By American Wind Energy Association
A provision written specifically to stop the proposed Cape Wind project slated for offshore Nantucket Sound in Massachusetts was tucked into a bill that was voted out of committee on Thursday, April 6. No hearings had been held on the provision. The bill containing the provision still must be approved by the full House and Senate, which will be on spring recess over the next two weeks.
The action came when members of a House-Senate conference committee approved a final compromise version of an $8.7 billion Coast Guard authorization bill containing language allowing the Governor of Massachusetts the unrestricted power to veto the project. Current Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R) is on the record opposing the Cape Wind project.
Leading the effort to stop the Cape Wind project by adding the veto provision to the bill were Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens (R) and Alaska Rep. Don Young (R), senior Congressional negotiators on the bill. In addition, “Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) spoke to Sen. Stevens in support of this provision,” said Kennedy spokesperson Melissa Wagoner, who was quoted in an April 7 story by the Associated Press.
Cape Wind Associates President Jim Gordon said, “This 11 th-hour move to change the rules for a renewable energy project that has already received its Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board approval and is moving favorably through an over-five-year environmental review involving seventeen Federal and State agencies is unjust and contravenes our regional and national energy policy.”
“Americans demanding clean energy and good government will be outraged when they learn how this deal was cut,” said AWEA Legislative Director Jaime Steve.
“Ted Stevens and Don Young are again overreaching behind closed doors to slip a controversial attack on the environment that they know couldn’t get through the normal legislative process into important national security legislation.,” said Karen Wayland, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s legislative director. “This isn’t over yet. We’ll keep fighting to make sure that this sneaky strategy is stopped in its tracks.”
In an April 5 statement on the provision, Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) said, “In particular, I think it is a very bad idea to give states veto authority over the siting of renewable energy projects on federal land in a bid to stop a particular project. In the [recently passed] energy bill, we gave states a strong voice and a key role in siting renewable projects on the Outer Continental Shelf. That is sufficient. It would be folly for us in Congress to talk about breaking our addiction to foreign oil and, at the same time, pass laws that stymie our own production of clean and renewable energies here at home. We can’t have it both ways.”
The same day, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) – the senior Democrat on the Energy Committee – issued a similar statement that said, “I oppose attempts to include anti-renewable energy provisions in the Coast Guard conference report.” Bingaman also said, “. . . [I]f a special-interest provision to veto a single project by earmark in a conference report succeeded, it would make a mockery not only of all the statements in Congress about the need to strengthen America’s domestic energy security, but also our statements advocating lobby reform in Washington.”
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