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These are the words of a veteran Nantucket Sound ferry boat captain and Clean Power Now board member to describe Congressman Don Young's proposed amendment on offshore wind farms, which Clean Power Now staunchly opposes.

"The recommendation to restrict offshore wind farms from within 1.5 nautical miles is excessive,” said CPN board member Richard Elrick, who has two decades of experience as a ferry boat captain on Nantucket Sound.

A letter sent by Young to his congressional colleagues states that ships routinely pass through the shoal where the Cape Wind project would be built, which is untrue, Elrick said.

“Deep draft vessels generally avoid Horshoe Shoals because it is very shallow," Elrick said. "The ferries and freighters use specified deep-water shipping channels to cross Nantucket Sound.”

"Even if a deep draft vessel finds itself amid the turbine array, the vessel is more likely to run aground than to collide with a turbine since the turbines take up only 200 square feet of surface area", Elrick said.

In all his years on Nantucket Sound, "not a single large draft freighter nor oil barge has ever run aground on the shallow area of Horseshoe Shoals," Elrick said.“The possibility of a vessel colliding with a turbine in Nantucket Sound is very unlikely. If a vessel cannot safely navigate the Shoal area, then they shouldn’t be there in the first place."The British government has also determined that wind farms can be sited within 500 meters of a shipping lane based on their extensive study of the potential effects of wind farms on radar. The Middlegrunden wind farm in Copenhagen harbor is within 500 meters of a major shipping channel and no turbine collisions have occurred there.

In addition, the US Air Force, which runs the PAVE PAWS radar station at the Massachusetts Military Reservation, has stated that the Cape Wind project would cause no problems for their radar.

"Placing unsubstantiated regulations on wind farms, in particular the Cape Wind Project, would be doing a disservice to our energy needs," said Matt Palmer, Clean Power Now's executive director. "Cape Wind will bring significant benefits to the local region by creating jobs, stimulating the local economy, and diversifying the region’s energy sources."

Cape Wind would provide nearly three-quarters of the electricity used on the Cape and islands, on average in any given year, while reducing our dependence on foreign oil and slowing global warming.

Public support for the project has grown steadily in the last two years, as seen in opinion polls and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick's overwhelming victory in the Democratic caucuses earlier this month. Patrick came out in favor of Cape Wind last October and is now considered the front-runner for the Democratic nomination against Attorney General Thomas Reilly, who opposes Cape Wind.

The Cape Wind project is in its fifth year of a rigorous environmental review, and no significant drawbacks have been found.