Christa Worthington, 46, on Oct. 30. But he’ll be in the Barnstable Superior Court before that, on July 5 and 6, when a number of motions filed by his attorney, Robert A. George of Boston, will be heard and ruled on. George hopes to get the judge to throw out all statements McCowen made to the State Police during the seven hours they interrogated him April 14, 2005, the day he was arrested. McCowen, who was Worthington’s trash collector, admitted at that time to being at Worthington’s house the night she was murdered. However, he claimed he was having consensual sex with her, and that a Wellfleet man who came to the house with him killed the fashion writer, after Worthington discovered the man stealing from her... [more]

BREWSTER - Firefighting equipment aficionados and children with dreams of one day joining the ranks of the bravest will be disappointed to learn that the New England Fire and History Museum in Brewster will not be opening its doors this summer. "It’s been tougher and tougher to just operate on admission fees," said Noel Beyle, a member of the museum’s board of directors. The closure comes after the board agreed to search for additional funding sources and an inventory of the museum’s collections was overdue... [more]

Read the rest of  The Cape Codder here, and comment below. 

Man-of-Wars close Vineyard beaches, 5 swimmers stung

The Vineyard Gazette  today boosts two stories which our cape newspapers missed;

Chilmark Beaches Closed Temporarily to Swimming

By RACHEL NAVA ROHR

Chilmark town beaches Lucy Vincent and Squibnocket remain closed to swimming after droves of Portuguese man-of-war began washing up on the southern shore of the Island Monday, stinging five swimmers within minutes at Lucy Vincent. Two of the swimmers were hospitalized and released for wounds from the jellyfish-like creatures.

 "Right after that happened, we decided to close swimming," assistant supervisor to Chilmark beaches Karyn Pietruska said. "Every morning since then, we've gone out to see how many there are."

Ms. Pietruska said the beaches will remain closed to swimming until the man-of-war, with their distinctive blue bubbles and their stinging tentacles, are no longer washing up. An offshore breeze will be necessary to push the creatures away, she said... (The photo is of Squibnocket Beach and Pond on the southwest corner of Martha's Vineyard)

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

And that island's weekly examines a aspect of their resident's recent theft of rare maps;

Thefts of Rare Maps Shatter The Small World of Collectors

By JAMES KINSELLA

To the modern eye, the maps are wildly out of whack.

Continents are bunched together or simply absent. California usually is in the wrong place. Major rivers wander off into mysterious voids.

But these maps, drawn up to 400 years ago, are literal touchstones in the evolution of human culture.

"It's who we are, and where we've been," said Nicholas Basbanes of Oak Bluffs, an author who's written about people passionate about rare manuscripts. "It's our history"... (You can click the map to see it full-size.)

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

Double tragedy, Medicare fraud, MCAS improves, Selectmen squabble

Upper Cape Cod news of the week

Around Sandwich
HS start time pushed back Sandwich High School students will have an extra 19 minutes to get ready for school each morning, beginning in September,... [more]

Charges in Vokey non-appointment, Asst. Principal leaving, More Chatham beach parking, MORE

Chatham & Harwich news of the week
June 28, 2006

Chatham Band Begins Another Season Friday
By Debra Lawless. Red, white and blue bunting. Popcorn and cotton candy. Balloons. The Chatham Band, as American as apple pie. The ever-popular Chatham Band will kick off its 2006 summer season this Friday at 8 p.m. with a patriotic Fourth of July concert. Kenneth Eldredge directs the Chatham Band. “We remain popular because the band is not afraid to wave the flag and be patriotic and be family oriented,” says Kenneth Eldredge, who has directed the band since 1995. “And the setting is just perfect with the bandstand at the bottom of a natural bowl”...

Bergstrom Alleges Backroom Discussion In Vokey Dismissal
CHATHAM — After a brief discussion, selectmen voted 3-2 Tuesday afternoon not to reappoint Maureen Vokey to a seat on the zoning board of appeals. In response, Selectman Ronald Bergstrom—who supports Vokey—accused the board’s majority of having violated the Open Meeting law by discussing the matter before the meeting...

Boat Trailer Parking Increased At OMBY --- But Just A Little
CHATHAM --- There will be a few additional boat trailer parking spaces at the town-owned Old Mill Boatyard parking lot this summer. But just a few. ...

