Westport moves to form wind group

Impartial advisory committee would advise town, residents on offshore projects

By Ted Hayes
Posted 8/13/24

They still have to do some clarifying of purpose, but members of the select board agreed Monday evening that Westport should form an advisory committee to keep the town up to date on the status of …

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Westport moves to form wind group

Impartial advisory committee would advise town, residents on offshore projects

Posted

They still have to do some clarifying of purpose, but members of the select board agreed Monday evening that Westport should form an advisory committee to keep the town up to date on the status of offshore wind projects that could impact Westport one day down the road.

“We know we need to do this,” board member Craig Dutra, who six years ago worked as a lobbyist for Bay State Wind, said. “We’ve heard enough concerns.”

The committee, which would be made up of as many as nine members who represent the public at large and various town boards, would be non-partisan and advisory in nature. Members agreed to the committee in concept Monday, saying they will come back in a few weeks with specifics of what they believe its exact charge should be.

“I know that there are some people who want Westport to say, ‘We do not want wind under any circumstance,’ and there’s some (who say) ‘Yes, we embrace wind in all its ways, shapes and forms,’” chairwoman Shana Teas said. “It’s my opinion that Westport doesn’t need to take a specific position, but that we should be monitoring all of these things and looking out for the interest of Westport.”

Over the coming several weeks, Teas and other officials will work to home in on the board’s exact charge, and could model it on the example set by Nantucket, which has an advisory offshore wind work group. Then it will likely go before the board for further public discussion and a vote.

The commission’s formation comes as Westport continues to eye a project that could bring transmission cables from a proposed offshore site up Route 88, from a possible landing at Horseneck Beach.

Along with New London, Ct., a Westport route is one of two potential landing sites included in a 2,600-megawatt Vineyard Wind proposal currently under review by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. If the Westport route comes to pass, the lines from the site south of Nantucket would come ashore at Horseneck Beach, and would be routed under a portion of the Westport River and up the Route 88 corridor to points north. Company officials have said that the Westport route is not its preferred path for the cables, but members of the public have raised concerns that not having a committee hampers the town as the public is not always privy to company and internal town communications on the matter.

“The whole point of, one of the major points of, this committee was to get discussions ... out from behind closed doors and into the public, where everyone that is interested in the subject, yay or nay, has a chance to come to the meetings,” said Constance Gee, an opponent of local wind power projects.

“It’s not a committee about should there be (wind) or not,” she said. “It’s about how does this impact Westport and what do we need to know about ... what’s going on right off our coast.”

 

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