Oil and Water

The other day I attended a breakfast seminar and had the pleasure to listen to Jim Gordon, the CEO of Cape Wind, speak about his recently approved project which involves constructing 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound.

Not surprisingly, his proposed wind farm was strongly opposed by special interest groups who maintained that it would damage the fragile ocean environment, among other things. The regulatory review process took nine years to complete and cost Cape Wind millions of dollars. The Environmental Impact Report alone was 60,000 pages long!

Contrast that odyssey with the Interior Department Mineral Management Service’s review of British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig which exploded and sank 40 miles off the Louisiana coast on April 20 and is currently spewing thousands of barrels of oil each day into the Gulf of Mexico. BP was granted a “categorical exclusion” from the National Environmental Policy Act and was required to file an Environmental Impact Assessment that was only 17 pages long. Approval was granted in a matter of months, not years.

It should be evident to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that oil and water don’t mix. However, wind and water do.