Another day, another lawsuit against wind turbines off Nantucket tossed overboard

One day after it dismissed a lawsuit by some Nantucket residents against wind turbines now being installed south of their island, a federal appeals court dismissed a similar lawsuit by the president of a solar-energy company who has a summer home there.

As it did on Wednesday, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said yesterday that Thomas Melone, who winters in Connecticut, was all wet with his claims that federal regulators were wrong to approve the Vineyard Wind project in a 260-square-mile area south of the island because they would harm or even kill endangered right whales. The ruling upholds a lower-court judge's decision to dismiss Melone's suit.

Unlike the resident group, which claimed the turbines and their permanent bases would harm the whales, Melone focused on the impact of the noise from construction of the turbines on the whales.

The court, however, said the basic issue was the same: Federal regulators adequately reviewed the impact and concluded the impact would be minor, "non-lethal harassment" of just a small number of the whales, especially since no pile driving would be allowed at all between November and May, when the whales migrate through the area, and so Melone has no case.