Protests against Vineyard Wind take place on land and at sea

A flotilla of two dozen boats descended on Vineyard Wind’s offshore wind turbines Sunday for a peaceful protest against the wind farm 14 miles southwest of Nantucket.

They were joined by a smaller protest onshore at Cisco Beach, attended by about 20 people.

The boats, ranging in size from 60-foot commercial boats to 20-foot recreational boats, came from Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and beyond.

Longtime Nantucket charter fishing captain Pete Kaizer, who has spent decades on the waters around the island, was one of the boaters from Nantucket.

He said he felt it was important to represent the island that was hit hardest by the damaged turbine, whose debris washed up across the south shore.

“A lot of the guys from Nantucket couldn’t go because they were fishing or busy. I usually take Sundays off anyway, so we went out there just to show that there’s distrust,” he said. “It’s appalling, to see what was such a fresh clean place, and you feel like you’re in an oil-pumping field in Texas or something just the size of it and everything.”

Kaizer said the area of the ocean occupied by the wind farm used to be teeming with life including marine mammals, birds and bait fish, but it felt desolate Sunday.

“I saw just one seal and a couple birds passing by,” he said.

Vineyard Wind have said that once construction of the turbines is complete, the ocean life will return, perhaps even stronger than before, but Kaizer isn’t holding his breath.

“Will it resettle? I don’t have a crystal ball,” he said. “This has the fox watching the chicken coop all over it. Everything is being done by (Vineyard Wind) and the government has just accepted what they say.”

Meanwhile at Cisco Beach, a similar protest took place on the beach. Roughly 20 people gathered at the entrance to the beach and held hands in solidarity.

Madaket resident and ACK For Whales member Mary Chalke donned her whale costume that has made appearances at Select Board meetings and the Milestone Rotary.

“We’re at an inflection point,” Chalke said. “Nantucket cares, and this is nothing we have ever dealt with before. They need to stop these projects, and take those blades down and barge them back to Europe. If the public gets behind stopping this, it can happen. If you look at New Jersey they have done a great job mobilizing.”

Cape May County, on the southern New Jersey shore sued Danish wind farm developer Orsted when the company proposed a pair of projects nine miles from its beaches.

The county and nonprofit groups protested the wind farm, saying it would industrialize the ocean and pose a threat to marine life, namely North Atlantic right whales. The same argument was made by ACK for Whales in its suit against Vineyard Wind.

Cape May County commissioners claimed victory when Orsted pulled out last year, and Cape May legal counsel for offshore wind Michael Donahue maintained that sentiment earlier this month, although others have said Orsted, like other wind-farm companies along the East Coast, backed out for economic reasons and will likely be back again once they renegotiate power-purchasing contracts.

“Which straw breaks the camel’s back, I’m not sure, but it takes every piece of straw to do it. We were part of that effort, and I believe we played a role in ultimately convincing them that they couldn’t make that project profitable,” Donahue said.

Vineyard Wind has long touted its ability to create “clean energy”, and lessen dependency on fossil fuels, saying that the turbines will eventually eliminate 1.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, and that it will create thousands of local jobs over the course of the project.

In terms of the visual impact, Vineyard Wind, through the Good Neighbor Agreement it signed with the town, agreed to move the project's first row of turbines farther away, paint the turbines an off-white color to reduce visibility and install a lighting system that will only be active when planes are nearby.

But the remote lighting system is a sore subject, especially for residents near the south shore. Despite being told that the remote lighting system would be operational by Memorial Day, it has still not been installed.