EDITORIAL
Jay Cashman and the Power of Wind By Sean Gonsalves
One of the most historically-significant projects he supervised was the building of the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown to commemorate the place where Myles Standish and the pilgrims first dropped anchor on their maiden voyage to America before landing at Plymouth Rock.
I
t was the spring of 1850 and James Cashman was searching for a new beginning. He bid farewell to Ireland - and the potato famine ravaging the land of his birth and with his wife Catherine and their two children, Judith and John, boarded a sailing vessel and let the wind carry them to Boston. James and Catherine settled in Hanover, Massachusetts where James built the family homestead. It was the first thing he built - but it was only the beginning. Over the next 30 years, James Cashman rose to become one of the most sought after builders in the area. He was well known for building and maintaining roads, bridges, sidewalks, laying drain pipes, carting gravel, digging ditches and wells. He also served as the town surveyor and Road Commissioner. James Cashman was not only instrumental in building the infrastructure needed in the developing town of Hanover, he was also paving the way for a long line of Cashmans to build a foundation for their own success. James’ son, John, made a name for himself in nearby Quincy, where he started his own business in 1874. By 1893, John Cashman had 40 employees working for him – doing excavation and masonry work, as well as building roads. In the late 1890s, he began building bridges, mostly notably train crossings for the Old Colony and New Haven railroads.
As the owner of a large quarry in West Quincy, John Cashman also owned and operated Bay State Dredging Ltd. – a venture that went far beyond making the Bay State’s most significant waterways easier to navigate. Not only did John Cashman deepen New York Harbor, he was able to steer his company into becoming a leader of bridge and tunnel construction – projects that stretched as far south as Chile and Brazil. At the time of his death in 1913, John Cashman was considered one of the bestknown contractors and bridge builders in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, foreshadowing the work his great-great grandson Jay Cashman would take up. A century after John Cashman left his mark - Jay Cashman would pick up where his forbears left off. John Cashman built the Greenbush line for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. Jay Cashman would later re-build it. And over the past four decades, Jay Cashman, a Quincy native, has built his own company into a titan of heavy civil engineering – from bridge construction to paving the way for vital transportation. Cashman was the force behind the coastal reconstruction projects when the infamous Blizzard of ’78 destroyed seawalls and jetties along the coast of Massachusetts. His company built the marine facility for the Martha’s Vineyard Steamship Authority, the ferry service that shuttles passengers between the Cape & Islands.
When Boston’s Central Artery gave the fledgling Patriot RenewTunnel project ran into problems, ables a blueprint for success. it was Cashman who was called on to finish the “Big Dig.” Another opportunity presented itself in Maine. Commissioned Most recently, however, Cashman in 2008 to service Central Maine has turned his attention not to his- Power, the Beaver Ridge Wind tory but to how he can reduce his project called for 3 turbines with carbon footprint for the sake of a total capacity of 4.5 megawatts, future generations. Reflecting on which translates into approxithe past with an eye toward pos- mately 12 million kilowatt-hours terity, it was his great-great-grand- of emission-free electricity each father who left an unwitting clue year, enough to power about 2,000 about the way forward. The same homes in the region. power source that first brought the Cashman family across the Atlan- Patriot Renewables next project tic Ocean could now be harnessed was Spruce Mountain Wind in to power regional economies and Woodstock, Maine, which conhelp America become energy in- sisted of 10 turbines with a total dependent. capacity of 20 megawatts. Patriot Renewables finished developing Just as John Cashman late in his and constructing the small wind career focused on the energy farm in December 2011 and Cashsector as the head of the Quincy man’s company still oversees its Electric Light and Power Com- operation. pany, Jay Cashman has turned his focused energy in the same direc- Spruce Mountain Wind was foltion -- with the founding of Patri- lowed by an even larger project ot Renewables. in Carthage, Maine known as Saddleback Ridge Wind, which After several forays into the pumps out 34.2 megawatts of emerging sector of renewable power. That project was completenergy -- including a partner- ed in September 2015. ship with the stalled Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound, and Today, Patriot Renewables is the a failed attempt to build an off- leading wind energy developer shore wind farm in Buzzards Bay in New England, with more wind -- Jay Cashman wasn’t going to farms in the pipeline. No longer a let set-backs derail him. Cashman start-up, the company is now an forged ahead. established energy producer, looking for more opportunities to exHis first success came in the form pand further into wind, solar, and of a single-turbine project in- even LNG storage. Cashman aims stalled on the campus of the Mas- to offer a total energy solution sachusetts Maritime Academy in and has begun offering investors a Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts in chance to buy-in. 2006. Unlike the more ambitious vision of constructing an off-shore “We have put together an enerwind farm in Buzzards Bay, this gy investment fund to work with project was a relatively easy one other business people to do bigger for Cashman to complete. Locat- projects,” Cashman says. “It’s a ed on the banks of the Cape Cod great opportunity to reduce carCanal, the single turbine would bon emissions and to make money provide the school with up to 660 doing it -- because really there’s an kilowatts per hour and has since environmentalist in all of us.” netted the Academy hundreds of thousands of dollars in energy sav- Please visit www.patriotrenewings. It wasn’t a big project. But, it ables.com
COASTALANGLERMAG.COM • THEANGLERMAG.COM
0717_Boston.indd 7
|
JULY 2017
|
BOSTON 7
6/20/17 8:41 AM