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Windfarm accompanied by a lot of hot air From the Cape Cod Times,
May 3, 2003 The day's news was nearly as bad. The bag-of-wind company that would install wind power off Cape Cod and New England had announced their endorsement by "fishermen." Bourjeson was spitting nickels. Or something like that. Ron is a real Cape Cod fisherman. He's become a heavy lifter in regional fishery politics - a job far tougher than finding slippery squid that aren't even here yet, but one that has to be done, just as the net must be mended and the winch oiled. The International Seafarer's Union recently endorsed the proposed Nantucket Sound windfarm. For the most part, they are the union of the merchant marine - deckhands, engineers and the like, people who work the jobs on big boats. Very big boats, and towboats and barges. Barges just like the one responsible for slopping the heavy heating oil that's lapping the shores of Buzzards Bay this morning. Ah, the ironies. They are thick - very thick - when it comes to this offshore windfarm. Nantucket Sound's real fishermen have barely had a voice in this debate. Meanwhile, the Seafarer's Union people, who are probably better acquainted with the Nantucket Sound found in the mall, get all kinds of press. An oil spill is again ruining poor Buzzards Bay, and it forces us to take another look at wind power. We like renewable energy, after all, and a part of the reason is the desire to eliminate offshore oil spills. Any oil spill is bad; oil in the ocean is the worst. Would Cape Wind Associates make Nantucket Sound oil-spill free? The turbines run on hydraulic oil; together, they'd arrange nearly 20,000 gallons of it on Horseshoe Shoal, the bluefish capital of the world. But hey. Oil lines never break, right? Life ain't never fair. We are watching an unfolding lesson in how not to make or use energy. While entertaining, it's enough to get a girl depressed. We find ourselves again wondering how the Greatest Nation on Earth can have such a ridiculous energy policy. (This assumes, of course, that we dare call it a "policy." Most of the time, it isn't; instead, it seems to be sort of a fill 'er up-by-default kind of habit.) But with the cowboy in the White House, we have to call what we've got a "policy." Mince no words here: The nation's top cowboy is an oil man, through and through. It's a wonder some of the cable channels haven't jumped on this sterling opportunity to blast us with re-runs JR, the North Fork, and Dallas. Developing countries are using solar power to fire up their laptops. They've got fleets of hybrid cars. They're using hydrogen and geo-thermal energy. Break a hydrogen canister, and poof! - you've got air. We have Cape Wind Energy Associates. Their biggest claim to hot air is their increasingly-demonstrated skill at blowing it. Lots of it. No question we need renewable energy. No question we have to stop wasting our remaining oil. But our cowboy president put the cease-and-desist on attempts to get better gas mileage out of the only-in-America monster cars lining up, waiting to clog Cape Cod roads. Every one of the SUV's burning gas on Route 6, whether residential or tourist-owned, drives up both demand and gas prices - among the litany of their ecological sins.. But hey, we taxpayers subsidize the oil and highway industries, so don't expect any rational action from the cowboy, no suh. Into the fray comes Cape Wind. It's been said that the only thing green about them is the color of money. We agree. They, too, expect enormous subsidies. They expect to use free public land. Thing is, they want to use some of the most inappropriate public land imaginable. And it's not like there aren't alternatives. Me? I'd love to see some wind power around here. You bet. As a fisherman, I've been dealing with and cursing our endless gusts of Cape Cod wind most of my adult life. Would I love to get something useful out of it, like cheap power for my house? Do little kids like ice cream? But why screw up a wonderful place like Nantucket Sound? Why not put the windmills in already-disturbed "used" places - like the median strip of Route 6? Imagine turbines on the median strips all along our highways. They could run all the way to New Bedford, and beyond. Cloverleafs could double up as not only funnelers of traffic, but gatherers of windpower. That's where they put 'em in California, right between the interstates. And from somebody who is rarely thrilled by lifestyles from the Left Coast, this time I'd say they got it right. Use the highways. They are easy to get to, easy to maintain. Easy to fix when something breaks. And the land is sitting there, perfect and waiting. Ah, but to gain those permissions would take time, reviews and money. Plopping turbines into Nantucket Sound seems contingent only on a review by the Corps of Engineers, the group that brought us the mess we call the Mississippi River, with its many straightened channels, locks, and other clever engineering marvels never intended by nature. The Corps is right now tearing up the mess they made in Florida, where the freshwater flow from the Everglades has been so disrupted the Everglades are dying and 100 miles of coastal waters off southern Florida has for years been known as The Dead Zone. Gives you lots of confidence, right? Would you let the Corps of Engineers design your septic system? We sit this morning and contemplate the oil lapping softly against the rocks of Falmouth, Wareham and Bourne. We worry ourselves sick over our apparently suicidal national failure to use energy wisely. Bob Dylan told us the answers are blowin' in the wind. Problem is, which way is the wind blowing? Molly Benjamin is a former commercial fishermen who writes about that industry and outdoor activities. (Published: May 4, 2003)
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