Reposted with permission from Legal Insurrection
I am continuing to keep an eye on the Vineyard Farms offshore blade failure near Nantucket. A few weeks ago the facility was closed because of the failure of Vineyard Wind’s newly installed wind turbines, and the city was poised to sue.
After one blade failed and ended up in the water, the beaches were cluttered with sharp fiberglass shards, which is a sub-optimum condition at the height of the summer tourist season. Continuing investigation into the cause of this environmental contamination incident determined that a manufacturing flaw in the blade was responsible for the failure.
Now this weekend, a “flotilla” of about two dozen commercial and recreational fishing vessels steamed to the wind farm on Sunday to protest offshore wind development.
The vessels, hoisting anti-offshore wind flags and blasting air horns, departed early Sunday morning from ports in New Bedford, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Rhode Island and along the Cape, converging at about noon on the site of the crippled Vineyard Wind turbine.
“The blade collapse was an eye-opener to a lot of people who before didn’t know that offshore wind is a disaster for the ocean,” said Shawn Machie, 54, who is captain of the New Bedford scalloper F/V Capt. John.
…The “flotilla” protest was organized by the New England Fisherman’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA). Plans kicked into gear when Dan Pronk, captain of lobster boat F/V Black Earl, was collecting turbine debris that had washed up on the shores of Nantucket. He called Machie and other New England fishermen who said they felt they had to “do something before it’s too late,” Machie said.
“We feel like our jobs are just accepted as collateral damage,” Machie said. “We are regulated for sustainability. And that makes sense. We need regulation. But offshore wind is allowed to kill fish and wreck nurseries without any manageable stopping point.”
The protesters indicate the impact on their industry will be more significant than many appreciate…because they can’t trawl on former fishing grounds.
Otto Osmers, a commercial fisherman from Martha’s Vineyard, made the journey from Menemsha at 7 am on Sunday, arriving at the Vineyard Wind site around 10:30 am. Osmers conceded that offshore wind projects like Vineyard Wind can block trawling and crab trap routes, but had other concerns about the project. “The ocean is one of the last undeveloped places on earth,” he remarked about the sight of so many large turbines peppering the horizon. “We put cables down there but it’s largely undeveloped. It’s sad to see that go away.”
Others were more passionate in their displeasure. Sue Zarba, who along with her husband John who fish recreationally, said seeing the scale of the turbines was emotional. “That was the first time I was up close to the turbines, and I was sobbing,” she said in an interview after the protest. “After you’ve seen this offshore wind farm, you cannot unsee it. Soon over one thousand acres just off the coast will be filled with turbines. We will never be able to undo this man-made environmental disaster.”
“This cannot continue because that’s where we fish,” said Zarba. “They’re developing on a tuna fishing ground. You can’t fish around turbines, you can’t trawl.” She added that her son, who attended the protest, was initially skeptical of her protesting but changed his mind once he saw the turbines.
However, their protests are being met with a deaf ear. The National Marine Fisheries Service issued a new biological opinion for flagship offshore wind project Vineyard that finds no adverse effects to endangered whales and other marine wildlife stemming from driving the array’s last 15 monopiles.
“It will have no effect on any designated critical habitat,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries said in a statement. “NOAA Fisheries does not anticipate serious injuries to or mortalities of any ESA-listed whale including the North Atlantic right whale.” The agency said that with mitigation measures, “all effects to North Atlantic right whales will be limited to temporary behavioral disturbance.”
In conclusion, the fishermen are doing the work that environmentalists used to do.
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Who is getting paid off to allow this travesty to continue? Once again, NOAA fisheries proves that those in government positions seldom have a clue what’s going on. Or don’t care. More likely the latter.
They care about their paychecks that would be in jeopardy if they failed to follow the narrative and actually took note of the massive assaults on marine mammals and other fisheries.
The federal and state fisheries biologists probably don’t like it but they aren’t going to risk their groovy jobs by saying so.
Wind and solar are not a substitute for fossil fuel and nuclear. Fire up all fossil fuel and nuclear generators, build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators. Remove all wind and solar from the grid.
About the only way to undo this is to change Presidents, and elect a Republican congress. For what ever reason, the Democrats have drunk the Climate Change KoolAid, and are beyond reason.
The problem with the left is that too many Far Left extremotards have infested the party driving the left side so far left that even moderate lefts look centrist and centrist lefts look right
Here’s a good example.
