Sep. 7--Three ocean-going research and survey vessels will be plying Rhode Island's coastal waters this month to collect data for the unprecedented ocean-mapping effort that is paving the way for the proposed $1.5-billion wind turbine farm that Governor Carcieri wants to develop south of Block Island.

The vessels are the 224-foot Bold operated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the 208-foot Thomas Jefferson operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the 185-foot Endeavor operated by the University of Rhode Island.

The first two vessels are already at work, and the Endeavor is scheduled for two five-day cruises later this month, according to Grover Fugate, executive director of the Coastal Resources Management Council.

The CRMC is halfway into a two-year effort to survey and map the state's coastal waters so it can determine the best place to locate the wind farm.

The state administration has selected Deepwater Wind of New Jersey to develop the wind farm. Deepwater's current plans call for erecting five to eight turbines in state waters south of Block Island to produce energy for the island. Later, it plans to erect far more turbines in federal waters farther south of Block Island to generate electricity for the rest of the state.

A special CRMC subcommittee that is supervising the ocean mapping project met Thursday afternoon at the URI's Narragansett Bay Campus to discuss the agency's rule-making process for siting the turbines.

One committee member, Paul Lemont, said he is concerned that the public and many news organizations don't understand the CRMC's role in developing the wind farm.

The Ocean Special Area Management Plan is being developed by the CRMC, with Fugate in charge, operating on a separate track from the administration's dealings with Deepwater. It is similar in many ways to plans the CRMC has created for the coastal ponds, Greenwich Bay, Aquidneck Island and the Metro region.

But this one is far bigger in many ways. It covers 1,547 square miles of coastal water. The state is spending $4 million, largely on URI researchers, to collect data. (Deepwater has agreed to reimburse those costs later.) And meetings have been held for the last year with the public and other stakeholders to get their views.

On Thursday, CRMC lawyer Brian Goldman presented a draft plan for turning all that data into rules that will lead to siting the turbines.

Basically, the data will be presented in a series of chapters on such topics as fishing, recreation and tourism, ecology, marine transportation and others.