Political Quotes

“I wish to join my colleagues from Massachusetts and Hawaii to talk about the tax credits for wind. We have had a remarkably exciting new thing happen in Rhode Island this summer. From time to time, I am able to get out on Narragansett Bay and, over and over, whether driving on the bridges over Narragansett Bay or actually out on Narragansett Bay, we saw the sites of these enormous barges traveling down the bay, bringing these huge structures that were carried out, located off of Block Island, and sunk to the ocean floor to provide the platforms for the first steel-in- water offshore wind energy in the country. Now, we can go over to Europe and see wind energy all over the place. We are behind them in developing it, but Rhode Island is the start. And whether we saw these enormous structures that were the legs--the frames for the pylon and the turbine--or whether we saw enormous pilings that get carried out there and in the same way that you drive a nail through the hole for a hanger and put it through wall, they take these enormous pilings that reach way up into the sky and drive them through the hollow legs of the framework and down to anchor them in the ocean floor. So this is under construction right now. It is big. We see these barges coming by and they are enormous. The structures run hundreds of feet in the air. It is exciting to see this happening, and it is part of the wind revolution that Senator Markey and Senator Schatz talked about.…”