Nantucket officials announced that the cleanup began on Sunday to remove part of the Vineyard Wind broken turbine blade that sank to the ocean floor earlier this summer.
According to a statement from the town, GE Vernova — contractors working with Vineyard Wind — informed select board chair Brooke Mohr that the recovery began Sunday, and an additional vessel would be deployed to remove any smaller fragments that could break off during the cleanup.
“We will continue to keep the community informed as the recovery operation progresses,” the town’s statement reads.
The cleanup follows the fracture of a blade at the Vineyard Wind site in July that has been blamed on poor bonding at a manufacturing plant in Canada. When the blade originally fractured, debris made up of foam and fiberglass eventually washed ashore on Nantucket beaches and, to a much lesser extent, on Vineyard beaches as well. A large part of the blade was dangling from the turbine tower before it was removed, and fell to the ocean floor.
A spokesperson with GE Vernova confirmed on Tuesday that work was ongoing.
“We continue to implement the Blade Incident Response and Action Plan that we shared in August, which included our plans to address seabed debris,” a spokesperson said in a prepared statement. “There are multiple components of this plan, and our teams continue to focus on prioritizing safety and quality in collaboration with our customer and all relevant authorities as we execute the Action Plan.”
Vernova confirmed that a 250-foot vessel, HOS Mystique, arrived onsite and has begun efforts to collect subsea debris.
In early August, Vineyard Wind outlined the cleanup process, which is being led by a Florida-based salvage company, Resolve Marine. The blade removal operation included removing the root of the blade from the hub, removing fallen debris, and addressing seabed debris.
News of the cleanup came just a few days after the Nantucket select board released a statement underlining its concerns with Vineyard Wind, and stating a commitment to hold the developers accountable.
The town said that it is hiring a “nationally recognized damages expert” to evaluate the harm to Nantucket’s environment and economy; it is soliciting information from residents, business owners, and members of the fishing industry to understand economic losses; and its researching the “likelihood of future turbine failures and the potential costs involved.”
The town is also said that it is negotiating directly with the developers and government officials responsible for additions to a community benefit agreement reached prior to construction. The town is requesting improved communications and protocols for reporting future technology failures.
The town is demanding compensation from Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova, and the creation of future safeguards. The town also announced that it is collaborating with the state to require the federal Bureau of Safety and Environment Enforcement to assess any future environmental issues from the development.
“While our community is committed to doing our part to address climate change, we have had to confront the very real and lasting adverse impacts of offshore wind development,” a statement from Mohr from Oct. 9 reads. “The turbine blade failure contaminated our coastal waters, restricted access to our beaches, negatively impacted our local businesses, and has required months of focused attention to the aftermath, which continues unabated. Our entire community has felt the repercussions of the turbine failure.”
I wish the town well and hope that they are successful in getting these foreign companies to pay and stop them from harming our environment while enriching their bank accounts off the backs of the american tax payer.
How have they harmed the environment?
How many gallons of goo have they spilled?
Burned?
How many American tax dollars have the gone to foreign companies?
Dates and payees?
If you don’t really know just make it up.
Like saying that China going to paying a 200% import duty.
China is still going to get $400 for a good TV.
Americans will be paying $1200.
I’m a wind energy proponent. I don’t object to wind turbines off our shores provided that they are safe, effective and not a visual blight. But the impact of those blinking lights at night is appalling. That needs to be addressed immediately. Dont make me regret my decision to support this project.
Carla – I appreciate your honesty here. All too often proponents and opponents of OSW are so dug in , that they refuse admit benefits or faults with these projects.
I’m an opponent of these projects but I also understand the need for alternative sources of energy.
Being objective is much better than just objecting.
Carla — I agree about the lights– they are really appaling.
As soon as construction is complete and turbines
are certified for use, the Aircraft Detection lighting Systems
(ADLS) systems will become operational. They are already in place
and just need to be turned on to turn the lights off.
The FAA is the final sign off for them. The entire project
does not need to be completed for some of the lights
to be turned off. Before the blade failure, VW 1 was days away from having
their first set of lights turned off.The lights will go off eventually –but not until
phases of construction are complete.Construction delays for any reason
prolong the agony. The blade failure is an important factor, and needs to be fully
addressed before they become operational.
ADLS systems have been in
use on offshore wind farms in European waters for years
with excellent results.
Note that on page 3 of this link it estimates
that the lights will be on for less than 4 hours a year.
https://www.boem.gov/sites/default/files/documents/renewable-energy/state-activities/App_S4%20ADLS%20Oct%202020.pdf
Don- why did VW1 pledge to have the ADLS system up and running by labor day 2024 if they knew they couldn’t turn it on until project was completed?, they certainly knew the completion date was much further down the road. They can’t blame it on the blade delay , as that happened well after memorial day.
Its just more deceptive lip service that VW1 continues to serve up.
Just like we’d only see them on the clearest of days ,with people who have good vision ( the times ran an article about it) BOEM had it in their plan , that they would be visible, so why did VW1 tell us otherwise?
Deceiving the public is bad look in my opinion.
https://www.mvtimes.com/2024/09/25/vineyard-winds-nighttime-lights-still-visible/
They did their part, they had it up and running.
They do not control the government.
The government controls them.
Vineyard did not deceive you.
You were unaware of the facts.
They need to be in someone else’s backyard.
The blinking lights cost money.
They are federally mandated.
Like the Island’s airport and radio towers.
So you want them to remove the lights to make them invisible to air traffic, commercial fisherman, and recreational boaters at night…?
You’re essentially saying,
‘I want bikers on the road at night to remove their reflectors because it’s appalling to people driving.’
So you want people to be seriously injured or die? Got it
I hope that in the future, Martha’s Vineyard could be included in this on going investigation and support from government watch guards to keep us all safe from profit greed.
The towns were paid. They agreed to everything upfront.
Conversely, had this been an oil spill , and clean up efforts took the better part of 3 months to begin , then everyone would be in an absolute uproar!
I understand that my analogy is not apples to apples but seriously VW1 could have done a lot better with their PR communication and response/retrieval teams.
I’ve yet to receive a response email from VW1 in regards to location and ongoing efforts to retrieve the broken blade.
Honesty and transparency should be paramount in this situation, as the subject is extremely controversial.
VW1 could have done much better in my opinion.
Jason–I agree entirely about the transparency issue.
But I do recall there was a clean up effort going on
within days of the incident. Yes, it has taken 3 months
to begin the operation to retrieve the sunken blade,
but that is just one part of the clean up, and the
submerged blade is not contributing to any
ongoing environmental damage. I wonder how
many fiberglass boats and ships are on the ocean
floor with gas tanks and bilge oil that aren’t even
being looked for, let alone even considering to be raised.
I also agree with you about your analogy of apples to apples.
Pretty bad to compare a piece of styrofoam and fiberglass
to an oil spill.
The Buzzards Bay Tank Barge spill took years to clean up, it is still oozing.
Jason, is there any scenario where VW will meet with your approval?
The clean up was complete in weeks.
We are still cleaning up the Buzzards Bay oil spill.
We could all do better.
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