U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has approved the nation’s first offshore wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, a $1 billion project that has survived nine years of regulatory review and a well-financed campaign to kill the plan.

The Cape Wind project will include construction of 130 wind turbines over a 24-square-mile area in the shallow waters of Nantucket Sound, an area within view of the tourist regions of Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard.

Salazar called the project a first step in the nation’s “clean energy revolution,” and vowed, “This will be the first of many projects up and down the Atlantic coast.” (more…)

Nine years into a regulatory battle that has been fought in virtually every legal , political and bureaucratic venue imaginable, Secretary of State Ken Salazar said today that the stakeholders must come to a compromise by March 1 or he would intervene and make the final decision on the proposed offshore wind farm in the waters of Nantucket Sound near Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Salazar reiterated that if the timeline he laid down last week wasn’t met, he would consult with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, an independent party, to make a final decision.

In a series of meetings with about three dozen representatives of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, Native American groups, Cape Wind and the primary opposition group, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, Secretary Salazar said “the public, the applicants and all the stakeholders deserve resolution,” calling the nine-year process an example of government failure. (more…)