Tag Archives: Nantucket Massachusetts

Common Sense Arrives

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On Friday, The New York Post posted an article about the federal funding for offshore wind projects.

The article reports:

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Friday that $679 million in federal funding has been withdrawn for 12 “doomed” offshore wind projects – including three in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

The scrapped funding includes $10.5 million for Connecticut’s Bridgeport Port Authority Operations and Maintenance Wind Port project, $20.5 million for New Jersey’s Wind Port at Paulsboro and $48 million for Staten Island’s Arthur Kill Terminal. 

The Trump administration plans to spend the withdrawn funds on “real infrastructure” and “restoring American maritime dominance.” 

“Wasteful, wind projects are using resources that could otherwise go towards revitalizing America’s maritime industry,” Duffy said in a statement.

“Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg bent over backwards to use transportation dollars for their Green New Scam agenda while ignoring the dire needs of our shipbuilding industry,” Duffy said. “Thanks to President Trump, we are prioritizing real infrastructure improvements over fantasy wind projects.”

At a White House Cabinet meeting earlier this week, President Trump fumed that wind projects were “ruining our country.”

“We’re not allowing any windmills to go up,” the president said. “They’re ruining our country. They’re ugly, they don’t work, they kill your birds. They’re bad for the environment.”

In July 2024, I posted an article about an environmental disaster caused by the failure of a windmill blade off Nantucket in Massachusetts (article here). The failure not only caused the island to have to close beaches because of contamination caused by the disintegration of the blade, but oysters and mussels in the area were contaminated by hazardous fiberglass particles that can cause harm to humans.

In 2020, I posted an article about two Massachusetts town that put up wind turbines in 2016 and voted to remove them in 2020 after approximately 360 complaints from residents in the area. Complaints include shadow flicker, nausea, vertigo, sleep disturbance, headaches, anxiety and sound disturbances. The towns were Bourne and Plymouth. The windmills were situated on Route 25.

We don’t fully understand the impact of low-frequency vibrations on people. Until we do, it might be a good idea to keep windmills away from populated areas.

There may come a day when we find a practical, economical and safe way to harness wind energy, but we are not there yet.

Nantucket’s Interesting Discovery

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On Friday, Fox News reported the following:

The sewage in New England’s exclusive Nantucket retreat is full of cocaine, according to local authorities, who this summer began testing it to monitor potential drug use in a popular summer getaway for the rich and powerful.

“During COVID, a lot of these communities, and most communities, decided that it was important for them to start testing the water to see if there were any spikes in COVID in the region.” said Randolph Rice, a Maryland attorney and legal analyst. “But what Nantucket has now decided to do as of the beginning of the summer is to actually start testing for other types of substances, particularly drugs, nicotine and other items…within the system there. And what they’re finding is that there is a high level of cocaine.”

The testing, conducted at the Surfside Wastewater Treatment Facility on Nantucket, found cocaine levels about 50% higher than the national average, according to publicly posted data from local authorities. The same tests found below-average levels of fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid blamed for overdoses around the country.

The article includes the following charts:

To be honest, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I also wonder how many politicians are currently vacationing on Nantucket.

The article notes:

“What’s shocking is that there is a low level of trace items,” Rice told Fox News Digital. “For example, there is very little fentanyl or xylazine, which is also referred to as ‘tranq.’ Oftentimes, these substances are added to [drugs] to make them more potent, but they also make them deadly. So what it’s telling us in Nantucket, is they’re getting the pure stuff.”

Wow.

Buyers’ Remorse

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On Friday, Hot Air posted an article about the city fathers of Nantucket’s regret at allowing the developers of the Vineyard Wind project to construct a large-scale offshore wind farm 15 miles from the island town.

The article reports:

The Nantucket City Council and Nantucket residents are suffering from buyer’s remorse, like everybody who decided to buy a Yugo based on the marketing that it was a great car at an amazing price. 

We told you so. It’s as if liberals see common sense and choose to do the opposite of what it tells them. No amount of sage advice will dissuade them because some “expert” with dollar signs in their eyes can talk them into anything as long as they whisper magic words like “renewable energy.”

The article includes a quote from The Washington Free Beacon:

If they could go back in time, officials in Nantucket, Massachusetts, wouldn’t sign the legal agreement that helped bring the nation’s first large-scale offshore wind farm 15 miles from the island town’s picturesque shoreline.

That was the common sentiment expressed during a Nantucket select board meeting this week about the August 2020 community benefit agreement the town entered into with developers of the Vineyard Wind project, which is currently under construction. “These wind turbines are bigger, brighter, and much more impactful than we ever thought—and not to mention the environmental hazards from failures,” said Dawn Hill, the chairwoman of the select board, which serves as the town’s executive body.

The agreement represented Nantucket’s formal endorsement of the project and satisfied Vineyard Wind’s legal responsibility to consult with the town. Because Nantucket is a federally designated national historic district, regulators and developers must consult with the town on new projects that may threaten its protected status.

“Hindsight is 20/20,” added Greg Werkheiser, an attorney who represents Nantucket. “Every lawyer in the world wishes 5 or 10 years into a negotiated contract that they could take the knowledge they have, fly back in time, and renegotiate—but communities make the choices they have with the information they have at the time.”

North Carolina take note! There is a group pushing for wind farms off the North Carolina coast.

Remember this event:

Tensions between Nantucket and Vineyard Wind reached a boiling point in July 2024 after a football field-sized blade on one of its wind towers fell apart during construction, sending 50 tons of fiberglass and industrial-grade foam into the ocean, forcing the island’s beaches to close. Project developers waited until debris washed ashore three days following the failure before they informed Nantucket about the incident, sparking fury from officials, businesses, and residents.

In the 12 months since the blade failure, the developers haven’t provided the town with information about changes to the construction timeline or the progress of environmental reviews related to the blade failure. As of this week, Vineyard Wind’s leadership remains in “hiding,” according to Mohr. Alas, Vineyard Wind issued its most recent press release in October, and its only public update this year appears to have come during an earnings call held last week by one of its developers, the Spain-based energy firm Iberdrola.

“They were not uninformed. Local groups were informing them five years ago that they should not do this deal and gave them all the reasons why they now regret it,” said Dave Stevenson, the director of the Center for Energy Competitiveness at the right-leaning Caesar Rodney Institute. “The folks in the town didn’t fight, they didn’t look at all the negatives, they just didn’t listen.”

Don’t let that happen here!