Saving Seafood

A Lot Was Riding on This Wind Farm. Then Giant Shards Washed Up in Nantucket.

August 12, 2024 — This summer was supposed to be a breakout season for the faltering offshore wind business in the U.S. Instead it may be defined by an ill-timed break.

A large project off the coast of Massachusetts, called Vineyard Wind, remains at a standstill following an accident that dropped a massive turbine blade into the ocean last month and washed chunks of debris onto Nantucket beaches.

The blade broke at the height of summer and at a pivotal moment for the U.S. offshore wind industry, which has struggled with rising costs, political opposition and a wave of canceled and renegotiated contracts. Efforts to launch the sector in the U.S. are considered key to President Biden’s climate aspirations but would be especially vulnerable if former President Donald Trump returns to office.

Of the many clean-energy incentives and policies approved by Congress or the Biden administration in recent years, offshore wind projects and electric vehicles have been singled out repeatedly by Trump with particular ire.

“We are going to make sure that ends on day one,” Trump said at a campaign event in May, talking about an offshore wind project in New Jersey. “I will write it out in an executive order.”

The project offshore Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard is among the largest planned wind farms in U.S. waters, with the capacity to deliver electricity to around 400,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts. It was the first U.S. commercial offshore wind installation to start delivering grid power earlier this year and has more than a third of its turbines in place.

Read the full article at The Wall Street Journal

MASSACHUSETTS: Vineyard Wind lays out plan to remove remaining damaged blade

August 12, 2024 — Vineyard Wind issued an action plan on Friday with details about the steps it will take to remove the remaining damaged blade, as post-tropical storm Debby makes its way to Massachusetts.

This involves removing fallen debris from the tower platform, rotating the turbine to shake loose any further debris, potentially cutting off a dangling portion of the blade, removing debris from the ocean floor, and ultimately detaching the blade “root” from the nacelle (the turbine’s generator).

A Vineyard Wind spokesperson said there was no specific order in the multi-step plan for removal, but did not state whether any of the steps were undertaken on Thursday or Friday.

Vineyard Wind’s plan also calls for resuming turbine installation (without the blades) before the inspection of all blades is complete. The company, however, cannot resume such activity until the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) lifts or amends its suspension order to allow for certain component installation to resume.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

MASSACHUSETTS: Nantucket residents seek to freeze offshore wind projects following Vineyard Wind failure

August 12, 2024 — A group of Nantucket residents is calling for a moratorium on all offshore wind development while the feds say there’s no timeline for when construction will proceed on Vineyard Wind following last month’s turbine blade failure.

The call from ACK4Whales, a nonpartisan community group, comes as debris continues to wash ashore on Nantucket, and the “small, popcorn-sized pieces of foam” and fiberglass shards spread to Martha’s Vineyard, Falmouth and elsewhere.

ACK4Whales is also preparing to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal on its lawsuit that looks to block the Vineyard Wind project.

A federal judge in April rejected the group’s arguments that the federal agencies that permitted the 62-turbine, 806-megawatt wind farm violated the Endangered Species Act, with construction threatening to “decimate” the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

Read the full article at Boston Herald

 

MASSACHUSETTS: Shellfishing Can Continue After Blade Break, State Says

August 9, 2024 — A week after debris from the broken Vineyard Wind turbine washed up on Edgartown beaches, state officials said they are investigating potential harm to the region’s seafood but don’t see a need to immediately stop eating shellfish.

Representatives with the state Department of Environmental Protection and Division of Marine Fisheries, as well as several federal agencies that are involved in offshore wind energy, met with the Nantucket select board Wednesday to talk about the fallout of the turbine blade that collapsed into the ocean on July 13.

Though thousands of pieces of fiberglass and styrofoam went into the water, both state agencies told Nantucketers that they saw no need to halt shellfishing in the region, but remained committed to monitoring the situation.

Wendy Heiger-Bernays, the chief of research at the state Department of Environmental Protection, and Chrissy Petitpas, an aquaculture biologist at the state Division of Marine Fisheries, came before the board to give their thoughts on the potential harm to marine life.

After reviewing initial reports and data from the turbine manufacturer, Ms. Heiger-Bernays said the debris posed a threat to beachgoers and boaters, but it is unlikely to be a significant risk to aquatic organisms chemically-speaking.

That said, the department offered its expertise to help craft water quality studies and review any findings.

Read the full article at the Vineyard Gazette

MASSACHUSETTS: State And Federal Regulators Address Vineyard Wind Turbine Blade Failure At Nantucket Select Board Meeting

August 9, 2024 — It is “very unlikely” that any chemicals released from the Vineyard Wind blade collapse pose a significant risk to humans or animals, according to Wendy Heiger-Bernays, the chief researcher at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Research and Standards, who attended Wednesday’s Nantucket Select Board meeting along with other state and federal regulators.

That assertion was made as even more debris from Vineyard Wind’s damaged Haliade-X turbine blade may be headed toward the island soon as a result of tropical storm Debby rolling through the region.

