Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is expected to decide by the end of this week whether his agency will greenlight Cape Wind, the controversial wind farm project planned for Nantucket Sound that has been tied up in the permitting process for nine years. But even as interest groups and most major policymakers in the state have taken strong stands on the issue, Democrat John Kerry, the state's senior senator and chief negotiator on climate legislation in the Senate, remains silent. Repeated inquiries by NationalJournal.com to the senator's office have not been returned.

Activists on both sides of the controversy want to hear from Kerry.

"It's just very troubling when he is an author of draft legislation that is going to be addressing climate change and we have not heard anything from the senator on the Cape Wind project," said Barbara Hill, executive director of Clean Power Now, the group spearheading efforts in favor of the project.

"I would prefer he was outwardly opposed to the project," maintained Audra Parker, executive director of Alliance To Save Nantucket Sound, the group leading the charge against Cape Wind.

While Kerry has stayed mum, other lawmakers and groups across the spectrum of opinion have made their voices heard in advance of Salazar's decision. Just in the last week, Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., and Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., whose district is home to the coast of Nantucket Sound, wrote a letter to Salazar highlighting their concerns with the project; six governors of East Coast states that could benefit from offshore wind development wrote a letter urging Salazar to approve the project. And on Friday, environmental groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Union of Concerned Scientists sent President Obama a letter expressing their support for the wind farm.

Salazar said in January that he would decide whether to grant the farm a federal permit by the end of April. An Interior spokesman said in an e-mail that "we will be making an announcement soon" but declined to answer any other questions about the imminent decision.

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