A broken turbine blade on one of the Vineyard Wind generators shed more fiberglass material into the water 15 miles off Nantucket, Mass., prompting project CEO Klaus Skoust Møller to abruptly leave a tense meeting with the island community Wednesday evening.
In the midst of the meeting with the Nantucket Select Board carried online via Zoom, Møller apologized that he had to leave to deal with “a development to the integrity of the blade” that had been hanging off turbine AW38 since its initial failure July 13.
“Folks this is the definition of crisis management,” said board chair Brooke Mohr, instructing Møller to report back to the board later. “Things change by the minute.”
Vineyard Wind officials issued a statement soon after.
“This evening there was an observed compromise to the integrity of the GE Vernova blade. While part of the blade remains attached to the turbine, we believe there is an increased possibility it could detach soon. There has been a 500-meter safety zone implemented around the turbine and GE Vernova blade since Saturday night, and it has been under constant surveillance.
“We have mobilized our response team and have also witnessed new debris enter the water. Vineyard Wind is in the process of notifying the U.S. Coast Guard, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the National Response Center, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, Tribal nations, Regional Emergency Planning Committees for Dukes and Barnstable Counties, the Town of Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and surrounding coastal communities.”
At 11:12 a.m. Thursday the Coast Guard issued a new safety bulletin, advising mariners that a piece of debris reported at about 300’ long had been reported.
The Nantucket Select Board Wednesday meeting was a session to update cleanup efforts on the island’s south beaches, where fiberglass and foam fragments from the splintered turbine blade prompted beach closures Monday and Tuesday.
It was a sounding board too for island residents and businesses to talk about how the incident was affecting them.
Nantucket charter boat captain Bobby DeCosta said he piloted through the turbine array early Sunday in “black fog” and unable to see any debris that would have been floating on the surface.
“Any given day, there’s as much as 30 boats that come out of Nantucket and go in that direction,” DeCosta told board members. “If they had called the town on Sunday morning, Sheila (Lucey, the Nantucket harbormaster) would have notified the charter fleet and we would have notified the recreational fleet, and we could have potentially avoided any kind of disaster, Thank God nobody hit anything.”
