Governors' Wind Energy Coalition

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Officials with the Cape Wind offshore wind project planned for Massachusetts have met with port officials in Rhode Island, and a project spokesman told The Associated Press on Friday that it’s an “open question” whether a terminal planned for New Bedford will be ready to use as the wind farm’s construction staging area.

The project is expected to bring hundreds of jobs to an area that desperately needs them. Rhode Island has the second-highest unemployment rate in the country and New Bedford, just over the Rhode Island border, is in one of the most economically depressed areas of Massachusetts.

Construction has not yet started on the $35 million terminal, and it is estimated to take 18 to 20 months to build, said Ed Washburn, New Bedford’s deputy port director. A permit from the Environmental Protection Agency has taken longer than expected and has not yet been issued. Washburn said it is expected in the coming weeks, and construction could start soon after that.

Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers said the phase of construction that will require a port is expected to start in 2014.

Rodgers told the AP on Friday that officials with Cape Wind and the port at Quonset, in North Kingstown, R.I., met two weeks ago. He said Cape Wind has periodically met with other ports as the project has progressed, and he would not go into detail about the meeting. But he said among the topics they discussed was whether Quonset would be able to take on at least some of the work Cape Wind planned to do in New Bedford.

“An open question is whether it will be available for everything, or if the work is done in stages,” he said. “We’re keeping our options open. We’d like to use New Bedford to the greatest extent we can, but it depends on their availability.”

For example, the work on the turbines themselves could be kept in New Bedford while earlier work that is necessary for the foundations could be done elsewhere, Rodgers said.