Cape Wind Lease Officially Comes to a Close

Cape Wind Lease Officially Comes to a Close

HYANNIS — The federal lease in Nantucket Sound for Cape Wind ended quietly last month, formally drawing to a close years of rancorous debate over the controversial project.

“We are thrilled that Cape Wind’s lease surrender is official,” Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound Chief Executive Officer Audra Parker said.

The 33-year federal lease was issued Oct. 6, 2010 to Cape Wind Associates, which intended to place 130 wind turbines on 25 square miles on Horseshoe Shoal between Cape Cod and the Islands, about six miles southeast of Cotuit. The offshore wind farm was long expected to be the first large-scale commercial installation in the country.

Cape Wind has applied to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to remove its 197-foot meteorological tower from the lease area, and the federal agency is reviewing the permit application, said Army Corps spokeswoman Christine Jacek. The agency expects to make a permit decision by the end of June, and then Cape Wind would be responsible for the removal, Jacek said.

The company’s proposal is to fully remove the tower and cut the three supporting piles to six feet below the ocean floor, and to restore the entire area to conditions prior to the project, Jacek said. As proposed, the removal would take 22 days and occur in July, she said.

Installed in the sound in 2003, the pale-gray steel tube is about five feet in diameter at the base, narrowing to about 18 inches at the top. It is 6½ miles off Hyannis, 13 miles from Nantucket and nine miles from Martha’s Vineyard.

Data from the tower has been delivered to some universities to provide more knowledge about the atmospheric and oceanic conditions on Nantucket Sound.
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Bummer about the tower but it has been off-line for a while now.