Since 2000, the U.S. Green Building Council has been transforming the built environment through the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program. If you’re at all paying attention to green buildings, you are well aware of LEED. There are now over 10,000 projects, representing over 3.5 billion square feet of buildings, that have been registered with LEED. And today, a new draft version of LEED becomes available for public comment. [Ed note: The draft is now available; see link below.]
Agency permanently extends comment period for alt. energy leases
In the fall of 2001, Jim Gordon of Energy Management Inc. (EMI) announced his intentions to build a 420 megawatt wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts - the nation’s first. Now, the long permitting process that was made even longer by powerful opposition groups, is nearing resolution…finally.
More than 40,000 individuals and organizations have submitted comments on an environmental review of the wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound, according to an article in the Cape Cod Times.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Rodney Cluck, Cape Wind project manager for the U.S. Minerals Management Service, the lead federal agency to review Cape Wind Associates’ plan to build 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound, off the coast of Massachusetts. Originally, the comments were set to be released last Friday, but officials at the Minerals Management Service postponed the release to give agency staffers more time to organize the overwhelming public response to the proposed wind farm.
As a result of the scoping process’ popularity, the MMS announced that they would be preemptively extending the comment period for all of the remaining “Alternative Energy Leases” from 30 to 60 days.
A recent survey (pdf) found that 87 percent of Massachusetts residents say they are now “more likely to support Cape Wind” in the wake of the recently issued draft environmental impact statement (EIS) that found no major environmental harms resulting from the project. It seems that the growing public consciousness of climate change is actually producing measurable shifts in the public mood. Time is clearly running out for Cape Wind opponents. And despite the recent 30-day extension of the public comment period granted by the U.S. Minerals Management Service (at the behest of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound), it is my firm belief that this project will soon get the federal stamp of approval it has been seeking (to go along with the federal approval it already got back in 2004). In what should make for a pretty entertaining roadshow, the MMS is beginning a four-night run of public hearings starting on Monday March 10th in West Yarmouth, MA. The hearings will then rumble through Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard before concluding in Boston on March 13. If you are not lucky enough to attend, what will certainly be “spirited” events, you may submit an e-comment no later than April 21.
