July 30, 2024
Debris from another portion of the broken wind turbine blade off the coast of Nantucket is expected to wash ashore on the island’s southern beaches on Wednesday and Thursday.
Town officials broke the development Tuesday afternoon while Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff visited the island to attend a presidential campaign fundraiser for his wife Kamala Harris.
The announcement came after GE Vernova informed town officials Monday that “several sections” of the already broken 351-foot turbine blade detached from the turbine, with some large pieces entering the water column and other smaller pieces floating on the surface.
“I hope while he’s here he takes a look around, talks to people, and maybe brings back the message that we should at the very least shut them down until we get some real answers,” Nantucket resident Amy DiSibio said of Emhoff’s visit in an interview with the Herald.
DiSibio was referring to the island’s desire for the feds to completely shut down the Vineyard Wind project, which has left Nantucket a debris mess since the blade failure sparked on July 13.
GE Vernova, the designer, manufacturer, and installer of the turbines, said last week that the failure stemmed from a “manufacturing deviation – in this case, insufficient bonding.”
The vague description and uncertainty surrounding the blade failure’s impacts have residents worried and searching for answers, said DiSibio, a member of the ACK4Whales group fighting the project.
“According to GE Vernova, this detachment was not unexpected, though it has been several days since any debris detachment was last observed’ town officials wrote in a Monday evening update.
The Biden-Harris administration’s quick approval of Vineyard Wind – an anticipated 62-turbine, 806-megawatt wind farm – is the subject of a dispute in Boston federal appeals court with two fishermen groups trying to toss the project’s underlying permit and arguing regulators failed to analyze the development’s impacts.
A month after Biden and Harris took office, the administration decided to restart permitting for the $4-billion Vineyard Wind endeavor. The Trump administration delayed the process due to concerns turbines would negatively impact commercial fishing.
Emhoff was an honored guest at an island fundraising event hosted by Laura DeBonis, a business and nonprofit technical consultant who previously worked for Google, and Ken Jarin, a partner at a Washington, D.C. law firm, according to the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror.
The New England Fisherman’s Stewardship Association highlighted in a release how Vineyard Wind is a beneficiary of the Inflation Reduction Action, which the group called “the signature domestic policy achievement of the Biden-Harris administration.”
Vineyard Wind in October 2023 was backed by a $1.2 billion investment transaction between its parent companies Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Avangrid, a member of Spanish renewable energy company, Iberdrola Group.
“We have people in positions who are disconnected with what our resources and waters provide,” NEFA CEO Jerry Leeman told the Herald. “It’s becoming more and more blatantly obvious. We’ve got a lot of assumptions and not enough facts and when things like this happen we’re over here playing the blame game.”
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