The long-running saga of the attempt to build a wind farm for the “green” generation of electricity inched one step closer to construction with the release of a 2,800-page Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Mineral Management Service (MMS). The proposed Cape Wind’s Horseshoe Shoals location is outside the state’s three-mile zone of jurisdiction and thus lies in federal waters. Among 27 resource-areas covered in the multi-page tome, the FEIS concludes that operation of the wind farm would have a negligible impact on electronic and magnetic fields. The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, an environmental group, disagreed with this finding and asserted that the report grossly understates the Cape Wind’s impact for physical and/or electromagnetic interference to the radar systems used by the Federal Aviation Administration and that the wind farm should be considered a “presumed hazard.” The MMS’s assessment was also questioned in light of a U.S. Coast Guard study concluded last year which ran several simulations to determine if the farm’s turbines would unduly interfere with radar operations. The entire report is online on the MMS website, and the response from the Alliance to Save Nantucket Sound is on that organization’s website. Questions on interference to radar, sonar, or other vital military systems can be posted to the Interference Technology Military Forum.
Wind Farms & the Ecosystem
