BOEM's Offshore Wind Farm Meeting

As promised, I attended the public information
meeting held by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to provide
information and take public comment on BOEM's notice of intent to prepare an
environmental assessment for the potential development of offshore wind energy
projects in an area of federal water on the outer Continental Shelf about 13
miles off our shores here on Martha's Vineyard. It  was well attended; there were 50+ people at the Katherine Cornell theater. The meeting went extremely well and the BOEM facilitator and panel got a big round of applause at the end of the meeting. Panelist Maureen A. Bornholdt was the spokesperson for the panel and she was brilliant.

There was a moment in the very beginning when a man with a blinking light strapped to his head stood up and gave a short diatribe on the ills and absurdity of the proposed offshore wind farm project. "If you're annoyed by this blinking light on my head, just think how annoying the hundreds of blinking lights on the wind turbines will be!" Annoying, I suppose, to the fish and the fowl out in the mid Atlantic. Or maybe not.

Actually, the proposed wind farm, albeit cut in half from the original plan, will have 800 turbines producing 4 gigawatts or 4,000 megawatts of electricity--enough to provide clean renewable energy to 1.7 million Massachusetts homes--according to Bill White, Assistant Secretary for Federal Relations for the Executive Office of Energy & Environmental Affairs for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. (Well, that is the longest title on God's Green Earth!) Bill was all smiles because the meeting was taking such a positive direction. Chris Fried stood up and urged that they get a move on because the carbon dioxide level was up to 350 and time was short.  

The MV Commission was well represented: Joanne Taylor, Jonathan Mayhew, Doug Cedarholm and Peter Savana expressed their issues of concern and asked pertinent questions that enhanced the dialogue. Tristan Israel asked some questions. Steve Bernier was there riveted to the proceedings.

All in all, it was a very good meeting and if I was a guessing gal, I'd say the Ayes Have It and all systems are Go, but this is only Step One and the gears of government grind slowly.  It's all in a day's blog.