Koch Brother Wages 12-Year Fight Over Wind Farm

[n2doc]

OSTERVILLE, Mass. — If the vast wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound is ever built, William I. Koch will have a spectacular view of it.

Of course, that is the last thing he wants. Mr. Koch, a billionaire industrialist who made his fortune in fossil fuels and whose better-known brothers underwrite conservative political causes, has been fighting the wind farm, called Cape Wind, for more than a decade, donating about $5 million and leading an adversarial group against it. He believes that Cape Wind’s 130 industrial turbines would not only create what he calls “visual pollution” but also increase the cost of electricity for everyone.

Now, as if placing a bet on the outcome of the battle, Mr. Koch, 73, who has owned an exclusive summer compound here for years, has acquired an even grander one — Rachel Mellon’s 26-acre waterfront estate in the gated community of Oyster Harbors, for $19.5 million. He has also bought the nearby 12-plus-acre Dupont estate. All of this adds up to a prime perch over Nantucket Sound.

“I love the area,” Mr. Koch said in an e-mail. “The ability to acquire a special property where I can create a family compound for my children and extended family was and is very meaningful to me.” (His current home, in the same gated community, is on the market for $15 million.)

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http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/10/23/us/koch-brother-wages-12-year-fight-over-wind-farm.html

[Flying Squirrel]

1. They should paint the windmills in rainbow colors

Instead of boring gray or white. Problem solved!

[stuntcat]

2. "donating about $5 million" against it

Well then, let whoever's richest make the decision! That's how everything will go from now on anyway.

No matter how bad it gets for everyone else in the world, people like him will definitely need their "family compounds" in the next few decades

[OnlinePoker]

3. Is that the same wind farm Ted Kennedy was fighting before he passed?

It doesn't matter which side of the political spectrum you're on, if you've got money, you've got influence, and will use it for your own self-interest rather than the good of the people in general.

[pscot]

4. True dat

[Nihil]

5. Does it matter? Being rich doesn't make you right in either case.

I've never understood the cult of Kennedy-worship when the same actions by
a different person would be (rightly) excoriated.




(Mind you, having seen the numbers on DU who have defended Obama for doing
the same thing as his predecessors, maybe I shouldn't be that surprised.)