Samuel De Champlain’s Bark Lands In Chatham
CHATHAM — French explorer Samuel De Champlain’s coastal bark, which landed in Stage Harbor four centuries ago, has returned to the place he called Port Fortune. A miniature model of the historic ship, commissioned by the Chatham Chamber of Commerce to mark the quadricentennial, was presented to the Chatham Historical Society last month.... (On right is a French attempt at reconstruction in 1908)

More Nutritional School Lunches To Come With Higher Price
HARWICH --- The cost of school lunches will increase next year, based on reduced revenues from the program and state and federal pressures to promote better ...

Superintendent Will Have Final Say On Principal’s Future
HARWICH --- Any decisions on Harwich High School Principal Kevin A. Turner’s future at the school will rest with the superintendent of schools, Dr. Daniel ...

After Initial Success In Chatham, Summer Food Collection Program ...
CHATHAM --- The start of the summer has been somewhat less than relaxing for Lynne Fletcher O’Brien. She’s spent a lot of time ...

Residents Want To Slow Commercial Creep In East Harwich
HARWICH --- The message from the 60 residents who attended the East Harwich Community Association’s vision forum last Thursday night was to slow commercial ...

Spirituality On The Beach
by Debra Lawless. Something about a beautiful beach setting, such as Chatham’s Oyster Pond, can be conducive to spirituality.

Assistant Planner Greenhalgh Leaving For Truro Job
HARWICH --- Assistant Town Planner Charleen Greenhalgh will be leaving next week to take a new position as assistant town administrator/planner in the town of ...

Parents, Coaches Open Dialogue With Park And Rec Commission
CHATHAM — More than a dozen parents and coaches sounded out to the park and recreation commission last Thursday, suggesting ways to improve the quality of ...

Read the rest of The Chronicle here, and comment below.

Building collapse still a mystery, ORV stickers are hot, New attempt at needle exchange, more

Mid Cape news of the week
June 30, 2006

Cause of building collapse remains a mystery By Nicole Muller/ nmuller@cnc.com A week after the landmark Henderson’s Hardware store collapsed in Dennisport, no one knows why it happened. "It was under the care of structural engineers, and there was no apparent sign that it would collapse," said David Maslin, owner of the property at 863 Route 28. "I can’t imagine how that happened. For three years my son [Jonathan, 22] has waited for his gallery, a cultural center that would serve the community with painting, sculpture, music and dance education" ... [more] Dennis ORV stickers are hot this summer By Nicole Muller/ nmuller@cnc.com "Our four-wheel-drive vehicle sticker sales are skyrocketing," Dennis Natural Resource Officer Brian Malone says. "We normally sell about 1,400 a... [more] Black history museum will highlight ’quiet’ contributions By Joe Burns/ jburns@cnc.com In Hyannis, just a stone’s throw from Zion Union Church, where there now stands a red brick shopping plaza, was once a small house with no electricity,... [more]

Read the rest of the Register here, and comment below. 

Mar-of-wars hospitalize South Shore man

One man sent to hospital by attack of jellyfishlike animals
Sightings at Falmouth, Buzzards Bay, recently

The Standard-Times reported that a bather had to be treated for the stings from these flooding, almost invisible animals which drifted here from the Carribean.

The newspaper quoted Ed Enos, superintendent of the Aquatic Resources Division at the Marine Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole, saying,  "What has probably happened is that a group of them congregated in the Gulf Stream and an eddy spun off — they can be 50 miles wide — and that column of warm water and the wind carried a whole little cluster in our direction". 

The Portuguese Man O' War (Physalia physalis), also known as the bluebottle, is commonly thought of as a jellyfish but is actually a siphonophore—a colony of four sorts of polyps. The Standard-Times story begins;

Man-of-wars invade coast
Jellyfishlike animals spotted in waters across SouthCoast

Troubling numbers of Portuguese man-of-wars were found in SouthCoast waters yesterday from Horseneck Beach to Aucoot Cove in Mattapoisett, likely transported by eddies broken off from the Gulf Stream, according to a local marine life expert.
The sightings follow a confrontation with two man-of-wars off East Beach on Monday night involving New Bedford lawyer Philip N. Beauregard, who was admitted to St. Luke's Hospital overnight for treatment after suffering numerous stings...

