Starting tonight, public hearings will be held around the state on the Cape Wind / NSTAR long-term power purchase agreement. These hearings provide a key opportunity for people to attend and voice their support for this critically important and long-overdue clean energy project.

Note that these hearings are not an opportunity for resurrecting a tired old debate regarding whether or not Cape Wind should be built. State and federal authorities – as well as the strong majority of people of Massachusetts – have answered that question with a resounding YES after over a decade of review. The focus here is on the long-term Power Purchase Agreements signed between Cape Wind and NSTAR.

Hearings will be held at the following locations at the following times:

Natick, Massachusetts
Tuesday, May 22, 2012 at 7:00 p.m.
Natick Town Hall
13 East Central Street
Edward H. Dlott Meeting Room
Natick, Massachusetts 01760

Barnstable, Massachusetts
Wednesday, May 23, 2012 at 7:00 p.m.
Barnstable High School, Knight Auditorium
744 West Main Street
Hyannis, Massachusetts 02601

Boston, Massachusetts
Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 7:00 p.m.
Department of Public Utilities
One South Station, 5th Floor
Boston, Massachusetts 02110

Recent polls confirm that the people of New England overwhelmingly recognize the need to address the threat of climate change and are willing to pay more for clean energy. With Massachusetts electric bills at a six-year low, the NSTAR/Cape Wind contract would only cost a small premium – about a dollar a month for the average residential customer.  And whenever fossil fuel prices increase again, as they always do, that premium will shrink to an even smaller amount – all while Cape Wind reduces our dependence on polluting and uneconomic fossil fuels like coal. So please join CLF and others in attending these hearings and voicing your support!

Rotten eggs and black mayonnaise – sights and smells that, to the dread of many, are becoming increasingly common across Cape Cod. Over the 30 years, increased development and insufficient wastewater treatment systems have degraded the quality of Cape Cod’s waters. CLF, in association with Buzzards Bay Coalition, are working to clean up the Cape – work that was recently covered by David Abel in The Boston Globe.

The eggs and mayonnaise (a description David used to open his piece) are but two signs of a growing body of evidence, both visible and disturbing, of degraded water quality. While visitors and residents depend upon Cape Cod’s pristine waterways – suitable for swimming, conducive to ocean life – instead they find ponds and bays that, in warm months, can be covered in a film of algae, while the water itself turns an opaque copper color.

This degradation is the consequence of too much nitrogen, the result of improperly treated  wastewater, primarily from the Cape’s preponderance of septic tanks. In the Cape’s loose, sandy soils, wastewater moves quickly through the ground, and iscarried into the bays and estuaries before it can be adequately filtered. The region’s economy, ecology, recreation and beauty have all suffered as a consequence – and will suffer more if stakeholders continue to delay action on a clean up plan.

In September, our staff at CLF, together with Buzzards Bay Coalition, filed a federal lawsuit against the US Environmental Protection Agency. Our claim: that the EPA failed to fulfill its responsibilities to oversee a regional water quality plan as required by the Clean Water Act. This lawsuit was CLF’s second showing EPA’s failure to address the Cape’s nitrogen pollution problem. The first, concerning point sources, was filed in August, 2010, and can be found here.

Why is this so important? The regional plan under question has not been updated since 1978, despite predictions at the time about the environmental risks of unchecked nitrogen pollution. Today, the consequences of decades of inaction are clear: badly degraded waterways, with mounting costs for solutions and little time left to ponder them while the region’s ecology and economy hang in the balance..

The answer, CLF argues, is a legally enforceable, coordinated blueprint to clean up the Cape. “It’s our firm belief that a coordinated regional approach is necessary – not individual towns trying to solve the problems on their own,” says Christopher Kilian, a senior attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation as quoted in The Boston Globe article.

The approach EPA will ultimately take is the subject of ongoing negotiations between CLF and the Buzzards Bay Coalition, EPA and Barnstable County officials. A report to the Court is due December 6th. Stay tuned.

For more on CLF’s efforts on cleaning up the Cape, read our release on our recent lawsuit, filed with the Buzzards Bay Coalition.

You can also find out more at the website of the Buzzards Bay Coalition.