1,160 Mile Area South Of Martha’s Vineyard Now Available To Lease For Wind Farms

Boston.com – Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell say a large area off the coast is being opened for commercial wind energy leases.

The officials say the proposed area is more than 742,000 acres, or more than 1,160 square miles. That’s larger than the area of Rhode Island and will nearly double the federal offshore acreage available for commercial-scale wind energy projects.

The area is about 12 miles offshore, south of Martha’s Vineyard, and will be auctioned as four leases.

So far the government has awarded five commercial wind energy leases off the Atlantic Coast, including Cape Wind in Nantucket Sound off Massachusetts and an area off Delaware. Two competitive leases also have been awarded in the Massachusetts-Rhode Island area and Virginia.

I bet this won’t open a can of worms at all. I mean it’s only been 14 years of court battles for Cape Wind, this will probably be a cake walk. I can see the lawsuit now, Greenpeace will have a whale up on the stand talking about how “wind turbine syndrome” made him lose his appetite for plankton and now he’s anorexic.

On the bright side, maybe 1,160 square miles of turbines will slice the Piping Plovers up like Atlantic Ocean garnish and we can have our beaches back. All I know is that windmills have to be better than Pilgrim power plant melting our faces off.