The case for Donald Trump | Cenk Uygur and Lex Fridman
I disagree: They are communists and are continually working towards Total Control. (I do not disagree that they “are beyond reason”… Reason is a foreign concept to them.
Went to The Vineyard Gazette to read what the locals have said about the
turbine failure and the construction of the wind farms==========>
https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2024/07/18/vineyard-wind-project-shut-down-over-broken-blade-setback
The comments at the end were enlightening, at least to me. For a hardcore flyfishing
enthusiast such as myself the Vineyard is as good as it gets. The fishery along the Cape
is a national treasure and the wind farms are going to impact the fishery significantly especially
when a major hurricane hits..
And this is only the beginning since Wokeachusetts has a net zero law. They’ll have to build many thousands of wind turbines to arrive at net zero nirvana. The enviros and greens here no longer care for large solar “farms” on land- nor industrial battery systems. They do call for putting solar on every building and parking lot, but that won’t amount to much. So, the ocean will bare the burden of this climate lunacy. Meanwhile, we’re close to a vast amount of shale gas in NY state but the government there won’t allow it.
Brainwashing en masse. It defies logic. No gas pipelines but cargos of LNG
are OK. The men who commercially fish are multi generational. If they are
taken out there will be no replacements in the future, Very serious stuff.
Wokeachusetts is now a hot bed of LGBT+, DEI and ESG- off the charts.
Sad–I haven’t been back there for a long time but everyone I knew back
then were all salt of the earth types, really great folks.
Our area in MT has doubled in population recently, lots west coast transplants. Everyone I’ve met moved out for a reason. The radical’s will fail, hopefully soon.
Such good people are still here but they’re not politically savvy. They lay low while the crazies took over.
Do those from Kalifornia bring heir Newsome-love [and politics, and watermelon-destruction] to Massachusetts?
Asking for a friend, Auto
That’s a good question, I’m in Montana and that question will be
answered this fall by the election. The race to watch is the senate
race between Tester and Sheehy. I hope Sheehy wins.
There’s some liberals in some of the larger towns. Newsome has a large ranch property in the Bitterroot Valley.
Not only will the ocean “bare the burden”… it will also bear the burden…😎 lol
Claims about forever impacts are pretty exaggerated. Oceans dissolve everything. The steel parts will be gone a few decades after the maintenance stops.
Maybe the cement bases, the only part left after a few decades, will eventually turn into good spots for recreational fishing, but they aren’t going to help the trawling. They’ll probably define many areas that use to be wind farms as off-limits to trawling.
Yep . . . long-live concrete!
Many WWII military construction sites used huge amounts of concrete both on tidal shorelines and underwater, from Norway to the South Pacific, and other than some limited spalling and rusting of exposed iron rebar (in the case of reinforced concrete), well-made concrete is rather immune to the ravages of salt water/salt air exposure at any reasonable temperature, including below freezing. We’re talking here about continuous exposures in excess of 80 years.
For a prime, earlier example of the durability of concrete (albeit not in a saltwater environment) look to Hoover Dam in the US, a concrete arch-gravity dam constructed in 1936, and still as structurally sound as when it was formed.
Continuing investigation into the cause of this environmental contamination incident determined that a manufacturing flaw in the blade was responsible for the failure.
What else could it possibly have been? A hurricane….global warmening…ocean acidification…a lack of DEI at the factory…….?
Probably not a lack of DEI at the factory. Competence and expertise (meritocracy) is not part of THAT plan.
Those guys fishing for trouble, or what?
Anything that the DemocRATS touch turns to $hit.Anyone who believes this BS about global warming,climate change should be certified as a mental midget.For the last 40 years they have been telling us we are doomed,but NONE of their predictions has EVER eventualized.WHY??????
Wind turbine technology evolution is diverging quickly between China and the rest of the world | | Wood Mackenzie
The financial risks from wind turbine failures: a value at risk approach (tandfonline.com)
Wind turbine failure rates are rising – has the industry gone too big, too fast? | RenewEconomy
So naturally wind turbine manufacturers want to derisk with any guarantees/warranty and ultimately look to power consumers to be the test guinea pigs via dopey climate changers in a political hurry to get them up and save the planet. What could possibly go wrong for power consumers?
“all effects to North Atlantic right whales will be limited to temporary behavioral disturbance.”
How does one define temporary in this context?