Many of the potential risks of the debris are difficult to quantify, officials said, because of dilution in the water column and the emerging status of the relevant science.

“[The science] is in the very early stages so we don’t have a very good understanding of what those human health impacts could be,” Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries Assistant Director and Shellfish Program Leader Chrissy Petitpas said. “Pretty much all of your shellfish has microplastics in it…so the challenge is going to be discerning what this additional risk may be.”

There are currently no public health standards or tolerance levels for many of the contaminants that have caused concern on the island, such as microplastics, and long-term monitoring of the fishery will be key, as fish and shellfish will continue to ingest more plastic as the fiberglass and styrofoam debris breaks down further.

Read the full article at the Nantucket Current

MASSACHUSETTS: Nantucket gets update on turbine debris cleanup

August 9, 2024 — Nantucket’s Select Board got an update Wednesday night, Aug. 7, on the efforts to clean up debris from the failed Vineyard Wind turbine blade south of the island.

Roger Martella, the Chief Sustainability Officer for blade manufacturer GE Vernova, outlined the ongoing response to the mid-July incident that sent debris into the ocean about 15 miles south of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. That debris continues to wash up on local beaches.

“We’re going to be focusing on shellfish, we’re going to be focusing on marine life, long-term degradation of anything that might remain. The impact from physical contact, from chemicals, from micro particulates,” Martella said.

Martella said a small portion of the broken blade remains on the turbine, but the expected high winds over the next few days should not cause more of it to break off.

“The storm is not a risk for the turbines or blades or anything like that. Of that seven-to-eight-percent of the hanging part that is still there, there is a possibility that the 22 meters per second projected winds could impact that and then we would execute the recovery plans that we’ve been doing.”

Read the full article at CAI

MASSACHUSETTS: Crews try to take down rest of broken blade from wind turbine incident on Nantucket

August 9, 2024 — The company responsible for a broken wind turbine blade that sent six to seven truckloads of debris into the water off of Nantucket hopes to remove the rest of the broken blade Thursday.

GE Vernova, the company that manufactured the blade said it’s worried high winds from Tropical Storm Debby could send the remaining pieces of the broken blade into the ocean.

Wednesday night Federal and State officials met with the Nantucket Select Board to discuss the incident. The broken turbine is part of the Vineyard Wind Project, which began to break apart in early July, shortly after that residents of Cape Cod and the Islands started finding heaps of fiberglass washed up on the shorelines.

Read the full article at Boston 25

The fallout from Vineyard Wind’s broken turbine blade

August 2, 2023 — When Nantucket residents began posting photos of the fiberglass and foam littering their beaches on the morning of July 16, everyone in the offshore wind world — proponents and opponents, alike — knew the industry was about to face a very public test in confidence.

The debris had fallen from a damaged turbine blade at the nearby Vineyard Wind project. The part, made and installed by GE Vernova, had broken three days earlier, and no one really knew why.

The project’s developer, also called Vineyard Wind, scrambled to clean up the mess and assure the public that the material all over their pristine beaches was “non-toxic.” But more and more photos of the bright green debris washed up on social media, many carrying captions like “It’s everywhere” and “STOP #Bigwind!”

Soon, a picture of the broken turbine itself surfaced. The 351-foot blade had snapped about 65 feet from the base and what remained of it hung slackly, dangling over the ocean.

It was not a good look for an industry already struggling against economic headwinds and public concern about its impacts on the ocean environment. Plus, as the first large-scale offshore wind farm to earn federal approval, Vineyard Wind has always been under intense public scrutiny.

Read the full story at WBUR

MASSACHUSETTS: ‘Deeply troubled.’ Keating, Aquinnah tribe want faster notice after wind turbine collapse

July 31, 2024 — After the July 13 collapse of a Vineyard Wind turbine blade in the project area south of Martha’s Vineyard, 48 hours passed before Nantucket officials got word. For the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), the lag was even longer.

It’s a wait that U.S. Rep. William Keating, D-Massachusetts, echoing the criticism of leaders on the islands, says was unacceptable.

In a letter last week to the head of the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, Keating called foul on a process that failed to alert leaders on Nantucket about the football field-sized blade breaking off in the nearby lease area until two days later.

Keating is now calling on the agency to create protocols that would require local municipal and tribal leaders to be immediately notified of hazardous situations in the wind lease areas south of Martha’s Vineyard and southwest of Nantucket.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Nantucket warns more turbine debris could be headed ashore

July 30, 2024 — Are you heading to Nantucket? You’ll want to exercise caution in the water, and we’re not talking about sharks.

Town officials have warned beachgoers that more pieces of the broken Vineyard Wind turbine are washing up.

The company that manufactures and services the turbines, GE Vernova, informed town leaders recently that several sections of the fiberglass turbine blade broke off from the hub. The company says while this was not unexpected, it has been several days since any debris was observed after the first chunk broke off nearly two weeks ago.

The United States Coastguard continues to enforce a 500-meter safety exclusion zone around the turbine.

Read the full article at Boston 25 News