In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Judicial Court today rejected a challenge by the “Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound” to the state Energy Facilities Siting Board’s decision to conditionally approve the construction of new electricity transmission lines, pending Cape Wind’s acquisition of all other necessary federal, state, and local permits needed to build the wind farm. The lines would be needed to connect the wind farm to the power grid. The first paragraph of the opinion (in prose that only a lawyer could love) pretty much sets forth the bottom line:
The Energy Facilities Siting Board (board) conditionally approved a petition filed jointly by Cape Wind Associates, LLC (Cape Wind), and Commonwealth Electric Company, doing business as NSTAR Electric (NSTAR) (together, applicants), to build and operate two 115 kilovolt underground and undersea electric transmission lines approximately eighteen miles in length. The transmission lines would connect an offshore wind- powered energy generating facility (wind farm) proposed for construction by Cape Wind in Federal waters off Nantucket Sound with the existing New England regional electric power grid. The board conditioned its approval on the submission by Cape Wind of copies of all Federal, State, and local permits necessary to begin building the wind farm. The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, Inc. (Alliance), intervener in the administrative proceedings below, appealed from the board’s decision to a single justice of this court, pursuant to G. L. c. 25, § 5, and G. L. c. 164, § 69P. The single justice reserved and reported the case without decision to the full court.(2) We affirm the decision of the board.
And, in a more interesting conclusion, the Court wrote:
The board’s decision, in our view, is an eminently reasonable and practical approach to the uncommon jurisdictional issues presented by the petition.
Here is the Alliance’s statement at the time the appeal to the SJC was filed, and a summary of the arguments it raised. The SJC rejected them all.
Now, about that voting thingy…
and you can watch it live here.
…in the repudiation of Margo Fenn, Christy Mihos, Rob O’Leary, Bill Delahunt, Ted Kennedy, and all the other NIMBY’s who were trying to use the courts to deep-six the wind farm….
Mitt Romney
I’m not one who’d ever let Teddy off the hook for that either, even though I’m a big fan most of the time (I wrote in Cape Wind in the primary and Sonia Chang-Diaz in the general…) just a reminder that this obstruction has been bipartisan 🙂
on the london array: from the guardian