Block Island embracing offshore wind farm plan

Electricity costs help sway support

BLOCK ISLAND, R.I. - The wind whips an American flag towering over the palatial lawn that carpets this hilltop. A gust topples a paper coffee cup, half-full, onto a Victorian patio chair on the veranda of the island's oldest hotel.

"If we did have wind turbines, they would be smokin'," said Dave Houseman, general manager of the 19th-century Spring House Hotel, looking out at the breakers below. "Chances are you wouldn't even see them. But I think if you did, it's something you could get used to."

His remark reflects a widely held sentiment here since a developer recently proposed erecting a $1.5 billion wind farm in the waters off this isolated island.

The company has proposed building more than 100 turbines, each one up to 240 feet tall.

No site has been selected, but they could be located anywhere from within 3 miles off the coast, which would place them in Rhode Island waters, or up to 20 miles away, where they would be in federal waters.

Similar offshore wind farms along the East Coast have provoked fierce local opposition, including in Massachusetts, where the Cape Wind project for Nantucket Sound has been stalled for seven years by powerful groups concerned about their ocean views and the potential impact on property values, tourism, and marine life.

But high electricity prices, along with a conservation ethos that has led to the protection of more than 40 percent of the island in reserves and land trusts, have prompted many Block Islanders to embrace the offshore wind project.

"A lot of the residents recognize the need for wind power," said Nancy Dodge, town manager for New Shoreham, the municipality that encompasses the island. "The major concern is that anything we have to look at, we share in, so we don't bear the brunt visually without getting the benefits."

This summer, electricity prices on the island reached a record of 65 cents per kilowatt hour - at one point, the highest rate in the continental United States and more than four times the rate paid on the mainland 12 miles away.

Unlike Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket to the north, Block Island does not have a cable connecting it to the mainland.

The island relies on diesel, carted by fuel tankers on ferry boats and burned by generators at the local power plant.

As gas prices have risen at pumps across the country, Block Islanders have been hit at home.

"My electric bill was like a mortgage payment," said Mary Anderson, a landscaper. The Island Free Library's circulation clerk, Judy Mitchell, said she paid $700 per month for electricity for her home over the summer.

Hotels that serve the thousands of tourists who come here each year for the beaches, birds, and nature trails are among the island's biggest power users.

At the Spring House Hotel, the electric bill this August soared over $40,000, nearly $10,000 more than the August 2007 bill.

Houseman said that the hotel has closed three days each week of October to save money. And next year, for the first time, the hotel will open its season on Memorial Day instead of in early April.

At the National Hotel, a century-old wood frame structure on the waterfront's main road, Julie Fuller, the hotel's manager, said she would prefer the wind turbines not appear in the harbor view of her guests but added, "Our electricity bills in July were astronomical. At some point, where do you make a sacrifice?"

Fuller and other hotel managers said they were not too worried that the wind farm would deter the tourists they depend on for their livelihood; one thought the turbines might even attract visitors the way they have in Samso, an island in Denmark.

The Block Island Residents Association, which represents about 550 households of year-round and seasonal residents, has declared its support for the wind project.

Some residents, however, are reluctant to join the chorus until they see the details of the wind project, including the placement of the turbines and how visible they would be from land.

"I think the location will be critical," said Lawrence Cheng, an architect from Cambridge who spends summers in a house he designed in southern Block Island.

The wind farm plans are preliminary. No one knows where or when the first offshore turbines will spin near Rhode Island; state officials estimate it will be five to 10 years from now.

Last month, Governor Donald Carcieri revealed the state's selection of a developer, Deepwater Wind, and said the project would generate 15 percent of the state's electricity.

In August, the state coastal resources agency launched a two-year study of its ocean waters to pinpoint the best location. A cursory study completed for the governor's office last year deemed an area of coastal waters to the south and southwest of Block Island as among the best of 10 possible sites.

"Block Island had the best wind regime, which produces power at the lowest costs," said Andrew Dzykewicz, Rhode Island's energy commissioner.

Block Island waters have the benefit of being far off the mainland, where winds are strong, while making it possible to place the project in state waters, which extend 3 miles from shore.

Deepwater Wind's chief executive, Chris Brown, promised that regardless of the location, the company will pay for the installation of a cable from the wind farm to Block Island, making the island's electricity costs "competitive" with the mainland, where the price is now less than 15 cents per kilowatt-hour.

He said that the company wants the wind farm to be "virtually invisible from the coast of the mainland" but that it may be visible from Block Island.

Rhode Island could end up as the first state to build an offshore wind farm if it chooses a site in state waters, where the permitting process is expected to be quicker than in federal waters.

But for Block Island, there would be a tradeoff: closer turbines.

Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University professor and a leading authority on climate change, spends his summers in his house on the southwestern side of Block Island.

"If they put 200-foot towers within a mile of the beach, that's one thing," he said. "But I certainly don't rule out a wind installation that I could see from my house."

Bina Venkataraman can be reached at bvenkataraman@globe.com.