Vineyard Wind US — a joint venture of Central Maine Power (CMP) parent company Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners — has come under heightened scrutiny after one of its wind turbines was significantly damaged earlier this month, causing a blade the size of a football field to break apart into the water.
In response, the Nantucket Select Board has taken steps to consider legal action against Vineyard Wind for the damage, which has scattered fiberglass and other debris throughout the ocean and surrounding beaches.
A 107-meter — or approximately 117-yard — blade on one of the turbines reportedly broke last Saturday about 20 meters from its root but still remained largely attached. This past Thursday, however, a large chunk of the blade fell off into the water.
[RELATED: CMP Parent Company’s Offshore Wind Turbine Creates Environmental Disaster Off New England Coast]
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) has issued a suspension order directing Vineyard Wind “to cease power production from all its wind turbine generators” — as well as all further construction — until it can be determined if the “failure” that caused the damage impacts any of the project’s other turbines.
The project, located 14 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, had previously been heralded as the “first large-scale offshore wind farm in the nation.”
As a result of the broken turbine blade, fiberglass debris was scattered in the water and has begun washing up on the shores of Nantucket and other nearby islands. Debris has also recently been found on Cape Cod.
On Tuesday of last week, Nantucket closed its beaches for swimming as “large quantities” of sharp, non-toxic fiberglass and insulation foam were collected. The town was able to reopen the beaches to the public on Wednesday.
[RELATED: Vineyard Wind US Offshore Wind Turbine Breaks Apart, Scatters Debris Off New England Coast]
Despite being labeled as non-toxic, Nantucket’s state representative Dylan Fernandes told the Nantucket Current that the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection intends to test the debris to determine “any potential public and environmental health impacts.”
The Nantucket Land and Water Council has also expressed concerns over the long-term consequences of the wind turbine’s breakage, as well as the precipitating debris.
“The unintended release of foam and fiberglass debris by Vineyard Wind this week is tragic,” the group wrote in a statement to the Nantucket Current. “The material is absolutely harmful and damaging to our waters and our environment.”
“It will ultimately be ingested by fish and wildlife and this type of industrial accident often comes with a cascade of other impacts which we may not see or understand for months or years,” they said.
“This is an unacceptable outcome of the development of wind in Nantucket’s offshore waters with serious and unknown ramifications,” the group concluded.
“This is an unacceptable outcome of the development of wind in Nantucket’s offshore waters with serious and unknown ramifications.”
— Nantucket Current (@ACKCurrent) July 19, 2024
– this from the Nantucket Land & Water Council, which is celebrating 50 years as the island’s environmental watchdog this year
According to an update posted Monday morning by Nantucket officials, about a quarter of the blade remains upright on the turbine, and approximately half of it is still hanging down. The portion of the blade that fell off Thursday has now been located, but it has not yet been retrieved.
NBC Boston reported that as of Monday, more than six truckloads worth of fiberglass debris have been removed from the Nantucket shoreline.
The Vineyard Gazette reported that it took Vineyard Winds about 48 hours to alert Nantucket that debris from the turbine blade was headed toward the island, prompting residents to express concerns during a meeting held this past Wednesday.
“This community would have been much better prepared in terms of communicating to our residents about the impending risk before it became an actual risk, with debris on our beaches,” said Select Board Chair Brooke Mohr. “I just want to state for the record, it was inadequate for this community.”
A notice posted to the Town of Nantucket’s official website indicated that the Select Board will be meeting Tuesday in Executive Session to “discuss strategy with respect to potential litigation…by the Town against Vineyard Wind.”
At this time, it remains unclear what caused the turbine’s blade to malfunction.
According to the Vineyard Gazette, however, “the company had installed three newly manufactured replacement blades on this particular turbine after one of the original blades was damaged during the lifting process and subsequently removed from the construction areas.”
Officials told the outlet that the broken blade was one of these replacements.
Roger Martella — the Chief Sustainability Officer at installation contractor GE Vernova — rejected assertions that the two incidents are related. “We don’t think there’s a connection between that installation issue and what we saw here in Vineyard Wind,” he said.
The Vineyard Wind project was originally designed to have a total of 62, 800-foot tall turbines, which is just less than a football field taller than the Seattle Space Needle.
Prior to the blade breaking, 22 of these turbines were either completed or under construction. Those that were operational had begun producing power this past winter.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="29552 https://www.themainewire.com/?p=29552">6 Comments
Anyone who has read the history of shipwrecks in New England knows that those are very dangerous waters in that whole area. High winds and high seas occur often there. This entire wind power plan is just a scam to get gazillions of dollars for the builders/owners and will never be able to successfully power the nation’s electric grid. Building these abominations is a threat to the fisheries and every animal in the ocean. I hope every single one of these is destroyed and blown to hell and the owners lose their shirts. NOAA is the US government’s shill in promoting this idea. Their major intent is to destroy the entire fishing industry along the New England coast so they can build these monstrosities with no objections to them. I wonder how the liberals of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard like the looks of the garbage their liberal dreams have turned into washing up on their nice beaches. Serves them right for supporting such tom foolery in the first place.
Would it be impolite to enquire how many millions of dollars the State of Maine and UMO have dumped into similar windmills in the sea over the past twenty or thirty years?
Ayuh,….. Save the whales, ‘n the fishing industry, Ban the off-shore wind mills,….
They will paint it red and sell it as lobster ; right Ms. Pingree.
This is a hideous waste of taxpayer money, just to put it into the pockets of the politically connected. My electric bill just went up with CMP in order to start to pay back the subsidies they have given to the solar panel thieves. Mills and the rest of em are plenty free with OUR money. In my book they are all leftist fools and idiots. This is the greatest redistribution of wealth scheme that the communists could ever devise.
Coming soon to a Maine beach by you!