Backroom Deal Threatens to Kill Cape Wind

As President Bush Seeks More Wind Energy Alaska Congressman Tries 11th Hour Back Door Ploy to Stop First Offshore Wind Project in America

After four years of favorable regulatory review showing the project would lower energy costs, reduce air pollution and help wean the New England region off its dependence on imported oil and natural gas, Cape Windâ??s future is now threatened because of Alaska Congressman Don Youngâ??s backdoor attempt to kill Americaâ??s first offshore wind farm.

Linked to Jack Abramoff: Alaska Congressman Don Young led a congressional delegation to the Marshall Islands, a group of atolls in the South Pacific. At the time, a lobbyist named Jack Abramoff represented the local government of the Marshalls. The links in this story in Achorage Daily News this week are here.

Rep. Youngâ??s effort would also delay progress on the development of any other offshore wind proposals, causing the American renewable energy industry to fall further behind its foreign competitors.

Last week, Rep. Young distributed a five-page letter to colleagues in Congress urging support for an amendment he says he plans to offer in Conference Committee. â??Heâ??s only been talking to NIMBY opponents and his letter reflects that, it is one-sided and inaccurate,â?� said Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers.

Today, in its own letter, Cape Wind is setting the record straight.  You can read the letter from Cape Wind to Representative Don Young here.

Attempted to hide his backroom booby trap

The â??Young amendmentâ?� was first reported in an article in the Congressional Quarterly on  December 5, in which Youngâ??s office denied its existence and called Cape Wind â??paranoid.â?�  In subsequent media reports, Youngâ??s office mostly refused public comment or said little about what he was trying to do.  â??Up until now, Congressman Young has apparently been trying to conceal his efforts,â?� said Rodgers.

Congressman Young, sometimes called the "Chief Porker", is seeking to attach the amendment to the Coast Guard Reauthorization Bill in Conference Committee.  The stated purpose of a Conference Committee is to â??resolve differencesâ?� between House and Senate Bills, not to introduce new provisions that were not reviewed by either chamber, as is happening in this case.  If the Amendment gets attached in Conference Committee, it is difficult to remove as both chambers tend to vote on important spending bills â??up or downâ?� with no changes.  

As chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Commitee, heâ??s ensured that the six-year $295 billion transportation bill was â??stuffed like a turkeyâ?� with $721 million in projects for Alaska, including $223 million for the infamous â??bridge to nowhere.â?�

DonYoung's Bill is
"Filled with exageration and misinformation"

These are the words of a veteran Nantucket Sound ferry boat captain and Clean Power Now board member Richard Elrick to describe Congressman Don Young's proposed amendment on offshore wind farms."The recommendation to restrict offshore wind farms from within 1.5 nautical miles is excessive,â?� said Elrick, who has two decades of experience as a ferry boat captain on Nantucket Sound.
   A letter sent by Young to his congressional colleagues states that ships routinely pass through the shoal where the Cape Wind project would be built, which is untrue, Elrick said. â??Deep draft vessels generally avoid Horshoe Shoals because it is very shallow," Elrick said.
   "Even if a deep draft vessel finds itself amid the turbine array, the vessel is more likely to run aground than to collide with a turbine since the turbines take up only 200 square feet of surface area", Elrick said.
   In all his years on Nantucket Sound, â??not a single large draft freighter nor oil barge has ever run aground on the shallow area of Horseshoe Shoals," Elrick said.â??The possibility of a vessel colliding with a turbine in Nantucket Sound is very unlikely. If a vessel cannot safely navigate the Shoal area, then they shouldnâ??t be there in the first place.â?� Source

â??Making important energy policy that affects national security, the economy and public health is too important to be done behind the closed doors of a conference committee that avoids public hearings or the scrutiny of the full committees of each chamber,â?� said Rodgers.  â??This is coming at a time when members of both parties are talking about their commitment to reform Congress to make their work more transparent and to curtail the influence of lobbyists,â?� Rodgers continued.

Young's stratagem would force an abrupt halt to most if not all offshore wind farm plans

At the heart of Youngâ??s letter and Amendment is a call to ban offshore wind farms within 1 ½ nautical miles of a shipping channel or ferry route.  For comparison, the required buffer zone between offshore oil and gas rigs and shipping lanes is 500 feet.  The entire justification offered for Youngâ??s 1 ½ mile ban is a recent report in the United Kingdom that identifies an approach on how possible marine navigation radar risks of offshore wind farms should be reviewed.  Crucially, the UK approach calls for a buffer zone of 500 meters, about one-third nautical mile.  The UK approach rejects a â??one size fits allâ?� solution and leaves it up to the UK Coast Guard to evaluate each project beyond 500 meters on a case-by-case basis.

