Amid media reports last week about the collapse of a giant wind turbine blade at the Vineyard Wind 1 project off the coast of Massachusetts, little attention was paid to the fact that the blade in question was a replacement, necessitated by damage to another blade during installation.
While the first blade was safely removed without causing a catastrophic contamination incident, the same cannot be said for the replacement blade.
The failure of the replacement blade scattered dangerous fragments of blade filler, including fiberglass shards, into the Atlantic Ocean. Not only has the debris caused the closure of Nantucket beaches and forced the shutdown of Vineyard Wind's fishing operations, but many observers have expressed concern that the fiberglass fragments pose a danger to whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals, some of which are covered by the Endangered Species Act.
Jerry Lehman, CEO, New England Fisheries Management Association He told the Cape Cod Times “Non-biodegradable fiberglass debris poses a major threat to endangered whales, dolphins and porpoises. Fiberglass nanoparticles can also enter the food chain when zooplankton mistake the particles for food. This slow-growing disaster is a serious threat to the sustainability of our fisheries.”
Amy DiSibio of ACK for Whales echoed Lehman's concerns: To tell“There's still a lot of debris on the beach, which means we're not going to be able to salvage it all. What I'm more concerned about is the long-term impact on the fish and food chain here… Are we all going to be eating this?”
One of the reasons the cleanup crews are working on the difficult task for days is the sheer amount of insulation in the giant Vineyard Wind blades, which sit atop a tower nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower. Length: 107 metersroughly the length of a standard football field. It's hard to imagine the size of these things from the distance that most residents experience. When you see them up close, you're stunned by their sheer scale.
Meanwhile, Vineyard Wind 1 spokespeople have tried hard to shift the blame for the environmental disaster onto the manufacturer, GE Burnova. Initial Environmental Analysis This week, the company claimed the blades are made of “inert, non-soluble, stable and non-toxic” material, similar to materials found in the “textile, shipbuilding and aviation industries.” The report further noted that the material is “considered non-hazardous and classified for landfill disposal upon disposal.”
The report makes no mention of Nantucket residents' concerns about swimmers getting cut by fiberglass debris, nor does it address Lehman and DiSibio's concerns about harm to marine life, which only adds to existing concerns in the region about a surge in beachings of whales and other marine mammals as development begins on a large industrial wind project.
The blade that caused this damage and anxiety is just one of thousands the Biden-Harris administration wants to subsidize and install in the Northeast Atlantic alone. This is in addition to a similar goal for the central Gulf of Mexico, to place these giant blades in the middle of what the administration itself calls a “superhighway,” a migratory bird corridor where millions of birds of hundreds of species migrate each year.
Fortunately, the first Gulf Coast lease sale Dismal failure There was little interest from qualified bidders. A second sale proposed earlier this year it was cancelled There's little interest, so for now, at least, migratory birds are safe from the devastating effects of wind farm projects.
It's important to point out here that these controversies and concerns would not have arisen in the Northeast without the massive green subsidies contained in the following two bills, which are the Biden-Harris Administration's main legislative achievements: Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act Passed in 2021, Orwellian Inflation Control Law The 2022 bill was passed by both houses of Congress on strictly party-line votes.
All of this makes me nostalgic for the good old days when Democrats at least pretended to care about the environment and endangered species. Those were the good old days.
David Blackmon is a Texas-based energy writer and consultant who worked in the oil and gas industry for 40 years and specializes in public policy and communications.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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