Falmouth Massachusetts Harbinger Offshore Wind Turbine Failures

Once these wind turbines go up the only thing that brings them down is an environmental disaster as witnessed in Falmouth.

Massachusetts is not ready for the installation of hundreds of offshore wind turbines after the land-based catastrophic disaster.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection a state agency designated to protect the environment instead brokered a project regulatory agreement for the Town of Falmouth to use American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to build two foreign-made Vestas V-82 industrial wind turbines in Falmouth.

General Electric a domestic wind turbine company refused in 2008 to build one wind turbine in Falmouth due to residential setbacks and ice throw. The ARRA money should never have been used to take the health and property rights. Multiple court documents, emails, letters, memos, studies, and more show prior to the installations of the two Falmouth town-owned wind turbines in 2010 and 2012 state and local politicians knew the turbines were too loud at 110 decibels each.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection is stuck in regulatory capture acting on behalf of the wind turbine industry ignoring the health and property rights of the citizens of Massachusetts as witnessed in Falmouth and twenty-one other communities.

The Massachusetts courts shut down both Falmouth town-owned wind turbines in June of 2017.

The Falmouth Building Commissioner gave the town until May 2018 to produce a plan to get rid of the first wind turbine according to town bylaws that the wind turbine is a non-complying structure. The town said it will produce an RFP, Request for Proposal soon years ago as nine companies were interested in the turbines. There is no RFP.

In November 2019 the Select Board asked town meeting for 2.5 million in ARTICLE 14: "To see if the Town will vote to appropriate a sum of money to initiate the process of disposition of the Wind Turbines which includes dismantling, relocation, engineering, permitting and other related costs, and to determine how the same shall be raised and by whom expended." It was approved.

The Town of Falmouth has no zoning bylaw for the storage of commercial wind turbines or the type of buildings acceptable for storage. The town may have to adopt a bylaw with the approval of the Massachusetts Attorney General to go forward with storing, selling, or leasing property to operate the turbine at another location. That's years down the road.

There does not appear to be any Massachusetts legislation for the Town of Falmouth to move or sell the turbines to a location in another town or state. In other words, the Town of Falmouth would be going into the power production business after the worst placement of two town-owned wind turbines in the United States

The Town of Falmouth still owes 3.5 million of a 5 million dollar ARRA loan on Falmouth Wind II the second wind turbine which requires repayment plus 2 percent interest. This according to the federal EPA waiver and MassDEP that the turbine must remain energy-efficient or pay back the loan.

The bottom line here is Massachusetts is not ready for placing hundreds of ocean wind turbines that may indeed end up like the two Falmouth wind turbines in legal limbo for years to come..

State of the Town: Falmouth Wind Turbine Update February, 2018