Tag: cape wind

A fitting memorial for Sen. Ted Kennedy.

No, really.

One that I can think that we can all get behind:

The first U.S. offshore wind farm, a giant project 5 miles/8 km off the Massachusetts coast, was approved on Wednesday after years of opposition involving everyone from local Indian tribes to the Kennedy family.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar gave the green light for the 130-turbine, 420-megawatt Cape Wind project in Horseshoe Shoal, Nantucket Sound, in what supporters considered a huge step forward for renewable energy in the United States.

“This project fits with the tradition of sustainable development in the area,” Salazar said in Boston.

What it didn’t do was fit with the tradition in the area of treating every whim of the Kennedy clan as a signed directive from God, but that deference died with Teddy.  So enjoy the view, ye remaining scions of Hyannis Port! – and if the image on the horizon appears at times to resemble that of the Hawaiian Good Luck Symbol, well, take it as a reminder that not even a Kennedy can stop the march of Progress forever.

Especially not the current crop of them.  And people wonder why Americans don’t trust dynastic thinking…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Latest Cape Wind excuse: “A long-submerged ancestral burial ground.”

(Via Riehl World View) Let us start by correcting the Washington Post’s headline for it:

Cape Wind’s fate unclear, even in Obama’s hands

The title implies that for some reason this President is immune from the automatic suspicion that habitually occurs when an elected official has to make a decision that is vehemently and personally opposed by one of the official’s close political allies.

…two Obama appointees to agencies connected to the project’s review have links to its chief opposition, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.

U.S. National Park Service head Jonathan Jarvis is the brother of alliance consultant Destry Jarvis. And Federal Aviation Administration chief Randy Babbitt has worked for the alliance. Both are recused from any decisions involving Cape Wind.

And yet, the National Park Service is taking seriously claims that a stretch of water is a National Register of Historic Places Traditional Cultural Property, and the FAA is… never mind the FAA right now, and let’s go back to the NPS thing:

The Wampanoag argued the project would interfere with sacred rituals which require an unblocked view of the horizon and would be built on a long-submerged ancestral burial ground.

This is not actually creative of the Kennedy family: the ‘ancestral burial ground’ anti-development ploy has been around for decades, although this is the first time that I’ve seen it used for an offshore coastal situation.  That being said, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.  After all, the Kennedys can’t even get Marcia Coakley elected these days…

Moe Lane

Boston Globe: Well, he ain’t getting any deader*.

So now’s a great time to bring up the Cape Wind wind farm project again (some background on the topic here). As near as I can tell, the Globe got this one in before the first spadeful of Virginia earth got put on former Senator Kennedy’s coffin:

The proposed offshore wind project has sustained more than seven years of heated debate; political maneuvering, including some by the late Senator Edward Kennedy, a project opponent; and environmental review. It now awaits a decision from the Department of the Interior — the last major regulatory hurdle its developers must clear for the project to move forward. As the country’s first proposed commercial offshore wind farm, and the only project of its kind this far along in the approval process, Cape Wind could open the door for developers to harness the vast wind energy resource along the nation’s eastern seaboard. The approval could make Massachusetts the trailblazer of a power source that is an essential part of the country’s strategy to address global warming and to achieve energy security.

(Via Newsbusters, via Instapundit**) That’s the thing about defending things until your dying breath: if you’re good enough at it, people eventually settle down to wait until you have one. Continue reading Boston Globe: Well, he ain’t getting any deader*.

An entertaining update to the Cape Wind matter.

The Cape Wind matter is one that I mentioned here – essentially, Ted Kennedy is enthusastic about wind farms, except when they’re within view of his luxurious Nantucket estate – and, via RedState diarist Vladimir (be sure to check out his Louisiana coverage) we get the report that one of President Bush’s last acts was to green-light said project… thus giving the new President a subtle, nasty, and frankly quite deserved headache.  More on it here: it should be quite amusing to see the fallout on this one.

Navajo tribe tells Kennedy to go to the Devil, or Nantucket.

Well, they were more polite about it than the title suggests, but the sentiment is real:

Joseph P. Kennedy II, whose father Robert F. Kennedy championed Native American rights, is at war with a band of Navajo Indians.

The Cameron Chapter of Navajo Nation is charging that Kennedy, president of Citizens Energy Corp. and its for-profit business Citizens Wind, is trying to seize control of a proposed wind farm on the tribe’s reservation on Gray Mountain in northern Arizona.

“Kennedy’s actions have single-handedly obstructed project development, delaying much-needed income and jobs for our nation,” said Edward Singer, president of the Navajos’ 1,500-member Cameron Chapter.

In a letter to Kennedy earlier this month, Singer accused Kennedy of using his “political connections” to take control of the project.

“If you are honestly committed to helping communities such as ours, please stop interfering with the Cameron Chapter so that we can move forward with the development of our Navajo Wind Project,” Singer wrote. “Instead, we suggest you support wind development elsewhere, including the Cape Wind Project in Massachusetts.”

It’s that last sentence about Cape Wind that indicates that the gloves are off on this one, and many people reading this are nodding in agreement. Continue reading Navajo tribe tells Kennedy to go to the Devil, or Nantucket.