NEW BEDFORD — Today, it is a 28-acre field with a dramatic waterfront view of New Bedford Harbor and its picture-postcard lighthouse. But within a few years, and with $35 million in public funds, city officials plan to convert the site into a bustling hub with hundreds of workers assembling giant wind turbines and loading them on ships bound for Cape Wind, the Nantucket Sound wind farm, and eventually for even larger offshore wind energy developments.
As proposals for wind farms off the coast of New England proliferate, New Bedford is hoping to capitalize on one very specific part of this alternative energy puzzle: the need for a waterfront facility where giant turbine components can be organized, assembled, and delivered to sites miles from land. The idea is to create hundreds, and potentially thousands, of high-paying jobs.
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Another Deeval-linked expense account for a natural energy project. Oh goodie.... let's give New Bedford $35 million or so to develop an ocean freight terminal,a function the port hasn't needed in 50 years or more. And all the executive wannabes that think windmills at sea is just the greatest ever say their ports will all work - there are going to be so many windmill projects offshore that ports in New Jersey and Delaware will have just as much business as will New Bedford, and maybe even Quonset Point, RI. If someone reads sarcasm into these remarks, he/she is quite right. This seems to be the start of yet another politically correct scheme to get the state of Massachusetts to finance yet another down-at-the-heels local community's pipedream of developmental riches. And please not, that Cape Wind bunch are saying they could become the New Bedford port's first customer... IF the windmill parts shipping facility is available around the time Cape Wind wants to start its project. If it's not ready? Maybe just another Deeval pipedream down the tubes like that solar panel shop at Devens.