If readers concerned about offshore wind have not heard about what happened to the wind farm off Nantucket recently, they need to look it up. In summary, one of the Vineyard Wind turbines located about 15 miles south of Nantucket suffered a catastrophic blade failure.
Before falling into the ocean, the blade dropped a very large amount of fiberglass pieces of various sizes and styrofoam-like material into the sea, which washed up on Nantucket’s beaches and as far as Cape Cod. The turbine was not operational at the time. The town closed many of its beaches for two to three days during a busy July due to threat of injury from the razor-sharp fiberglass pieces. Beachgoers were told to wear foot protection on the beach and no pets allowed.
The town of Nantucket was not informed of the incident until two days after the blade failed. The island residents, fishermen and local businesses were stunned that such a disaster could happen during calm conditions and so soon into the project.
Although touted as clean and green, there is a dark side to the offshore wind technology being deployed at such a speed and scale off our coast. At the July 17 Nantucket town select board meeting, residents and businesses got a firsthand introduction to the corporate shell game. There was deception, misinformation and abandonment by the state and federal agencies that green-lighted the project. Unheard-of questions about microplastics and PFA levels in the water column were left unanswered. Many questioned if they would feel safe barefoot or swimming for months.
Readers should see for themselves at the town’s meeting livestream on YouTube. What Nantucket officials are dealing with is a sobering wake-up call for town councils from Lewes to Ocean City. Remarkably, Nantucket entered into a good neighbor agreement with Vineyard Wind. But, residents never voted on it. Many were incensed and demanded the board rescind the agreement. Lesson learned. Does community benefits package sound familiar? The amount of impact on the community from just one turbine blade breaking during calm summer weather is astonishing. What happens when hundreds are subjected to months of gales, nor’easters and the occasional Category 3 hurricane?
Proponents will cite that turbine blade breakage is rare, but those statistics are for much smaller turbines. There is very little operational experience with the Vineyard Wind mega turbines and ones proposed by US Wind. Locally, since 3R’s Beach and the Indian River Bay are state-regulated lands not under any community jurisdiction, what beach town officials will lead the effort to deal with a major problem? DNREC is going to be on the hot seat. They are quite underresourced to manage their existing workload, let alone do crisis management with a potentially impassive foreign wind company. There is no track record for US Wind, so how does the coastal community place complete faith in US Wind’s equipment safety and working relationship with DNREC if there is an ecological disaster?
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