Huffington Magazine Issue 39 | Page 37

PREVIOUS PAGE: COURTESY OF CAPE WIND ASSOCIATES SINKING IN BUREAUCRACY The advantages of the site seemed plain: Relentless, harddriving winds, shallow shoals several miles offshore on which to anchor large turbines, and, perhaps most importantly, a left-leaning population inclined to support what was already viewed at the time as an overdue migration away from dirtier sources of electricity. “We have real and looming environmental problems on the horizon,” Gordon told reporters that summer, as he prepared to apply for the necessary federal and state permits. “Is this going to solve these problems? No. But it is going to help.” Almost 12 years later, the now 59-year-old Gordon, who graduated from Boston University during the 1970s oil crises with a degree in communications and, he says, vague designs on film school before he set his sights on the energy business, is still pressing his case. Not a single turbine is in the water. Acquiring the full array of government permits and sign-offs — a byzantine process involving dozens of sometimes overlapping, often contradictory agencies, hundreds of officials and thousands of pages of impact statements — took over a decade. And more than a HUFFINGTON 03.10.13 “I CAN’T THINK OF ANYTHING MORE BENIGN IN TERMS OF IMPACT THAN AN OFFSHORE WIND FARM.” dozen lawsuits, citing everything from potential disruption of whale and bird migrations to interference with airplane and shipping traffic, the wrecking of commercial fishing grounds and the desecration of sacred Native American sites, have thrown sand in the project’s gears at every turn. Virtually all of the opposition suits over the years have been rejected ultimately by the courts, but at least four more are still pending, and opponents promise to keep fighting. To be sure, as the first proposed offshore wind project in the United States, Cape Wind, as it is called, was bound to encounter unique scrutiny, and like any undertaking of its size, it is not without environmental impacts. But the long-thwarted wind farm also highlights what some critics say has become a bloated and overly complicated regulatory maze through which fewer and fewer project developers of any kind have the wherewithal to navigate. Indeed, while it has earned the