New England’s Weekly Newspaper of The Year VOL. 202 NO. 12 USPS 264-720
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The Inquirer and Mirror, Nantucket, Mass.
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Thursday, August 1, 2024
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Seventy-Two Pages
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Four Sections
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www.ACK.net
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$3.00
Good Neighbor Agreement never intended to address catastrophic failure Doesn’t preclude town from seeking damages By Kaie Quigley kquigley@inkym.com Nantucket’s so-called Good Neighbor Agreement with Vineyard Wind was never going to include language about catastrophic turbine failures and how the company would be held accountable for them, according to the law firm that negotiated the deal for the town four years ago. “The Good Neighbor Agreement was designed to answer the question of adverse visual impacts from the appropriate construction of these things. It wasn’t designed to anticipate everything that could potentially go wrong,” said Greg Werkheiser of the law firm Cultural Heritage Partners. Vineyard Wind would not have
Photo by Karen Quigley
WINGED ROYALTY: A monarch butterfly alights on a zinnia flower last Thursday.
Inside presidential politics with Susan Glasser and Peter Baker By John Stanton
Susan Glasser and Peter Baker are on the phone talking about what they have seen as observers of what so far has been the strangest of presidential campaigns. She is the Washington, D.C. columnist for The New Yorker magazine. He is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, and has covered presidential politics and administrations from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden. “Today we are having this conversation, and it’s exactly a month since the debate that would prove to be the undoing of Biden’s presidency. I think it will be a month that books will be
Courtesy of Peter Baker
POLITICS, PAGE 6A
From left, Susan Glaser, Theo Baker and Peter Baker at the George Polk Awards.
New program aims to reduce opioid-related deaths apopnikolova@inkym.com
MAILING LABEL
There were four opioid-related deaths on Nantucket last year, in-
agreed to be liable for something that was hypothetical at the time, he said. The project was years away from putting steel in the water when the agreement was signed. “You’d never get to an agreement on
WIND, PAGE 4A
Cancer cluster? Residents blame airport PFAS By Dean Geddes dgeddes@inkym.com
jstanton@inkym.com
By Anna Popnikolova
Photo by Ben McGrath
An aerial view of the damaged Vineyard Wind turbine blade and a support vessel two days before additional debris entered the water.
“The chances of rehabilitating someone who’s dead are very small. If they’re occupying a plot in Prospect Hill Cemetery, we can’t help.” – Dr. Tim Lepore Addiction Solutions creasing the number of fatal island overdoses across a decade to 21. The opioid antagonist naloxone, more commonly known by its brand name Narcan, is being made increasingly available to the public, as a tool in efforts to bring those numbers down. “Narcan saves their life. Every day the sun comes up even if someone is
an addict. There’s no reason for them to die,” Tim Lepore, MD, said. Lepore is the founder of Addiction Solutions of Nantucket, which offers addiction recovery treatment and support. “I want to give people a chance, and continue giving them a chance to get past their addiction,” he said. Rosemary McLaughlin’s goal is to bring down the number of island overdoses to zero. She said that making Narcan more accessible is an important step in reaching that goal. She is the executive director of Community Solutions for Behavioral Health, an organization focused on addressing
NARCAN, PAGE 7A
Scientifically it can’t be determined exactly why four people, all who live within a stone’s throw of each other and a stone’s throw from Nantucket Memorial Airport, have a similar cancer diagnosis. And lawyers might be hard-pressed to make the argument that PFAS exposure from living so close to the airport is the cause. But to Peter McKay, it seems obvious that the toxic firefighting foam that was used for decades at the airport within sight of their homes is the reason he has prostate cancer. “If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck, but you’re never going to prove it,” he said. “My brother (David MacKay) to the right
Meri Lepore of me, Dick (Sheehan) to the left of me, we all have prostate cancer. Three houses right next to each other, all really close to the drain (firefighting
PFAS, PAGE 2A
Photo by Bob Lyons
HANGING OUT: A family of deer make a brief daytime appearance near Long Pond earlier this month.
Monday, August 5
Community Day
10 AM – 3 PM | Children’s Beach FREE & Family Visit NHA.org for details! Friendly