From Cape Wind

Few Americans will ever literally see Nantucket Sound. Most of its beaches are intentionally closed to the public, who are instead directed further toward Cape Cod’s eastern end, to the national seashore which overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. Still, many Americans have "seen" Nantucket Sound on television. These are the waters enjoyed by Jack and Jackie Kennedy, who sailed out from the summer capital of their brief Camelot — Hyannisport. The carefully orchestrated, nationally broadcast images showing the romantic young couple, destined for such pathos, sailing their elegant little boat across the glittering waves brought about the end of “quaint” Cape Cod. Already drowning in money, the southern shoreline, now made famous by the Kennedy family, was swamped by a storm-surge of development. Today, much of Cape Cod is a highly commercial, Disneyesque version of what was once a very lovely seaside area. Along the south shore and on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, colonies of the rich and the hyper-rich flourish as never before — not just multimillion-dollar folk, but really rich people – such as Jack Welch, once leader of General Electric, Paul Fireman of Reebok, Douglas Yearley, long-time chairman of Phelps Dodge mining and board member of Marathon Oil Corporation, and William Koch, inheritor of money from Koch Industries, a massive privately held energy company heavy into fossil fuel. Like Fidelity’s Abigail Johnson, ranked America’s 12th richest person in 2005 by Forbes magazine, some represent financial money. Some, like Koch, come from purely industrial wealth. Many, like the Mellons and the DuPonts and the Kennedys, have been there for decades. During the summer, Nantucket Sound can be a busy crossroads — except on Horseshoe Shoal, where Gordon wanted to put his wind farm. There, with only a few feet of water at low tide, it’s too shallow for most yachts.