Pro-Whales Group ACK for Whales Urges Revocation of Vineyard Wind Project

NANTUCKET, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ACK for Whales, the non-profit grassroots Nantucket group leading the fight against offshore wind turbines, said Monday it has asked U.S. Secretary of the Interior Douglas Burgum to reopen the permit approvals for the Vineyard Wind project to review significant gaps in the process, and to revoke the permits.

When Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) in January 2025 granted Vineyard Wind’s Revised Construction and Operations Plan (COP), it failed to consider or discuss the threat of turbine blade breaks or lightning strikes on turbines, two problems that have beset Vineyard Wind’s construction, ACK For Whales said in its letter.

Last July, a blade snapped on a Vineyard Wind turbine off Nantucket, strewing 70 tons of jagged and potentially toxic blade shards from Cape Cod to Montauk Point in New York. In 2025, the same turbine was struck by lightning and further damaged.

“BOEM consistently ignored data throughout the permitting process because it was rushing to carry out the partisan agenda of it political overlords,” said ACK for Whales President Vallorie Oliver. “Even after the blade failure last year and subsequent confirmation of the same untested Haliade X blades failing elsewhere, BOEM doubled down and rushed its approval, failing again to do its job properly.”

As the letter to Burgum notes,

More than 36% of wind turbines fail less than three times; however, most wind turbines suffered five to nine failures during observation. As such, turbine failure is a well established problem. The revised COP does not appear to examine the possibility that regular turbine failure events have the capacity to introduce significant environmental degradation (i.e., marine debris, which can invariably deleteriously affect both sea and land, inter alia). These new “significant effects” could warrant a supplemental environmental assessment or environmental impact statement. The revised COP and approval letter notes that certain conditions were added, but does not indicate that analysis beyond the original Environmental Impact Statement’s scope…

“It is apparent that grave analytical deficiencies exist in the revised COP and the underlying federal permit approvals for Vineyard Wind 1, among those include the failure to prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement to assess the impacts of blade failures,” said Thomas Stavola Jr. Esq., attorney for ACK for Whales.

BOEM also did not analyze the causes of the blade failure – as was required. – BOEM did not make clear whether the revised COP was as specific as federal rules demand, and did not solicit or consider adequate public comment, the letter says.

“We’ve asked the government for months to answer our questions,” Oliver said, “but they continually stall. Although they finally agreed to hold a public meeting, they delayed and then postponed that meeting indefinitely, despite receiving hundreds of questions from concerned citizens.”

“Not only was the public ignored in the approval process for the revised COP, but there was also no public notice whatsoever until the approval announcement was made in a press release,” Oliver said. “We hope Secretary Burgum will direct the agencies to take a hard look at this environmentally unsound and unsafe project.”

About ACK for Whales

ACK for Whales is a group of Nantucket community members who are concerned about the negative impacts of offshore wind development off the south shores of our beloved Island. The Massachusetts/Rhode Island wind area is bigger than the state of Rhode Island and will ultimately be occupied by 2,400 turbines, each taller than the John Hancock building in Boston, connected by thousands of miles of high voltage cables. There are many unanswered questions, and the permitting of these massive utility projects has happened largely out of the public eye. We provide a community group of neighbors and friends, who all love the same place.