"In the next few weeks, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will make a momentous decision — the official, final, formal record of decision on permitting the nation's first offshore wind farm, Cape Wind. And after eight years of obfuscation, dilatory tactics and sharp practice by a well-funded opposition group wielding political power quite out of congruity with its level of popular support, his decision will come not a day too soon.

And yet Secretary Salazar waits. It seems that the opposition, having run out of technical, environmental and economic arguments, has co-opted the local Wampanoag tribes to assert that their ancestors are — or might be — buried under what is now Nantucket Sound — this despite the fact that the area became a water feature long before Native Americans settled nearby. Tribe leaders have also claimed that their rituals demand an uninterrupted view of the eastern horizon, a claim not only questioned by some of their own members, but also one that has never been made as houses, hotels, telephone poles and more have appeared over the years in the viewshed.

Cape Wind is the single largest potential contributor in the U.S. to the carbon-free, homegrown energy regime that we need for our physical and economic health, for our national security, and for our sustainability."

Get the Story:
Christopher Stimpson: Salazar must look to the future (The Cape Cod Times 3/22)

Relevant Documents:
Secretary Salazar Letter | Press Release

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