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

Sierra Club sues Pentagon over wind farm delay

Sierra Club Calls on Rumsfeld, DOD to Stop Blocking Wind Farms
Suit filed against Defense Department for delaying study of windmill threats to security

he Sierra Club today filed suit against Donald Rumsfeld and the U.S. Department of Defense for creating a virtual moratorium on the construction of new wind power plants.

The nation's most respected environmental organization charged that Rumsfeld and DOD have failed to complete a congressionally mandated study of windmills' impact on radar.

In the meantime, DOD, Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Aviation Administration have halted wind farm construction "within radar line of sight" of any military radar--which has effectively stopped construction across the U.S.

"While the Defense Department drags its feet studying if wind farms are a threat to national security, Americans are missing out on cleaner, cheaper energy," said Kristin Henry, staff attorney for Sierra Club. "If the military can have windmills and effective radar at Guantanamo, why can't we have both in the Midwest?"

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claims that the Department of Defense has violated the Administrative Procedure Act and will seek to "compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed." 5 U.S.C. § 706(1).

The move by the Bush administration to link wind power to national security threats is especially ironic given that it took a recent decision of the Ninth Circuit Court to get the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consider the potential impacts from a terrorist attack on nuclear facilities when conducting environmental reviews.

"The same administration that didn't want to consider terrorism when building nuclear plants is saying that windmills may be a threat to national security," said Henry.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006 contained a last-minute amendment, inserted by Senator John Warner of Virginia, requiring Donald Rumsfeld and DOD to complete a study on the effect of windmills on military readiness and the operation of military radar installations by May 8, 2006.

Beltway bureaucratic stalling  charged

In order to operate and construct a windmill in the U.S., an energy developer must obtain a notice from the FAA stating that the installation is not a hazard to air navigation. The Federal Aviation Administration is interpreting DOD's "Interim Windmill Policy" to mean that it cannot approve any wind projects "within radar line of sight." Instead, the agency has been issuing "Notices of Presumptive Hazard," which decline to provide the required notice until more information is obtained regarding possible interference with military radar installations. Since much of the nation and almost all of the Midwest is "within radar line of sight," this policy has a sweeping effect and has essentially created a de facto moratorium on new wind power projects.

15 wind farms stalled 

Federal officials have declined to reveal how many wind projects have been blocked from construction, but, according to media reports, at least 15 wind farm proposals in the Midwest have been shut down so far. The list of stalled projects includes one outside Bloomington, Illinois, which would have been the nation's largest source of wind energy, generating enough electricity to power 120,000 homes in the Chicago area. Coal and natural gas will likely replace the lost wind generation, resulting in higher energy costs and increased soot, smog and global warming pollution.

"Paralyzing wind energy development could not have come at a worse time," said David Bookbinder, senior attorney for Sierra Club. "The Department of Defense has provided no indication of when it intends to complete the required study, even though the deadline has already passed. Meanwhile the window for claiming tax credits on wind projects is closing next year.

On June 2, 2006, Senators Russ Feingold, Dick Durbin, Herb Kohl, Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, and Barack Obama wrote a letter to the Department of Defense and the Federal Aviation Administration requesting that they stop unnecessarily obstructing the construction of clean, renewable energy sources.

Threat to tax credits seem as ploy to stop the wind 

If the moratorium persists through the summer, it may not be possible to complete wind projects in time for their developers to claim applicable federal tax credits, which were extended last August through the end of 2007. The direct and indirect economic damage that will result from suspension of wind farm construction could easily reach tens of millions of dollars.

The Sierra Club attornies claim that wind energy is the fastest-growing source of power on the planet. With our national wind resources, they say, the United States can become a world leader in wind energy. Already, wind turbines in this country produce enough electricity to meet the needs of more than 1 million households. A single modern wind turbine can produce enough power to meet the annual electricity needs of 500 average homes.

The suit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco claimed that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the Pentagon missed a deadline for completing a study that is holding up more than a dozen wind farm projects in the Midwest.

