It has been 2,755 days since the Cape Wind project was first formally proposed. It is a controversy older than the war in Iraq. Hostilities began only a few weeks after the war in Afghanistan.

And, as in those other conflicts, indeed in any protracted battle, it’s crucial to maintain morale of the troops, particularly when your allies are dropping off and it looks as if you’re losing. Surveys show public opinion in the state is strongly in favor of the wind farm, and the Patrick administration in Boston, too.

Thus Audra Parker, executive director of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the main community group opposing the Cape Wind development, has been running a new argument lately.

It’s not just about Cape Wind anymore, she argues, although that is still the group’s major focus. It is about the precedent which would be set if Cape Wind gets the go-ahead.

If the state can override the wishes of local communities and the regional planning body, in this case the Cape Cod Commission, it could also do so in other waters closer to land, and even on the land.

“There is an ongoing effort by the state to centralize and streamline wind projects both offshore and on land,” she said yesterday.

“There is talk now about giving authority to the state for the siting of land-based projects, without deference to local communities, which seems parallel to what is going on with the state in terms of opening up [marine] sanctuaries to wind development.

“So I think now you can make a broader argument that they are subverting local control on land as well as offshore, and that’s going to affect ultimately not just Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard but communities up and down the state both on and off shore.

“Which gives new context and greater importance to the EFSB case.”

The case is the legal action the alliance, the town of Barnstable and, she hopes, the Cape Cod Commission, intend to take against the state Energy Facilities Siting Board by challenging its authority in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

The board recently granted a composite certificate, a sort of super permit which grants Cape Wind all the remaining state and local regulatory clearances they needed to begin construction.

That is not the end of the matter; Cape Wind still needs several approvals from federal agencies.

Backed by developer Jim Gordon, Cape Wind plans to build 130 huge wind turbines over some 25 square miles of Horseshoe Shoal in the middle of Nantucket Sound. The site was chosen for several reasons: it is a suitable windy place in shallow water, close to demand for power, and importantly, in federal waters.

At the time the proposal was first mooted, Massachusetts state waters were a marine sanctuary, effectively off-limits to most development within the three-mile zone.

In recent months, however, that has changed. The state is currently in the process of fleshing out a new Oceans Act, and a new management plan will see that sanctuary status removed in many areas, allowing a variety of activities, including the generation of alternative energy.

The possibility concerns many people. In an interview with the Gazette in early May, Martha’s Vineyard Commission executive director Mark London suggested this could leave state waters on three sides of the Vineyard open for wind power developments with no regulation by the towns or their commission.

Broadly, he said, the use of the coastal seas would be divided into three categories: exclusionary zones, which would remain protected; constraint zones, where certain activities would be allowed, and “no constraints, no problems, go right ahead.”

There is real concern about the prospect of diminution of regulatory power in the Vineyard commission and its sister body, the Cape Cod Commission.

The Oceans Act provides that the two local bodies would have regulatory authority over any development in the oceans. But language in the act allows appeals of commission decisions to go to the state EFSB, instead of superior court.

Equally worrying to some, including Ms. Parker, are suggestions that the EFSB could have similar ultimate power over developments on land.

“It’s why it is important for this appeal [to the state supreme court] by the alliance, the town of Barnstable and Cape Cod Commission to be successful,” Ms. Parker said. (The Cape Cod Commission has not yet decided whether it will join the action.)

It will not be the first time the Cape Wind dispute has gone to the Supreme Court, and the result last time does not bode well for wind farm opponents.

In 2005 Cape Wind’s plan to run two power transmission cables, partly under the sea and partly under land through the towns of Yarmouth and Barnstable to connect with the regional grid was challenged.

The EFSB had approved it in May 2005, and the court upheld it in December 2006.

In October of 2007, the Cape Cod Commission voted to deny the land transmission portion of the Cape Wind project as a development of regional impact. It was a procedural denial, because Cape Wind never completed its application, believing that it could win superseding approval from the EFSB instead.

Which it did last month.

On the federal level, the largest hurdle for Cape Wind was cleared back in January, when a final environmental impact statement from the Minerals Management Service found it presented no serious environmental hazard.

The 2,800 page final report differed little from a draft released almost a year earlier which identified no lasting major impacts on wildlife, navigation, fishing, tourism or recreation.

At the time, Cape Wind Associates issued a press release saying it hoped all remaining approvals would be in place by March, and that the project could begin by year’s end, and have electricity flowing into the grid by 2012.

But it has not gone so quickly. The Minerals Management Service has yet to issue its formal record of decision.

A couple of months after the EIS came out, Cape Wind’s communications director Mark Rodgers said he hoped to have the record of decision and the terms of Cape Wind’s lease by June, along with the necessary permit from the Army Corps of Engineers.

“It’s been a long road; it’s been seven years. But we see light now at the end of the tunnel. We hope in a few months to be in a position to become America’s first permitted and licensed offshore wind farm,” Mr. Rodgers said.

That was in March. Now it is June and other pieces also have yet to fall into place. The Federal Aviation Administration still must give clearance — it previously found the project a presumed hazard to aviation.

And minerals management has yet to complete mandatory consultations with Wampanoag tribal interests and historic agencies.

The new challenge to the powers of the EFSB, even if it does not succeed, promises further delays. And the prospect of still more litigation looms after that.

There is little question about it: this is a long war.