After several press releases, various heads up and the many giddy emails I've received, it's clear that the Patrick Administration has just undone a bit of ugliness of the Romney Administration by adding The Commonwealth of Massachusetts' long overdue stamp of approval to the Cape Wind project. There are still several hurdles to clear and some of them more daunting than this one, but as a scandal per day unfolds in Washington, perhaps energy prudency will have a shot there too.
The Grown-ups-in-charge report from the front page of today's Boston Globe on the flip...
Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian Bowles concluded yesterday that the wind farm developer's final environmental impact report complies with state environmental law and that the project's environmental benefits will offset its negative impact. The wind farm would produce so much clean energy, displacing power now produced by burning climate-warming fossil fuels, that it would be tantamount to taking 175,000 cars off the road, Bowles said.
"Global climate change, sea level rise, dependence on foreign oil, and the health impacts of local and regional air pollution create an urgent need for sustainable alternatives to energy produced from fossil fuels," Bowles wrote in the state's certificate approving the Cape Wind project. "While new technologies are not without impacts themselves, these pale in comparison to the scale of impacts that continued fossil fuel emissions will have on the environment of Massachusetts."
Truth should be presumed but for all we've been through, it must be celebrated! Truth and prudent policy is why we voted Deval Patrick in and the GOP (finally) out. Don't get too carried away with your happy dance, there's more ahead. Here's what's in store:
The Interior Department plans to release a draft report next month, but will not finish its review until early next year. And well-funded opponents, who have dogged the project for six years, waging legal and political warfare in efforts to derail it, are likely to challenge the permits required to build the wind turbines off the Cape and Islands.
If you haven't followed the mess at Interior, it's not too late to catch up (from 7 days ago):
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles pleaded guilty Friday to obstruction of justice in a Senate committee's investigation, becoming the highest-ranking Bush administration official convicted in the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal.
The former No. 2 official in the Interior Department admitted in federal court that he lied to the Senate about his relationship with convicted lobbyist Abramoff, who repeatedly sought Griles' intervention at the agency on behalf of Abramoff's Indian tribal clients.
And that's just the tip of a massive, corrupt, deseased, iceberg. Melting...melting...metaphorically melting...thanks in no small part to global warming...onward!