Large wind turbine blade falls into cranberry bog, prompting outcry

A single blade from a 91-metre-tall wind turbine has fallen into a cranberry bog in Massachusetts, in northeastern United States, exacerbating concerns over the small wind farm.

The Plymouth Fire Department responded on Friday afternoon to a report from “a concerned neighbour” who apparently noticed that “one of the three blades on a wind turbine located in the area of 810 Head of the Bay Road was suddenly missing.”

Several residents, speaking to local media, said they heard a “huge boom” or “rumble” and felt the incident “like a mini earthquake”.

Upon arrival at Mann Farms, a cranberry farm, or “bog”, firefighters located the detached turbine blade several hundred feet away from the base of the turbine “resting in an open cranberry bog area”.

The blade, which reportedly measured between 22- to 30-metres long, fell from a Gamesa wind turbine with a height of at least 91 metres. It is one of four installed at the farm, which has a nominal capacity of 8 megawatts (MW), and began operations in 2016.

According to the Plymouth Fire Department, the “affected area is remote and surrounded by cranberry bogs, and no homes or occupied buildings were in the immediate vicinity of the fall.”

“We were fortunate that this turbine is located out in the middle of the cranberry bogs and not in a residential area,” said Neil Foley, Plymouth Fire chief.

“Thankfully, no one was hurt, and the turbine automatically shut itself down as designed. As we continue to investigate, MassDEP and Inspectional Services will now do their due diligence to ensure this incident is addressed appropriately and the impacted area is cleaned up safely.”

Nevertheless, the incident has reawakened local concerns around the small wind farm.

Local residents were quick to answer questions from the local media, restating complaints and concerns that have existed since the project was first proposed.

“”We brought up the safety concerns of just this, a turbine failure, what happens, we’ve all seen the videos online,” said David Daylor, a local who reportedly lives near the cranberry bog, speaking to CBS News. “I was honestly hoping I’d never see this here, but yet look behind us.

“All these turbines were built at the same time commissioned at the same time, they obviously all might have the same failure now, are we talking weeks, days, hours? We don’t know.”

CBS News also reported that “Residents said they were told that the turbines wouldn’t need maintenance for 25 years after installation”, however this seems unlikely, given that wind farms and turbines undergo regular inspections every six to 12 months, and operations and maintenance (O&M) contracts are highly prized by service providers.

The incident, and the media’s rush to survey local opinion, has therefore only served to exacerbate opinions of wind energy and the technology’s safety record.

However, even with a steady drumbeat of headlines reporting on various turbine failures, the sheer scale of global wind turbine development ensures that these incidents are statistically insignificant.

For example, according to the final paragraph in the local CBS News affiliate’s article reporting on the fallen turbine blade, the most recent “trouble with a wind turbine” in Massachusetts was the blade failure in mid-2024 at the Vineyard Wind offshore wind farm off the coast of Nantucket.

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