In the Atlantic ocean south of Massachusetts, 10 wind turbine towers, each 500 feet tall, stand stripped of their rotary blades. Stuck in this bald state due to the Trump administration’s halt on offshore wind construction, the towers are susceptible to lightning strikes and water damage. This makes them a potential threat to public safety, according to previously unreported court filings from the project developer, Vineyard Wind.
The company filed for an injunction against Trump’s stop work order last week. The order posed a unique threat to Vineyard Wind, as the project is 95% complete and its contract with a key construction boat is set to expire on March 31, the filing said. “If construction is not completed by that date, the partially completed wind turbines will be left in an unsafe condition and Vineyard Wind will incur a series of financial consequences that it likely could not survive,” the company wrote.
One of the final tasks the company was working on was replacing faulty blades on nearly two dozen turbine towers. In July 2024, one of the installed blades snapped in two, sending fiberglass and other debris crashing into the sea and eventually onto the beaches of Nantucket. The incident revealed a manufacturing defect at the Canadian factory where the blades were made. After multiple investigations into the incident, the company reached an agreement with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement to replace the defective equipment with blades produced at a different factory in France.
Trump’s construction freeze contained an exception for activities “necessary to respond to emergency situations and/or to prevent impacts to health, safety, and the environment.” So after the order came down on December 22, Vineyard Wind reached out to the relevant regulators and asked permission to continue its blade replacement process on safety grounds, the company explained in court filings. BSEE responded that the company could remove the faulty blades on the 10 remaining towers, but could not replace them.
The decision highlights an apparent double standard in the administration’s considerations of public safety. The stop work order itself was intended to “protect the American people,” according to Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum. Yet the agency has refused to let construction move forward to mitigate risks created by the stoppage.
Testimony submitted by Steven Simkins, Vineyard Wind’s Wind turbine team lead, describes the dangers of leaving the towers bladeless for an extended period of time — a risk compounded by the ticking clock on the company’s construction boat contract. “The wind turbine was designed to be constructed completely and only be in a hammerhead state, without blades, for a brief amount of time during installation,” Simkins wrote.
He warned of three main liabilities. First, the towers are equipped with a lightning protection system, but the system’s receptors and conductors extend along the blades. Without the blades, the towers are essentially lightning rods, at risk of igniting an electrical fire, Simkins explained.
The three giant holes where the blades would be installed are also sitting open, with tarps covering them as temporary protection. That means that water, ice, and humidity could get into the nacelle, the top part of the tower that houses all of the electrical and mechanical systems, which are not designed to weather this kind of exposure. “Not only will this lead to prolonged offshore work replacing damaged equipment but it also puts the safety of the workers at risk,” Simkins wrote. “Electrical cabinets that have experienced some level of corrosion become less safe and increase the risk of an arc flash event.”
Lastly, the 500-foot towers are being roiled by winter wind and waves, which causes them to sway. The blades are designed to capture that wind, reducing its force on the towers. Without them, the “fatigue” on the towers will be exacerbated, “and the design has accounted for a limited amount of such fatigue over the total life of the structure.”
Court documents show that Vineyard Wind — the last of five affected companies to file for an injunction against Trump’s stop work order — held off on litigation as it made multiple attempts to convince the administration that completing blade installation was necessary to mitigate safety risks.
Vineyard Wind also sent BSEE verification of its safety claims by DNV Energy Systems, a Danish company it was required to retain to “ensure that the Project is installed in accordance with accepted engineering practices and, when necessary, to provide reports to BSEE regarding incidents affecting Critical Safety Systems.” But BSEE disagreed and denied Vineyard Wind’s request.
The Trump administration filed a response in the case on Tuesday, with BSEE’s Principal Deputy Director Kenneth Stevens testifying that the bureau’s technical personnel had “determined that there should be no structural issues associated with the tower and nacelle-only configuration if they were installed correctly.” He noted that the towers had been “routinely left in this configuration repeatedly” while the project was under construction over the past year and a half “with no reported adverse impacts to safety.”
Vineyard Wind did not respond to a request for comment on that assertion. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Friday. Three separate district judges have already granted injunctions to offshore projects affected by the stop work order: Revolution Wind, Empire Wind, and Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project. Each judge found that the companies were “likely” to succeed in showing that the stop work order violated the Administrative Procedures Act, and allowing them to continue construction.
Jael Holzman contributed reporting.
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