"The end result is the wind industry is being crippled," said attorney Kristin Henry of the Sierra Club. The study was ordered earlier this year by Congress. The Federal Aviation Administration has halted projects in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, North Dakota, and South Dakota until the agency can determine their impact on military radar. Delayed construction on wind farms could make developers ineligible for federal tax credits available until the end of 2007, dealing a severe blow to efforts to develop clean, renewable energy sources in the United States, Henry said.

Senator Warner protecting Osterville trophy homes

The amendment ordering the study, authored by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., came as a last-minute addition to a national defense bill passed in January. The bill gave the Defense Department until May to complete the study. Mr. Warner's daughter own a summer home in Osterville.

Wind industry backers have accused Warner of trying to scuttle an offshore wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound in Massachusetts.

DOR charges rock Ptown, Pilgrim Monument begun 100 years ago, more

Outer Cape news of the week
Jaune 28, 2006

State Dept. Of Revenue charges ‘rock’ Provincetown
PROVINCETOWN — Dirty laundry was aired this week when the state Dept. of Revenue announced that it would delay third and fourth quarter aid to the town, roughly $240,000 worth, due to late document filings, unrealistically high revenue projections and what has been described as the unabated handholding that state officials give to the town...

100 years ago: Laying the cornerstone of the Pilgrim Monument “In the name of the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts I now proclaim that the corner stone of the structure to be here erected -The carefully planned ceremony had begun the morning of August 20, 1907, when the presidential yacht “Mayflower,” with President Theodore Roosevelt aboard, sailed into Provincetown Harbor around 10 o’clock. As it rounded Long Point and entered the harbor, it passed down a passage created by eight battleships composed of two squadrons. The president received a 21-gun salute from each battleship as he passed. Observers on High Pole Hill said it seemed as though their view of the “Mayflower” would be lost in a smoky haze of gunpowder ...

ORV's off limits, E. Harwich pans, Plover need help, Turner in court, more

Harwich news of the week

Read the rest of this week's Oracle stories here, and comment below.

Delahunt, others, get free trips to Wequassett

Globe says lobbyist spent $22,000 on them since '96
The lobbyist represents firms which get millions from state

According to today's Boston Globe, four Massachusetts Congressman, US Representative Richard Neal,  Michael E. Capuano, William D. Delahunt and the late J. Joseph Moakley, all received free visits to Harwich's Wequassett Inn Resort. The Globe story refers to the inn's mailing address. The property on Pleasant Bay & Round Cove is on Route 28 in East Harwich between Orleans and Chatham.

According to the inn's web site, their July Fourth Package for three nights, one dinner for two and a round of golf starts at $1,455 while their better rooms cost almost that for one night. The Globe story states: 

A lobbyist link in congressmens' visits to Cape

By Michael M. Grynbaum, Globe Correspondent | June 28, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Four Massachusetts congressmen have attended luxurious Fourth of July weekends at Cape Cod's exclusive Wequassett Inn in Chatham with representatives of various interest groups, courtesy of a little-known nonprofit group started by a longtime lobbyist.

The lobbyist, Jeanne Campbell, received millions of dollars in contracts to lobby Congress through her Washington-based firm, Campbell-Crane. Her clients, including several Massachusetts agencies and companies, routinely attend the Fourth of July events.

The trips to the Wequassett Inn, where room rates range from $475 to $1,300 per night, are intended as seminars where industry representatives can discuss legislative issues with members of Congress. But government watchdog groups say they represent a common route around federal lobbying restrictions.

The firm has paid more than $22,500 to cover Massachusetts congressmen attending the sessions since 1996, the first year for which records are available. Nearly $11,000 went to cover food and lodging expenses of US Representative Richard Neal, a Springfield Democrat, who has attended every year but 2002...

The story goes on to say that people who attended the Wequassett's Fourth of July events say the attendees include many clients of Campbell-Crane. Watchdog groups say that lobbying firms have found a way around the current regulations by linking up with nonprofit groups to sponsor travel.

Delahunt dissembles

Our own congressman, William Delahunt on right, attended the July 4 events at the resort for three years but said he did not recall details about the weekends. He did say that the groups at the Wequassett soiree  "would have access to Massachusetts representatives anyhow."

Local observers thought this statement was misleading at best since access to elected officers is hardly a simple matter for ordinary folks.

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