WASHINGTON – The U.S. Interior Department hopes to make a final decision by the end of this year on the long-delayed Cape Wind project proposed for Nantucket Sound, Bloomberg News reported Monday.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters his department is working toward an “expeditious decision” on the approvals sought by Energy Management Inc., the Massachusetts company behind the project.

“We’ll have a final decision to be made hopefully by the end of this year,” Salazar said. Cape Wind was the first offshore wind farm proposed in the U.S., with 130 turbines capable of generating 420 megawatts of electricity.

Deepwater Wind LLC has proposed a wind farm of 100 turbines that could generate 384 megawatts of electricity for Rhode Island Sound, but that project is still moving through the regulatory process and is not projected to get under way before 2015.

Additional information is available at capewind.org.