Appears that the feds figured out the good doctor Dagher just isn't ready for prime time.
Maine didn't get the $46 million dollar grant to build two fullsize floating windturbines off Monhegan.
The UMaine-led floating ocean winturbines project has suffered terribly from the near paranoid insularity of the project under Principle Investigator Dagher, who spurned suggestions from anyone outside his charmed circle. (Charmed by the allure of all those tens of millions and what a grand time they would've had expending it
DeepCwind is getting three million federal bucks in the nationwide competitino. but according to a University source this 3 million isn't even enough to make a single full size prototype. One that can actually be tested, unlike the ridiculous toy windmill that the Maine the windies rushed out and wouldn't take out to the test area - They knew it would sink!
So the feds took a look at this furtive public-be-damned-operation that UMaine engineering professor Habib Dagher, Principal Investigator for the DeepCwind Consortium and its spin off progeny has been running.
They gazed upon the tiny toy windturbine bobbing off Castine. Too shabbily built to be safely tested at the test site off Monhegan, the design inspired no confidence among the grantors. Where did the money given DeepCwind to buld a fullscale prototype go? they must have wondered!
This is an important stay. The University and its hangers-on in the DeepCwind Consortium presumably figured that if they could get away with soiling Monhegan's viewshed with its heavy public use and high scenic values, then all marine viewsheds of the Maine coast are vulnerable. Maine has spent too many years stewarding
Floating off shore windpower extraction is worth trying out, but not when it is needlessly view-polluting; or within the Gulf's ecologically (hence economically) vital coastal currents. Nor are great sweeping blades the only way to extract energy from the seawind. Dr. Dagher should follow his own advice and commit to siting his floaters beyond the curvature of the earth from any inhabited part of Maine.
The scent of imminent Big Money may have pushed that civic responsibility from his mind. Now that DeepCwind Consortium and its spinoff children are no longer suffering that temptation, perhaps they will step outside of their echo chamber and listen - really LISTEN -to the existing Gulf of Maine communities of interest about how to avoid wrecking or damaging their existing economic and cultural sectors and the manylayered heavily webbed ecosystem that fills these waters.
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