An ‘unusual and rare’ wind turbine failure is littering Nantucket beaches with debris, angering locals

Debris from a broken offshore wind turbine has for days been washing up on the Nantucket shore, prompting beach closures and frustrating locals at the peak of the summer season.

The massive turbine blade – as long as a football field – was part of the Vineyard Wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts and its islands, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. The blade was “broken” and “folded over” on Saturday, Vineyard Wind CEO Klaus Skoust Møller told Nantucket residents and officials at a public meeting Wednesday night.

Since then, foam debris and fiberglass – including some large and dangerously sharp pieces – have washed onto beaches. A “significant part” of the remaining damaged blade detached from the turbine early Thursday morning, Vineyard Wind said in a news release. The US Coast Guard confirmed to CNN it has located a 300-foot piece of the blade.

There are few answers to what caused the turbine to fail, and the incident has prompted questions and anger from city officials and Nantucket residents.

Speaking to the public on Wednesday, top company officials from Vineyard Wind and wind blade manufacturer GE Vernova promised they were investigating.

A wind turbine breaking is “highly unusual and rare,” Roger Martella, head of government affairs at GE Vernova, said Wednesday. Martella couldn’t provide officials with the precise number of times something similar has happened at other wind farms around the world.

A GE Vernova spokesperson said in a statement the company was “working with urgency to complete our root cause analysis of this event.”

Nantucket select board chair Brooke Mohr said the meeting with officials left her with the impression that it could take months to figure out why it happened.

“Our knowing what happened is critical for us to assess our risk and plan for the future,” Mohr told CNN.

The shards of turbine forced officials to close beaches earlier this week, though they have since reopened. Mohr said the town would monitor for additional debris and adjust schedules accordingly.

“Public safety is our most immediate concern, these fiberglass pieces are quite sharp,” Mohr said, making swimming unsafe.

No Vineyard Wind workers were injured and no boats were damaged in the breakage, Møller said Wednesday. But he called it a “very serious situation” and apologized to residents for the impacts.

The federal government is conducting its own investigation and has ordered Vineyard Wind to stop all its wind turbines producing electricity until it can be determined whether any other blades were impacted, a Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement spokesperson said in a statement. The federal government has also ordered the companies to preserve any equipment that could help determine the cause of the failure.

The federal suspension order effectively halts further construction on Vineyard Wind, the first large-scale wind farm being installed in the US. The wind farm, a joint venture of Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, has 10 turbines up and running so far with plans to install 62 total.

The broken turbine is a major setback to the project, which had been seen as a bright spot for the struggling US offshore wind industry. Hampered by inflation, long wait times for parts and accusations of environmental harm, US offshore wind has been in a slump for years.

Energy analysts recently pointed to signs of momentum in the industry, including Vineyard Wind coming online. The project was set to double the number of turbines spinning off the East Coast, and state leaders in Massachusetts have viewed it as a big boost to the state’s ability to generate electricity.

Now the project is in limbo, and could remain so until the investigation is complete.

Nantucket town officials questioned the lack of discussion of the risk posed by wind turbines breaking, compared to discussions about visual impacts or potential risks to marine life.

“Personally, I never contemplated something like this, it just never occurred to me that we were at risk of this situation,” Mohr told CNN.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com