Cape Wind project review to be revised 

The court ruling did not require the project to halt or redo the regulatory approval process.

Parker called the order “inappropriately narrow in scope” and one the Alliance would challenge. Likewise, another plaintiff in the case, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, worries too that the draft supplement will not address that group’s concerns about the dangers wind turbines pose to birds, especially rare species like piping plovers and roseate terns.

“We wanted them to do some mitigation measures,” said Kyla Bennett of the group’s New England office.

The Cape Wind turbines are “right in the Atlantic flyway where millions of birds migrate,” she said.

The group still needs to fully read and assess the draft supplement before commenting further, Bennett said.

McLaughlin, too, said the town of Barnstable needed time to assess the draft.

Cape Wind president James Gordon and vice president of regulatory affairs Dennis Duffy didn’t return requests for comment.

Despite the renewed effort to fix the environmental impact statement, the 16-year-old project’s fate remains in question if not outright decided, even among those who previously supported it.

“It is not on our radar,” said Massachusetts Clean Energy Center Offshore Wind Director William White. “We do not believe that Cape Wind is a project that is moving forward.”

Based on stipulations about leasing and distance from the shoreline in recent legislation, the state is focusing on waters south of Martha’s Vineyard for wind energy, White said. On June 30, the state’s three electric distribution companies – Eversource, National Grid and Unitil – are expected to release a request for proposals, soliciting bids from wind power companies that want to sell their energy under the state’s guidelines. The companies expected to compete are those with federally-issued commercial wind leases south of Martha’s Vineyard: DONG Energy, which is also known as Bay State Wind in its alliance with Eversource; a collaboration of Vineyard Power and OffshoreMW; and Deepwater Wind.

None of the three companies have begun construction, though. Deepwater Wind has submitted a site assessment plan, which the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is reviewing for completeness. Vineyard Power/OffshoreMW and Bay State Wind are expected to submit their site assessment plans by Saturday.

Two other companies will compete for leases in two areas south of Martha’s Vineyard that have not been spoken for yet.

Signs of life remain in the 30-acre Cape Wind project, though, despite the loss in 2015 of Eversource and National Grid as customers and the denial about a year ago by the state’s Energy Facilities Siting Board of Cape Wind’s request to extend its bundle of state and local permits that were granted in 2009.

Cape Wind is currently in good standing and made its annual rent payment of $88,278, a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management spokesman said.

“As long as Cape Wind holds a lease, we consider Nantucket Sound vulnerable to development,” Parker said.