EDITORIAL: Hydropower could be a more realistic answer for LI

Next month marks the second anniversary of the Long Island Power Authority's first announcement that it wants to build a large wind farm off the Rockaways. By the third anniversary, this project is likely to be twisting in the wind.

The siren lure of wind power is irresistible but dangerous. We continually succumb to the concept, yet it diverts our attention from more effective plans to develop renewable energy sources and cleaner generating plants. In 2007, LIPA chief Kevin Law rightly scuttled as too costly his predecessor's wind project, estimated at $811 million, a few miles off Jones Beach. Now, as Law leaves LIPA, he's pushing a more ambitious project deeper in the Atlantic.

Law enlisted Con Edison to share the nearly $4-billion cost, and that political reality dictates that the onshore connection be closer to Queens. A land facility and the connection cable could cost $1 billion alone. And the sky will be the limit on the price of up to 234 turbines 13 to 17 miles out, even if a feasibility study determines such technology is reliable. The environmental and economic issues involving the fishing and shipping lanes could take years to sort out. The proposed Cape Wind project off Nantucket, Mass., is now in its ninth year of review without a pole in the water.

A transmission line to bring untapped hydropower from Canada and wind from idle upstate turbines is a more desirable object for LIPA's attention. Soon there will be a new governor to choose a new head of LIPA, who will then decide what to do about all this hot air. hN