July 16, 2025 — One year ago today, Nantucket residents awoke to reports that green debris was littering the south shore beaches from Madaket out to Tom Nevers. It quickly became clear that the thousands of pieces of fiberglass and foam had floated to the island from the Vineyard Wind farm 15 miles to the southwest following a blade failure.
After failing to notify the town about the incident for 48 hours, Vineyard Wind finally acknowledged the situation following the initial reports of debris washing up and dispatched a team to the island to begin the assessment and cleanup. But in those first few hours, it was the island’s lifeguards – some of them just teenagers – who collected the largest and most dangerous pieces of debris from the surf. Despite warnings not to, residents took it upon themselves to gather and dispose of the blade pieces.
The incident rapidly became a regional and then national news story as the town announced that all of Nantucket’s south shore beaches were closed to swimmers “due to large floating debris and sharp fiberglass shards.”
Within hours, the federal government agency responsible for monitoring the Vineyard Wind project – the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) – shut down the multi-billion-dollar project. The story of Vineyard Wind’s blade failure and the revelations that followed – including manufacturing deviations and allegations of a safety data falsification scheme at a wind turbine blade plant in Canada – would become the biggest news story of the past year.
Twelve months later, while some parts of the story have concluded, others are still unfolding and remain unresolved.