Documents Link Wind Farm Foes to International Energy Conglomerate
May 16th, 2008Imagine my shock.
Via: Boston Globe:
A new lobbying firm for the group opposing a wind farm off Cape Cod filed a federal document last month reporting that its work for the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound is partially funded and shaped by an international energy conglomerate.
The disclosure represents the first documented financial connection between the group opposing the wind farm and Oxbow Corp., which mines and markets energy and commodities, including coal, natural gas, and petroleum.
The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound immediately decried the filing as a mistake, and the lobbying firm later amended it in the US Senate Office of Public Records to eliminate the reference to Oxbow.
Oxbow’s founder, Osterville yachtsman William I. Koch, has been a cochairman of the alliance since 2005, a year that saw a flurry of congressional attempts to kill the wind farm. While Oxbow maintains that its lobbyists monitor Cape Wind because of the corporation’s interest in energy and shipping, Cape Wind proponents assert that Oxbow’s lobbyists have been doing far more to fight the wind farm.
“Bill Koch is using his company to significantly augment the already substantial amount of lobbying that the opposition group is doing by using his fossil fuel company to fight this wind farm,” said Cape Wind communications director Mark Rodgers.
After seven years of review by various governmental agencies, Cape Wind recently received a federal draft environmental review that did not identify any major environmental impediments to building the wind farm in Nantucket Sound.
