By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 14, 2006

Proponents of the Cape Wind project on Nantucket Sound say wind farms like it will help wean the country from dependence on foreign oil. Opponents suggest it will harm the area's environment, scenic views and economy. And both sides insist wealthy interests are doing their best to manipulate the decision-making process by hiring high-priced lobbyists and cutting backroom deals on Capitol Hill.

The fight over Cape Wind -- a 130-turbine wind farm that would span 24 square miles of federal waters off the Massachusetts coast -- highlights how development of alternative energy remains a complex and often contentious business.

After years of failed plans and minimal growth, the nation's installed wind capacity grew 35 percent last year. On Thursday, Texas officials approved the nation's largest offshore wind farm -- which when built will be able to power 125,000 homes. One wind farm is operating in West Virginia, with more applications pending in that state as well as in Maryland and Virginia. But small communities in Vermont, Massachusetts and elsewhere have fought stubbornly to block wind farms, and some operators are struggling with a shortage of turbines and the challenge of transmitting wind-generated electricity to more populated areas.

"The wind industry is not in a mature phase in the U.S., but it has a good future," said Michael Liebreich, who heads London-based New Energy Finance, which analyzes clean energy projects.

"It's part of the answer" to the energy crisis, he added, but "we're not going to get rid of oil and coal and nuclear power in the next 20 years."

For the moment, projects such as Cape Wind often still face formidable obstacles. Last month, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) inserted language into a Coast Guard reauthorization bill to allow Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) to kill the project, a move Stevens and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) defended on the floor Tuesday.

The maneuver has put the bill in limbo: New Mexico Sens. Pete V. Domenici (R) and Jeff Bingaman (D), who sit atop the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said they will filibuster the bill unless Stevens's language comes out. "It's not normal for Congress to be trying to legislate a particular energy project around the country," Bingaman said in an interview.

Kennedy, whose family's famed compound in Hyannis Port looks out on Nantucket Sound, has led the fight against Cape Wind. He said he opposes the venture on policy rather than personal grounds.

"That is a giveaway of public land that belongs to the country," he said in an interview, noting there was no competitive bidding on the wind farm and the developer would reap tens of millions in federally funded tax credits for renewable energy. "Those credits are coming from working families."

Kennedy and groups such as the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, which is financed in part by major GOP donor and Cape Cod landowner Bill Koch, assert that the venture will damage a delicate marine sanctuary and the area's value as a tourist attraction. The development will rival the size of Manhattan, boasting turbines with blades stretching as high as 426 feet mounted on piles driven into the ocean bottom 80 feet below.

"There are serious environmental, safety and economic implications for the people of Massachusetts, and the developer is trying to keep them out of sight," Kennedy said, adding that he is not opposed to the project because he owns land there. "If this was about self-interest, I'd have a different voting pattern than I've had for 43 years in the U.S. Senate."

Massachusetts residents, along with their congressional delegation, appear divided.

A Statehouse News Service poll of 400 residents this week found that 71 percent of respondents approved of the project and 17 percent opposed it, but 66 percent of Nantucket residents voted against it in a nonbinding referendum last month.

Government officials overseeing the project seem split, as well. The Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department criticized aspects of Cape Wind as part of a broader environmental assessment by the Army Corps of Engineers. Interior wrote in February 2005 that it "may represent substantial and unacceptable adverse impacts to the aquatic resources of national importance."

But the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board issued developer Jim Gordon a permit last year, concluding there was a need for new sources of electricity in the state and there could be "significant and lasting air quality benefits resulting from the wind farm's displacement of other, primarily fossil-fueled, generators. . . . Overall, the Siting Board concludes that the air quality benefits of the wind farm are significant, and important for Massachusetts and New England."

Chris Miller, a senior energy campaigner for the advocacy group Greenpeace, said the only marine activities that might be jeopardized are destructive trawling on the ocean's floor.

"What we believe is this is absolutely the right project in the right place at the right time," Miller said, adding that migratory birds are also not in danger. "House cats in Hyannis kill more birds than this wind farm ever will."

Elsewhere, some communities have embraced wind power. Jerry Patterson, commissioner of the Texas General Land Office, said he and other state officials cannot understand why politicians would block wind farms. Texas is expected to outpace California in wind power capacity by the end of this year, according to the American Wind Energy Association, and has pledged by law to triple its installed wind capacity by 2015.

"We go, 'Huh?' " Patterson said. "We are accepting, and we are encouraging and we don't mind looking at wind platforms when we've been looking at oil platforms for a long time."

Patterson announced Thursday his office will grant Superior Renewable Energy LLC the rights to 39,900 submerged acres in the Gulf of Mexico, just off Padre Island, to build a 500-megawatt wind farm -- bigger than Cape Wind.

Former House majority leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.), who is advising Cape Wind investors from his base at the law firm Piper Rudnick, said politicians will soon have to abandon the "not in my back yard" attitude in light of the country's growing energy needs.

"Eventually the NIMBYists are going to feel enough pressure from others in their communities and start being a little less aggressive," Armey said. "It's a perfect clash between the special interests and the public interest."

In fact, both sides have spent money on special-interest lobbyists to press their case.

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound and Koch's Oxbow Corp. have spent at least $1.02 million in lobbying fees on the issue since 2003, according to federal election records, while Cape Wind has spent at least $325,000 on lobbying since 2002.

And while critics complain the venture has enjoyed fast-track treatment under the new energy bill because the developers did not have to engage in a competitive bidding process, Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers said the project has been scrutinized by 17 agencies since 2001.

"I would like to see what the slow track looks like," Rodgers said.

Not far from Nantucket Sound, however, there is a ghostly reminder of what happens when wind projects fail.

In the 1970s, a few men got together on Cuttyhunk Island, seven miles off the coast, and built a small windmill in the hopes of generating electricity. The project never really got going, and its remains rusted in the wind for years afterward.

But Ernie Corrigan, a spokesman for the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, said the renewable energy industry can survive without windmills on Cape Cod. "They act as if this is somehow going to halt the entire alternative energy movement in the United States," Corrigan said. "That movement is going on, with or without Cape Wind."

Researchers Madonna Lebling and Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.