Editorial: Approve wind farm over sacred site concerns

Opinion

Monday, January 11, 2010

"Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, has decided that nine years of wrangling over a proposed wind farm off the Massachusetts coast must come to an end — even if it requires his personal intervention. This is the best news this controversial, yet important, project has received in a long time.

Having endured endless state and federal reviews and ferocious opposition from local homeowners who don’t like the idea of 130 wind turbines interrupting their views of Nantucket Sound, Cape Wind had moved closer to final approval. Then came complaints from two American Indian tribes in Massachusetts that the turbines would interfere with their spiritual greeting of the sunrise and disturb ancestral burial grounds, now underwater.

The tribes asked that all of Nantucket Sound be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the National Park Service agreed that they had a case.

On Monday, a clearly exasperated Mr. Salazar gave the contending parties — the developers, the tribes, the agencies and the State of Massachusetts, which supports the project — a March 1 deadline to resolve their differences. He said if they could not, he would make the decision himself."

Get the Story:
Editorial: Wind Power (The New York Times 1/9)

Also Today:
Cape Wind project may be test case of Obama administration’s promises (Indian Country Today 1/11)