Huffington Magazine Issue 39 | Page 44

COURTESY OF CAPE WIND ASSOCIATES SINKING IN BUREAUCRACY Dam that tamed the mighty Colorado River was finished in 1936 after a mere five years. Yet 130 offshore wind turbines, a pioneering project of President Obama’s ‘new energy economy,’ may take three times as long to complete.” Three more years have slipped by since that editorial was written. To be sure, Cape Wind was challenged in part by its uniqueness. The U.S. had no history of permitting offshore wind farms — a task that fell initially to the Army Corps of Engineers, which took roughly three years from the time the proj- HUFFINGTON 03.10.13 ect was first proposed to prepare a lengthy Draft Environmental Impact Statement, as required by the decades-old National Environmental Policy Act. Some 5,000 public comments were submitted on that draft, but it would be quickly rendered moot by passage of the Energy Policy Act in 2005, which shifted jurisdiction for offshore wind permitting from the Army Corps to the Department of the Interior. To the dismay of Gordon and his partners, Interior decided to pursue its own environmental review, which would not be published in draft form until three years later, in early 2008. A final environmental impact statement An artist’s rendering of the Cape Wind E