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Wind farm proposed for Cape military reservation

E-mail|Link|Comments () June 11, 2009 05:32 PM

By Vivian Nereim, Globe Correspondent

The Massachusetts National Guard today announced a proposal to build a wind farm on the Massachusetts Military Reservation that would include up to 17 turbines and vastly increase the amount of electricity generated by wind power in the state.

As the first of many steps toward building the project at the 22,000-acre facility on Cape Cod, the National Guard has filed a site plan for review with the Federal Aviation Administration and the Air Force Space Command.

Depending on the size, number, and capacity of the turbines, the project could produce up to 34 megawatts of power, boosting Governor Deval Patrick's goal to develop 2,000 megawatts of wind power in Massachusetts by 2020. Currently, 11 wind turbines across the state have a total capacity of 6.8 megawatts, according to Robert Keough, spokesman for the state's Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.

The plan has won the support of numerous elected officials, including Patrick, Senate President Therese Murray, and US Representative William Delahunt.
"Putting wind turbines at MMR makes sense both economically and environmentally," said Murray.

The plan has also received the support of community activists who have vehemently protested the Cape Wind project, a controversial proposal to build 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound. "It's something we've been saying all along, that you can say yes to wind, but no to Cape Wind," said Audra Parker, executive director of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.

Mark Rodgers, a Cape Wind spokesman, said the project had considered the reservation as a potential site but eventually rejected it. "We determined placing the same kind of wind farm there as we're looking to do offshore could probably produce half as much energy," he said. "That said, there certainly is good potential to do wind development at that site."

Before projects go forward, the FAA reviews them to determine if they pose a hazard to aviation, said Jim Peters, New England spokesman for the FAA. Wind turbines, for example, can interfere with air traffic radar signals (a problem that has been raised with the Cape Wind project). If it is determined that the project is a hazard, the FAA will provide a list of ways to mitigate the hazard in order to move forward, Peters said.