Island Residents Skewer Vineyard Wind As CEO Apologizes For Turbine Blade Debris

Representatives from Vineyard Wind and turbine blade manufacturer GE failed to answer a series of questions posed by the Select Board and the public about the turbine blade debris washing up on Nantucket’s beaches during a contentious meeting on Wednesday. Spokespeople claimed they did not know why or how the turbine blade detached, how frequently similar failures have occurred in the past, how likely future failures may be, how much debris has yet to be collected or reach Nantucket, whether or how local businesses and organizations will be compensated for lost revenue, or what will eventually be done with the waste.

Select Board Chair Brooke Mohr pressured the representatives, including Vineyard Wind CEO Klaus Skoust Møller, to follow up with answers as soon as possible, but attempts to push for more substantive replies came up short when Møller and several other Vineyard Wind officials suddenly left the meeting due to reports the remaining three-quarters of the blade had suffered an additional structural failure.

Select Board members and the public hammered Vineyard Wind for its response to the crisis, including the two-day delay in notifying Nantucket of the failure and Vineyard Wind’s claim that the debris, which includes fiberglass, is “non-toxic.”

“I had a case once of someone with fiberglass in their eye. It wasn't very pretty,” Select Board member and Doctor Malcolm MacNab said. “I don't like your presentation of saying it was not a toxic event. That is a toxic substance.”

“Our ability to communicate effectively with our residents was hampered greatly,” Brooke Mohr said of the delay in notification. “Notice immediately when you have information regardless of the time of night. I may not be awake to receive it but I want it when I wake up at 5:30 in the morning.”

Møller apologized for the incident, for which he said there was “no excuse,” claiming that his company is taking it seriously and has removed most of the debris from the water.

“This is a very serious situation and I am really truly sorry for the impact on your truly beautiful beaches here,” he said. “Rest assured we will not just leave this as it is now. We will monitor it and we will keep the team here as long as is needed.”

Several residents drew attention to the massive commercial impact of the failure on various local industries, urging Vineyard Wind to offer payments to impacted businesses.

“We were always told we were going to be able to fish around these things, that they weren't going to affect our livelihood,” charter boat captain and former Select Board member Bob DeCosta said. “I would like to see a representative from the federal government and they should treat this like an aircraft incident…none of these turbines should be allowed to turn a blade...until they find out exactly what happened.”

The root cause analysis that will determine the reason for the failure has yet to be completed, and it is unlikely Vineyard Wind will be able to resume its operations until it is. Roger Martella, the chief sustainability officer and head of government affairs at GE Vernova, said that the analysis is being moved as quickly as possible and that his team is working on the incident “24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is overseeing the analysis, while the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) on Wednesday further clarified its shut down of the Vineyard Wind project.

“Following the July 13, 2024, blade failure incident at Vineyard Wind, BSEE has issued a Suspension Order to Vineyard Wind to cease power production from all its wind turbine generators until it can be determined whether the blade failure affects any other VW turbines,” the agency said. “The Suspension Order suspends power production on the lease area and suspends installation of new wind turbine generator construction: Those operations will remain shut down until the suspension is lifted. BSEE has also issued a Preservation Order to safeguard any evidence that may be relevant to determining the cause of the incident.”

So far, no one has been injured at the wind farm or on Nantucket’s beaches, but some residents and Select Board members expressed concerns that may not remain the case.

“I think our community would like to understand the impact of fiberglass particles in the water where we are swimming and where we are fishing,” Mohr said, suggesting that swimmers could unintentionally swallow small particles of fiberglass.

Martella acknowledged the concerns but did not comment on the potential danger. He also did not answer whether the turbine blade contains PFAS, BPA, or any other potentially harmful microplastics or chemicals.Vineyard Wind has not sampled the water south of Nantucket to test for possible contamination yet, a task the town may have to take on itself — and it would need to happen soon if they want to acquire a sample before potential contaminants dilute. Similarly, Vineyard Wind and GE representatives offered no response to repeated comparisons between the incident and the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

“We are having our own Valdez, except that this one is going to go on forever,” local teacher Galen Gardner said.

Rob Frame, who has lived on island for 52 years, echoed her sentiment. “In all those years I have never witnessed an environmental disaster like I have in the last three days,” he said. “I am horrified to think of what's happening and what is going to continue to happen to our fisheries. When the first dead fish washes up on the beach of our shores you're going to understand that this disaster has had a great impact on Nantucket.”

Mohr and Town Manager Libby Gibson repeatedly stressed that island residents should not touch the material or dispose of it through the Town’s usual residential waste streams. Vineyard Wind needs to collect the debris to know how much is still in the water and conduct the tests that will determine what caused the failure initially. All waste will be shipped off-island and will not enter the landfill.

The Select Board also criticized Vineyard Wind for its faulty wave and tide models, which projected that the debris would only wash up on a portion of Nantucket’s south shore. Møller characterized the situation as “contained,” but Select Board member Matt Fee pointed out that not only have the debris spread across the south shore, they have also now been sighted on the north shore, at Madaket, and on Tuckernuck.

The Select Board faced criticism of its own at Wednesday’s meeting as residents, including members of the political action group ACK for Whales, renewed calls for the Town to withdraw from the so-called “good neighbor agreement” entered into with Vineyard Wind to receive remediation funds from the company. No Select Board members were willing to commit to supporting a withdrawal at the meeting, but all of them expressed their desire to review their options, suggesting they might consider withdrawal.

“I want to make sure I'm not doing it just for window dressing,” MacNab said. “I want to make sure that if we do something as drastic as that after we review all of our options that it actually has meaning and it actually accomplishes something more than making us feel good.”

“We will review our options,” Mohr said. “We will do everything in our power to hold Vineyard Wind responsible for this disaster.”

Select Board member Dawn Hill Holdgate, who was the Chair of the board when the good neighbor agreement was signed, emphasized that the wind farm was on federal land and Nantucket could not have prevented its installation—a priority of the Biden administration.

“I'm just tired of the characterization that we had a choice in these land leases that were done by the federal government,” Holdgate said. “To think that we had a Select Board meeting and decided to build wind turbines out in the ocean, we did not.