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NEW BEDFORD — Efforts began on Sunday to retrieve a large piece of a 350-foot turbine blade that broke off and sank to the ocean floor at the Vineyard Wind project in July.
Nantucket town officials said GE Vernova informed them at around 4 p.m. Sunday that the salvage work had begun earlier that day.
“In addition to the vessel tasked with retrieving the larger pieces of debris, an additional vessel has been deployed to recover any smaller fragments that may break off during the process,” says the town’s press release.
Nautical charts show waters near the faulty turbine are about 150 feet deep (or roughly half as deep as the blade is long). A time lapse on a vessel-tracking website showed about a dozen vessels — including high-speed craft and commercial fishing boats possibly serving as site guards — darting in or nearby the wind farm throughout Sunday. The tracker showed far less vessel activity Monday through the afternoon.
Some vessels that were near the faulty turbine, AW38, including the Cade Candies and the HOS Mystique (which arrived from Virginia), have been equipped with cranes, photos show. Trackers showed them in the bottom portion of the wind farm, near AW38.
It is unclear as of Monday whether any major pieces have been removed from the ocean bottom, or if the work to do so is still in the early stages.
A GE Vernova spokesperson on Monday declined to answer questions, stating by email that the company will continue to follow the steps of a plan released in August. “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,” the spokesperson said.
Vineyard Wind did not respond to questions on Monday, a federal holiday.
In August, Vineyard Wind announced that Resolve Marine, based in Florida, would undertake the salvage work. The company was involved in the response to the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster in Maryland earlier this year. Resolve Marine declined comment, citing a confidentiality agreement with its clients.
Vineyard Wind’s plan stated that all tasks, including the seabed debris removal, would occur “under close supervision” of the federal regulators.
The U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement enforces environmental compliance for energy projects along the outer continental shelf, including Vineyard Wind. BSEE did not respond to a request for comment Monday on the salvage operations.
BSEE officials have been conducting their own investigation, separate from that undertaken by the developer, to determine what caused the blade failure in July and if other blades are affected.
To date, GE Vernova has publicly shared the failure was due to a manufacturing defect from a blade produced at its factory in Gaspé, Quebec, specifically “insufficient bonding” or adhesive, which holds the two halves of the blade together.
Blades for the project have been shipped from factories in Canada and France, but it is unclear how many have come from each. Previous remarks from GE Vernova said a “vast majority” of the blades for the project are from Canada.
Earlier this month, The Light was the first news outlet to report that the project is shipping at least two blades from the Port of New Bedford to Cherbourg, France, where GE has its other blade manufacturing facility. The vessel carrying the blades, the Rolldock Sun, is due in Cherbourg as early as Wednesday.
Neither Vineyard Wind nor GE Vernova has responded to questions from The Light about why the wind project — which spends considerable time and money shipping major components from Canada and France into the U.S. — would ship blades overseas from New Bedford.
Over the weekend, a local French news outlet, La Presse de la Manche in Cherbourg, reported on the GE blades coming to the Port of Cherbourg, with the headline asking why blades made in Canada are coming to the port. The article asked a question others have been wondering: are those blades defective?
The outlet stated six blades were headed to the port. Only two blades were visible in New Bedford atop the Rolldock Sun as it exited the harbor on Oct. 4.
Email Anastasia E. Lennon at alennon@newbedfordlight.org
Is this being done responsibly?
Why are they really shipping those blades to France?
They should remain here and be inspected by Americans.
The windfarm area is fairly well covered with security cameras, so the idea that the blade was damaged by an overzealous individual with a boat, has been cautiously discounted. And yet, a high velocity object, be it a drone or projectile, could have inflicted the incursion at a distance, outside of specific camera range. The location of the damaged turbine is in an area of greater access. Now the question is, who would not want this windfarm to be a success?
Creatines.
How will these blades perform during a hurricane? Will they break off in the storm?