Town Reaches $10.5 Million Settlement With GE Vernova Over Vineyard Wind Blade Failure
GE Vernova will pay the town of Nantucket and island businesses $10.5 million as part of a settlement related to the offshore wind turbine blade failure in July 2024 at the Vineyard Wind farm.
The town announced the settlement Friday morning with GE Vernova, the manufacturer of the Haliade-X turbine that failed, nearly one year since the 300-foot-long blade collapsed 15 miles southwest of the island, littering Nantucket beaches with debris and scattering fiberglass and foam around the region.
Under the agreement, Nantucket will establish a “Community Claims Fund” to provide compensation for economic harm caused by the blade failure. Nantucket will engage an independent third-party administrator to evaluate claims from local businesses and issue payments.
Notably, Vineyard Wind itself is not a signatory to the settlement agreement.
“The Town of Nantucket commends GE Vernova for its leadership in reaching this agreement. By contrast, the Town has found Vineyard Wind wanting in terms of its leadership, accountability, transparency, and stewardship in the aftermath of the blade failure and determined that it would not accept Vineyard Wind as a signatory to the settlement,” the town stated Friday morning.
Despite this statement, Section 4 of the settlement appears to release Vineyard Wind from all liability related to the 2024 blade incident, even though it did not sign the agreement.
The town of Nantucket remains a partner with Vineyard Wind in the “Good Neighbor Agreement,” signed in August 2020, that provided cash to the town in exchange for its support of the offshore wind project and other concessions, some of which have yet to be realized.
GE Vernova had previously cited a manufacturing deviation at its plant in Gaspé, Canada, as the cause of the blade failure. Vineyard Wind is now in the process of removing more than 60 defective blades which had already been installed at the wind farm that came from the Canadian plant.
“Offshore wind may bring benefits, but it also carries risks—to ocean health, to historic landscapes, and to the economies of coastal communities like Nantucket, known worldwide as an environmental and cultural treasure,” Nantucket Select Board chair Brooke Mohr stated.
Three law firms represented the town during the negotiations over the past year that led to the settlement, including town counsel KP Law, the South Carolina-based law firm Wyche, along with its counsel for offshore wind matters, Cultural Heritage Partners, which brokered the original Good Neighbor Agreement with Vineyard Wind on behalf of the town. The litigation and dispute consulting firm Stout also advised the town on the settlement.
Read the full settlement agreement here
“Federal law limits localities’ influence in the design and approval of offshore wind projects, but communities have rights when it comes to safe operations of the farms,” stated Greg Werkheiser, of Cultural Heritage Partners.
After the town selects an independent third-party administrator to manage the “Community Claims Fund,” that firm will be tasked with developing protocols and setting up a six-month period in which businesses and individuals that suffered losses as a result of the blade failure can “submit evidence of any costs or losses.”
Those impacts can include clean-up costs and typical business losses such as lost rental profits less tax liability “that are reasonably attributable to the turbine blade failure,” the town announced.
This is a developing story that will be updated.