By contrast, Youngâ??s Amendment would strip authority away from the US Coast Guard to review any offshore wind project, like Cape Wind, closer than 1 ½ nautical miles to a shipping channel or ferry route by banning them outright.  Young inaccurately claims his amendment is based on the UK approach but he has more than quadrupled the size of the UK buffer zone.  Not surprisingly, Youngâ??s Amendment is opposed by the Coast Guard.

Congressman & his Lobbyist friend: Oil yes, wind no

Youngâ??s Amendment also brushes aside the experience in Denmark where an offshore wind farm near Copenhagen sits ¼ nautical mile from an extremely busy shipping lane, and another offshore wind warm in the Baltic Sea is 1 nautical mile from the main channel that connects the Baltic Sea with the North Sea.  These and other Danish offshore wind farms have had no reports of any problems with sea navigation.

The following is an extract from the lead Cape Cod Times article on Sunday, February 19, entitled, Alaska lawmaker joins Cape wind farm fray:

One of the top-paid lobbyists hired by the Alliance is Guy Martin, a former Washington counsel for the state of Alaska who describes himself as a longtime friend of Young's.

Martin, who worked in offshore leasing issues and coastal zoning, also helped win federal support for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline - a project Young calls the ''single most important achievement'' of his career.

Guy Martin got nearly $1/2 million from the Alliance

Alliance linked to Young: Over half the Alliance lobbying budget, $440,000, went to Guy Martin's firm.

A little more online digging uncovers the possible smoking gun linking Young with opposition to the Cape Wind project. Guy Martin, a well-connected lobbyist with Perkins Cole DC's Environment Group, has been pushing hard for the Cape Wind opposition group Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound down in Washington.

For example, the US Senate Office of Public Records (see report here ) which keeps tabs on how much money is spent on lobbyists, shows the Alliance has paid $440,000 to Perkins Cole since 2002. This out of a total of $840,000 for lobbying in Congress as of last June, the records show (including the lobbying firms of Loeffler Tuggey and O'Neill Associates, but not including the recently hired Patton Boggs).

An interview with Guy Martin appears at the website of LitSite Alaska, "a Web community promoting literacy, cultural diversity, and well-being throughout Alaska." (see story here .)

After Young was elected in 1973, Martin says in the interview, "Bill Egan and John Havelock, the governor and the attorney general at the time, asked me to open the first state office for Alaska in Washington. The reason being, they didn't have anybody there to represent the state in the upcoming Trans-Alaska Pipeline debate (emphasis added). So I did that." See the CapeCodToday report "Oily Bedfellows" here.

Don Young is the House Chair of the Coast Guard Conference Committee, key Senate Members that can defeat this amendment include: Stevens (R-AK), Snowe (R-ME), Cantwell (D-WA),  and Inouye (D-HI).  

The Young amendment threat comes just as President Bush and leaders in Congress are making repeated public statements about the need to accelerate the development of wind power in the United States to help make America less reliant upon oil and other fossil fuels.

Cape Wind enjoys the enthusiastic support of thousands of residents of Cape Cod and the Islands of Marthaâ??s Vineyard and Nantucket and in statewide polls Cape Wind is favored by margins of 3-1 to 6-1. 

The following is a partial list of organizations that are opposed to the Young Amendment: 

• American Wind Energy Association,
• National Ocean Industries Association,
• Maritime Trades Council,
• Seafarers International Union,
• Natural Resources Defense Council,
• Sierra Club,
• Union of Concerned Scientists,
• Conservation Law Foundation,
• Clean Power Now
• U.S. PIRG,
• Greenpeace,
• Woods Hole Research Center,
• Natural Resources Council of Maine,
• Environment Maine,
• Friends of the Earth,
• American Lung Associationâ??s Maine and Massachusetts Chapters.
• Other Cape Wind supporters here.

Cape Windâ??s proposal to build Americaâ??s first offshore wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal would provide three-quarters of the electricity used on Cape Cod and the Islands from clean, renewable energy - reducing this regionâ??s need to import oil, coal and gas. Cape Wind will create new jobs, lower electric costs, contribute to a healthier environment, increase energy independence and establish Massachusetts as a leader in offshore wind power. For more information visit their web site here.