Edgartown officials say that debris from the broken Vineyard Wind turbine blade may have come ashore on the Island on Thursday evening. Vineyard Wind has not confirmed that the debris was actually from the blade.
James Hagerty, Edgartown town administrator, received a call from a Vineyard Wind representative Thursday night at 7 pm that some foam had potentially washed ashore around Wasque Point.
He put the offshore wind developer and the Trustees of Reservation — managers of Wasque — in communication with each other. He also spoke with town parks commissioners, who’ve so far found nothing on South Beach.
“During aerial surveillance, GE spotted potential debris at Wasque Point. The Trustees’ staff is cooperating with GE and Vineyard Wind to ensure that any debris located on our beaches is properly retrieved,” Darci Schofield, Island director for the Trustees, said in a statement to the Times. “We ask beachgoers to use great care and alert our rangers to any possible debris they may spot on the beach or in the water. We continue to patrol the beaches searching for debris. The safety of our visitors and of the shorebirds we protect are our utmost priorities.”
GE Vernova is the company contracted to construct the turbines.
The Edgartown Parks Department has gone back and forth and surveyed the area and have yet to find anything.
“That doesn’t mean it won’t happen,” Hagerty said. If debris does wash ashore, Hagerty said they’d make a judgment call that might be similar to Nantucket’s decision to shut down their south shore beaches for a day.
“There’s no reason to shut down anything right now,” Hagerty added.
A spokesperson for GE Vernova issued a statement to The Times, but did not clarify if the debris found Friday was from Vineyard Wind.
“GE Vernova’s top priority is safety and minimizing the impact of this event on the communities surrounding the Vineyard Wind farm in Massachusetts,” the statement read. “We continue to work around the clock to enhance mitigation efforts in collaboration with Vineyard Wind and all relevant state, local and federal authorities. We are working with urgency to complete our root cause analysis of this event.”
Latest on turbine blade
The section of Vineyard Wind blade that fractured on Saturday has fallen to the ocean floor, Nantucket officials confirmed Friday morning.
The blade, made of a fiberglass shell and foam interior, is being monitored and will be recovered “in due course,” a note from the town states.
The latest follows a tough week for Vineyard Wind and the nascent offshore wind industry off the Northeast United States. It started on Saturday evening when one of the 350-turbine blades fractured. Federal officials are investigating the cause of the damage, but Vineyard Wind has since released few details of what happened.
Debris from the initial fracture eventually washed ashore on Nantucket, leading the town to close several beaches on Tuesday. The beaches were reopened on Wednesday, and then on Thursday morning, Vineyard Wind reported that a significant portion of the turbine blade had dislodged and that more debris was expected to land on Nantucket shores.
On Friday, the town of Nantucket issued a statement — calling the damaged blade a “crisis” — that aside from confirming that the blade had sunk to the ocean floor, the town also said that Vineyard Wind is developing a plan to test water quality around the island.
The offshore wind company is also working on setting up a process for financial claims, the town of Nantucket reported.
Vineyard Wind crews — which total 56 people as of Thursday — are expected to continue removing debris along the south and north shores on Nantucket, in advance of a triathlon on Saturday.
Criticism intensifies
Meanwhile, criticism of the Vineyard Wind and GE continues to ramp up. As The MV Times reported Thursday, residents and business owners grilled executives at a Nantucket select board meeting.
More locally, some Islanders have had enough. Johnny and Otto Osmers, brothers and second-generation commercial fishermen out of Menemsha and Oak Bluffs, protested in front of the company’s building in Vineyard Haven Friday afternoon.
They wanted to stand in solidarity with Nantucketers and show that though the company is called Vineyard Wind, not all Islanders support offshore wind development.
If all the South Shore beaches were closed here, as they were for at least a day in Nantucket, people would be outraged, they said.
To the brothers, offshore wind isn’t green. “We’re worried about all the environmental impacts,” Johnny Osmers said. “A lot doesn’t seem that green when you do the research.”
”We’re not climate change deniers,” he added. As commercial fishermen, they see the effects of climate change first-hand, including warmer waters.
But they think there are better ways to get green energy, and that a lot of things were overlooked with this project. There wasn’t a thorough look into long-term impacts, Johnny Osmers said.
At least four cars honked in support of the protesters, one yelling out of his truck, “Yeah, F*** them.”
When asked what they thought about Friday morning’s update that the rest of the blade fell to the seafloor, Osmers said, “My question is, what are they going to do to remove the blade from the seafloor?”
Their sign read: “No more [wind farms] time to go fiberglass is toxic! Stop blaming fishermen, over 80 dead whales and sea turtles.”
They were joined at around 12:45 pm by more protesters.
State officials have been critical as well. State rep. Dylan Fernandes — noting that turbines have been in operation successfully around the world — told The Times that the incident is deeply concerning and that the development should be suspended until GE and Vineyard Wind make assurances that the fracture won’t happen again.
Some state republicans have questioned if fractures could become more common, calling the recent incident a “catastrophic failure,” State House News Service reported.
Meantime, the U.S. Coast Guard continues to advise mariners to stay outside of the Vineyard Wind area. A warning issued on Friday says that two large pieces of debris are floating in nearby waters.
Sam Houghton contributed to this report.
