Capitol Hill's ill wind

FOR A textbook case of why the public holds Congress is such low esteem, look no further than the way an Alaska congressman is short-circuiting the legislative process to sabotage the Cape Wind project off the coast of Cape Cod. Representative Don Young is trying to tack an amendment banning the project onto a bill to authorize funding for the Coast Guard. The stealth amendment has not been debated by any committee of Congress.

The best hope for heading this off rests with Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, who is said to be working with other senators on the conference committee to respond to Young's attack. If Snowe and the others do not succeed in removing Young's language from the final bill, they will share blame for killing one of the country's most important renewable energy initiatives. Cape Wind would generate enough electricity to supply three-quarters of the power needs of Cape Cod and the islands without emitting any greenhouse gases.

The Young amendment would ban offshore wind turbines within 1.5 nautical miles of navigation channels or ferry routes. This would stop construction of Cape Wind's 130 turbines, some of which are as close as 1,500 feet to shipping lanes. Young's measure is opposed by the Coast Guard, which doesn't want to lose authority over approving turbine sites. Offshore oil rigs are permitted within 500 feet of shipping channels. In Copenhagen harbor, wind turbines are within a quarter mile of shipping lanes that get far more traffic than the Cape Wind site.

Young bases his no-turbine zone in part on a United Kingdom study of possible marine radar interference caused by the structures. But the exclusionary area called for by Young is four times as large as the one recommended in the UK report.

Congress would have had a chance to debate information like this if the Young amendment had been offered during consideration of the Coast Guard funding bill. Rather than subject it to such scrutiny, however, the Alaskan is trying to insert it into the authorization measure. Backers of Cape Wind suggest the reason that Young is drawing a bead on Cape Wind is that a longtime associate, Guy Martin, works for a Washington firm that has been hired by Cape Wind opponents to lobby against the project. Martin said Friday he has had nothing to do with Young's amendment.

If senators on the conference committee let Young's measure go through, either chamber could vote the entire bill down, but rejecting the funding for an agency as pivotal to national security as the Coast Guard would require inordinate political courage in an election year. Snowe, who has been an advocate of diversifying the nation's energy sources, should take the lead in protecting Cape Wind from a backroom assassination in the Capitol.