How would Cape Wind impact shellfish and other organisms that live on and beneath the seabed?
The Army Corps of Engineers concluded that installing, operating, and decommissioning the wind turbine towers and cables would have temporary, localized impacts on ocean-bottom fauna and shellfish in the project area. The main impacts are expected to be temporary, short-term increases in sediment deposition and suspended sediment levels associated with installing and removing the towers and buried cables. To minimize these impacts, Cape Wind plans to use monopole foundations for the turbine towers and state-of-the-art jet plows to install underwater cables. There are no data indicating a significant lobster population on Horseshoe Shoal. Click here5 to read the Corps assessment (Section 5.3, pages 5-31 to 5-47).
