Vineyard Wind Hosts Abutters Meeting in Hyannis

HYANNIS – Vineyard Wind hosted a community abutters meeting in Hyannis yesterday, allowing area residents the opportunity to meet with project staff and hear more about the proposal.

The company hopes to construct an 800-megawatt offshore wind facility in federal waters approximately 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket and approximately 34 miles south of the mainland Cape.

Representatives with the company were at Barnstable High School to hear concerns, questions, and ideas from area residents regarding their proposal to construct the large, utility-scale wind energy project.

“I’m very concerned for those guys and gals and make their living on the water,” said Barnstable Town Councilor John Flores, “Whether it’s commercial fishermen, charter fishermen, pleasure boats, I want to be sure that there’s a coexistence that makes sense and doesn’t impact, if you will, that natural resource.”

Among the concerns presented was that nitrogen loading within Lewis Bay could be exacerbated by the undersea power lines from the turbines, which the company would need to bring ashore in either Yarmouth or Barnstable.

Eric Stevens, Chief Development Officer for Vineyard Wind says that the issue really is not connected with the proposed project.

“Because the problem is really wastewater our cable really doesn’t change that one way or the other,” he says, “It doesn’t make it better and it doesn’t make it worse.”

Officials say that the project will generate enough electricity to power over 400,000 homes and have already submitted the key federal and state permit applications.

If all goes according to plan, the project is on track to start in-state construction in 2019, which would make the project the first commercial large-scale offshore wind farm in the United States, and bring the commonwealth closer to its renewable energy goals.

By DAVID BEATTY, CapeCod.com NewsCenter

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