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Mass. Supreme Court Gives Cape Wind Major Legal Victory

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on Tuesday upheld the Energy Facilities Siting Board’s authority to overrule community opposition and allow permits for the controversial Cape Wind offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound. The case is being viewed as the last major legal hurdle facing the 130-turbine project.

As the Boston Globe noted on Tuesday, “If the court had sided with opponents of the project, it could have held up the project indefinitely or killed it outright because many permits have to come from communities or agencies that oppose the project.”

The first wind farm on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, Cape Wind has been thought capable of generating enough power to meet 75% of the electricity demand for Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket Island combined. The facility would occupy a 25-square-mile section of Nantucket Sound. Though it is rated at 468 MW, its average anticipated output is 182 MW. The project includes a 66.5-mile buried submarine transmission cable system, an electric service platform, and two 115-kV lines connecting to the mainland power grid.

Though the turbines would be built in federal waters, local groups had taken issue with the proposed transmission lines that would connect the wind farm with Cape Cod. The Cape Cod land planning agency in 2007 rejected Cape Wind’s application for a permit to build the link, saying it didn’t have enough information.

The state’s Energy Facilities Siting Board later approved a single permit to build the line, but local permitting agencies and groups challenged that decision. On Tuesday, however, Massachusetts’s high court in a 4–2 ruling upheld the ruling that the project could get a “composite” of permits from the state, allowing it to bypass local permitting processes.

In a dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Margaret Marshall said that the ruling could set a “dangerous and unwise precedent, which has far-reaching consequences.” She wrote: “A wind farm today may be a drilling rig or nuclear power plant tomorrow.”

The project received federal approval in April this year, almost a decade after it was first proposed. It still requires approval by the state’s Department of Public Utilities for Cape Wind’s power purchase agreement with National Grid.

“The SJC’s decision brings to a close ten years of state and local permitting for this landmark clean energy project,” said David Rosenzweig, Cape Wind’s attorney, in a statement on Tuesday. Mark Rodgers, Cape Wind communications director, added: “The court was right to say no to the delay tactics of the oil- and coal-funded opposition group which brought this lawsuit.”

Sources: POWERnews, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Boston Globe, Cape Wind

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