Tribe in Martha’s Vineyard asks for moratorium on offshore wind after blade disintegration incident

The Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, is asking the Biden administration to pause offshore wind developments after a blade disintegrated and spread debris across beaches of the island. 

In the July 18 letter to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which is under the Department of the Interior, Aquinnah Wampanoag Chairwoman Cheryl Andrews-Maltais expressed “strong concerns and outrage,” over the impacts of the debris, according to the MV Times. 

Aquinnah is a town on the western end of Matha’s Vineyard. 

Andrews-Maltais requested that the moratorium be put in place until further studies can be done on the impact of offshore wind farm construction. The Times reported that her letter raised issues with the potential for serious health consequences to the “delicate marine ecosystem.” 

“The presence of fiberglass fragments in the water poses a threat to shellfish, which are a crucial part of both the marine food web and also ingested by humans.The potential contamination of shellfish with fiberglass and other materials could have severe consequences for human consumption and public health,” Andrews Maltais wrote. 

Last week, styrofoam and fiberglass debris washed up on the beaches of Martha’s Vineyard when a turbine from Vineyard Wind broke apart, the Nantucket Current reported. The blade is 351 feet long and weighs over 57 tons. Each of the 62 turbines in the first phase of the project contains three such blades.