A Push for Sanctuary Status at the Capewind Site

Another update on the Cape Wind saga, this time from a
piece by James Kinsella in The Inquirer and Mirror, (2/21/03), reporting on Congressman William Delahunt's (D-Mass) continued efforts to declare the site for the Cape Wind Project a national sanctuary. According to the article:

Delahunt, D-Mass., is using a report released last week by the Center for Coastal Studies to bolster his quest to make Nantucket Sound a marine sanctuary, a designation that could bar a proposed wind farm from being constructed there.

Last Monday, Delahunt and Peter Borelli, director of the Provincetown-based Center for Coastal Studies, met the press in Hyannis to discuss the report and its ramifications.

The report doesn’t include new scientific investigation of the sound, but summarizes previous research. It also includes a copy of a 1980 state nomination of the federal waters in the sound as a national marine sanctuary. In 1983, the entire sound and nearby areas were nominated as a sanctuary.

The federal government didn’t designate the sound as a sanctuary, at the time although it subsequently did designate Stellwagen Bank north of Cape Cod Bay as one of 14 national marine sanctuaries. In doing so, fishing stocks in the area are protected.

“Nantucket Sound contains significant ecological, commercial and recreational resources that have been at the heart of several past nominations for enhanced environmental protection and conservation policies in the region,” the report states.

The upshot of the report, at least to Delahunt is to demonstrate that the perception of Nantucket Sound as a special place “is not a matter of recent invention. Over the past 25 years, Massachusetts has been trying to make the sound a sanctuary.” So then, is it just a coincidence that efforts to revive a movement for classifying the Nantucket sound as a sanctuary just happen to coincide with the proposal of the Cape Wind project?