First US off-shore wind farm challenged by American Indians

Plans to build America's first off-shore wind farm in the sea off Cape Cod are being obstructed by local American Indian tribes which say it will disrupt their ancient sun-saluting rites.

By Tom Leonard in New York Published: 4:04PM GMT 05 Jan 2010
The proposed $1 billion (£620 million) wind farm off the Massachusetts coast would provide electricity to 400,000 homes and bolster President Barack Obama's strategy to expand the US renewable energy sector.
However, it has been opposed by two local tribes, descendants of the Wampanoags who greeted the Pilgrim Fathers, whose lawsuit on Monday won the backing of the National Park Service.

The Mashpee Wampanoag of Cape Cod and Aquinnah Wampanoag of neighbouring Martha's Vineyard have said the proposed 130 turbine towers - each 440ft high and covering 24 square miles - would ruin their spiritual ritual of greeting the sunrise.
The ritual requires unobstructed views across Nantucket Sound, which contains the wind farm site and separates the cape from the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. The tribes also say the so-called Cape Wind project would disturb ancestral burial grounds, now underwater.
Environmental and political arguments over the project have dragged on for nine years. Although backed by the state's governor, the wind farm was opposed by the late Senator Ted Kennedy, whose family compound overlooks the sound.
On Monday, the project faced a new setback when the National Park Service said that Nantucket Sound was eligible to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places because of its significance to the tribes.
Signalling Washington's frustration with the delays, Ken Salazar, the US interior secretary, said he would summon key parties in the dispute to a meeting next week and set a deadline of March 1 for a compromise to be reached.
Environmental campaigners attributed the government's intervention to what one called a "renewed sense of urgency" to address climate change in the wake of the Copenhagen summit.