Southeastern Massachusetts suffers from deteriorating air quality for a variety of reasons that Cape Wind will help improve once past the conspicuous NIMBYism and vested interests.
This was recently issued:
Code Orange Alert Day for Southeastern counties
Why should the region continue to endure Dirty Air, elevated childhood asthma rates and other respiratory illnesses because of a few with deep pockets?
Bowles vs. O'Connell
Cape Wind showdown pits two former Patrick cabinet secretaries against each other
May 30, 2013
Two of Gov. Deval Patrick’s former cabinet secretaries are squabbling over Cape Wind, the proposed offshore wind farm that has been a high priority of the governor since he took office.
The fracas began last week when the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, a group of the state’s most powerful business executives, took out full-page ads in three newspapers saying Bay State businesses cannot afford the wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound. The Competitive Partnership, headed by Dan O’Connell, Patrick’s former secretary of housing and economic development, said in its ads that “Cape Wind does not make sense.”
The ads prompted an immediate backlash from members of the state’s environmental community, who accused the executives of being more concerned about the views from their oceanfront summer homes than the competitiveness of Massachusetts businesses.
A check of real estate records and press reports indicates 10 of the 16 members of the Competitive Partnership own homes on the Cape, Martha’s Vineyard, or Nantucket, but property could not be found under the names of the other six members. O’Connell says he has a vacation home in New Hampshire.
Ian Bowles, the governor’s former secretary of energy and environmental affairs, said he believes NIMBYism (for Not In My Backyard) is what is driving the concerns of the Competitive Partnership.
The argument that Massachusetts businesses can’t afford Cape Wind is preposterous, Bowles says. He says electricity prices are way down now thanks to the plunge in natural gas prices, which has made it easier for the state to support investments in more expensive renewables such as wind and solar. He acknowledges some types of renewable energy would be less expensive than the electricity generated by Cape Wind, but he says the state needs all the renewables it can find to meet its goal of reducing emissions 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. (He notes solar power is more expensive than Cape Wind electricity, yet the Competitive Partnership is not campaigning against solar power development.)
Bowles also rejects the notion that Cape Wind makes Massachusetts unfriendly to business. He says Cape Wind developer Jim Gordon has invested 10 years and more than $65 million in the project, yet the executives from the Competitive Partnership want to pull the plug on that investment. “That’s business friendly?” he asks.
“What is this about?” Bowles asks. “It must be about NIMBY.”
O’Connell calls the NIMBY accusation “a cheap shot.” He admits many of the Competitive Partnership members have homes looking out on Nantucket Sound, but says that’s not why the executives are opposing Cape Wind. He says the group has been voicing opposition to Cape Wind since 2011, noting testimony by former ad executive Jack Connors before a legislative committee on Beacon Hill and
private meetings EMC chief executive Joe Tucci held with Gov. Patrick at about the same time.
[Private meetings for which Massachusetts is famous?]
What prompted the ads last week was frustration, O’Connell says. He said Cape Wind hasn’t been able to arrange financing for the project even though state regulators have locked in customers for 77 percent of the project’s power. So now Cape Wind is going to the federal government asking for an estimated $300 million in loan guarantees. “That’s what really got the group saying enough is enough,” O’Connell said.
Cape Wind’s initial price is currently forecast at 18.7 cents per kilowatt hour, and it rises 3 percent a year. O’Connell says onshore wind power and hydropower from Canada can be purchased for less than half that amount. He also doubts the project will spur much economic development in Massachusetts, noting that most of the equipment will be manufactured out of state or out of the country.
The state is moving ahead with plans to invest $100 million in a marine commerce terminal in New Bedford, which would serve as a staging area for Cape Wind and other offshore wind projects as well as a container facility. But O’Connell worries that the state is pushing ahead with the terminal with no guarantee that Cape Wind will end up using it or that other offshore wind projects will ever get built. “What’s the business plan for that investment?” he asked.
Mark Rodgers, a spokesman for Cape Wind, said the wind farm would like to use the New Bedford terminal but has to keep its options open in case the terminal is not completed on time. “We would like to use it for Cape Wind and for future offshore wind farms we hope to develop,” he said in an email. “Our ability to use it specifically for Cape Wind will depend upon their completing the facility in time for our use.”
Bowles said O’Connell is now raising concerns about some of the same policies he supported as a member of the governor’s cabinet. “It’s somewhat surprising and discordant with the positions he took as a public official,” Bowles said.
O’Connell says Bowles took the lead in the administration on Cape Wind, but he adds that he was in the cabinet to carry out the governor’s initiatives. He suggested he has some different priorities at the Competitive Partnership “We haven’t disagreed on many issues with the administration and the Legislature,” O’Connell says. “But we disagree with the governor on this.”
http://www.commonwealthmagazine.org/Voices/Back-Story/2013/Spring/009-Bowles-vs-OConnell.aspx
![Shared at @[352859651422892:274:Ayn Rand collected Social Security].](https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/q71/s480x480/983666_546466538728868_1649985648_n.jpg)
Last week, the U.S. Senate voted down an amendment by Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to restore $4.1 billion in food stamp cuts—by reducing corporate welfare to a handful of crop insurance companies, mostly based overseas. Only 26 senators voted “yes.”
Twenty-eight Senate Democrats joined with all voting Republicans to defeat this crucial amendment. If these cuts are allowed, around 500,000 low-income households will lose an average of $90 in monthly benefits.
