THE HUESSY REPORT
Message to Maryland folks July 29th, 2024, Prepared by Peter Huessy, President of Geo-Strategic Analysis of Potomac, Maryland
This week’s report will highlight to issues: what is the reason for the increase in the homeless population, especially in California, which has spent $5.6 billion to deal with homelessness in the past three years. This essay from the Epoch Times is lengthy, but the issue is complex and the Times does an excellent job helping the reader understand things. In the early 1960’s the US government decided that mental illness was something that could be dealt with through outpatient medical treatment, especially with drugs. Deinstitutionalization became the watchword, pushed by Harvard University.
State Mental Hospitals were promised first by President Kennedy and then President Johnson that their costs would be dramatically reduced as these mental institutions, many of them in appalling shape, could be closed. Thousands of beds were destroyed. We substituted the streets for metal hospitals, and with the climb in illicit drug availability, addiction and homelessness rates increased. This is the story of Lancaster California, a desert community where the average rent is $2595 a month. Its only $4595 in Los Angeles.
Our second apology is about windmills and the destruction of a windfarm off the coast of Marthas Vinyard and how the US subsidies many big foreign companies with billions in tax credits that are building these renewable facilities. The story about the growing opposition within the community to the wind farms in fascinating and should inform Maryland communities that are going to experience the same problems.
The third material are two cartoons: one is Ms. Kamela Harris “taking the wheel” from the President and the second is the state of the Presidency. Both by a great editorial cartoonist--my friend Michael Ramirez.
The fourth issue we lay out is what happens if the US government pays all workers $1000 per month to encourage investment in better education or work skills. Well, the USG did a study and everyone getting the free cash responded by working one month less per year---150 hours per year.
Behind the Homeless Surge in California’s High Desert
Yes, Kamala Harris Is Responsible For California’s 31% More Violent Crime And 3x More Homeless, July 26, 2024
Just look what she did and didn't do as District Attorney, Attorney General, U.S. Senator, and Vice President
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July 25, 2024 Updated: July 26, 2024
LOS ANGELES—In the scrubby Mojave desert north of Los Angeles, a sprawling encampment of decrepit RVs sits just off a dirt road separating the city of Lancaster from Los Angeles County’s unincorporated expanse.
In every direction, garbage spreads out like an algae super bloom—beyond that, endless sand and brush, baking in the summer sun.
“Keep your head on a swivel for dogs,” a member of the city’s public safety and emergency response unit tells us. Through the haze, we see two pit bulls and a German Shepherd under a tarp, but they are tethered, too hot to move.
Freddy, a resident, seems only moderately bothered by the 110-degree temperature. “I don’t have a car anymore, so I can’t get my own water,” he says, when asked how he survives out here.
“Someone brings me water every two weeks,” he said, referring to a nonprofit.
Pointing down at his legs, scaly and engorged beneath black shorts, he adds, “And I’m sick, too. They bring me medicine.”
There is no grid here, no power or water. RV residents dump their raw sewage in the desert, either right outside their vehicles, or sometimes with a hose that carries it a little farther out.
Such encampments, which are also a magnet for illegal construction dumping, appear as clusters on satellite maps, dotting the rugged terrain just past the county line. Officials say they stretch out as far as 10 miles into the desert, but most stay closer to town.
Freddy is one of thousands without housing in the northern part of the county, according to data released last month by the Los Angeles Homelessness Services Authority (LAHSA).
On any given night, an estimated 6,672 people are homeless in the Antelope Valley—a 42 percent increase over the year prior. But only 1,057 of the region’s homeless people live in its two main cities, Lancaster and Palmdale, leaving the remaining 5,615 in smaller towns and the region’s rural unincorporated areas.
It’s surprising that so many people could be living in tents, under tarps, inside of old RVs, out in the middle of the high desert with no water or infrastructure.
But those familiar with the situation say the population was already high, and the dramatic jump simply represents a more thorough count this year.
“The count went up this year because the count was done wrong in previous years,” said a city official, who asked not to be identified by name. “This year we utilized a drone, and our teams went out to remote areas and did the count,” he said, estimating the actual increase over last year might be closer to 25 percent.
L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, whose 5th District includes the Antelope Valley, also suggested the increase may not be as straightforward as it looks.
“The Point In Time Count is not a perfect science and it’s rightfully evolving,” she said in an email to The Epoch Times, expressing uncertainty over whether the number reflects an increase or a better count.
“Regardless, we will use those results to draw down more federal and state funding so that we can deliver more local housing and shelter options. The need in the region is real.”
Either way, the uptick is an outlier in 2024, when the county overall and most city homeless populations are either remaining stable or shrinking slightly.
The City of Lancaster’s overall homeless count went down in 2024, to 520 people from 590 the year prior, with fewer unsheltered homeless and more sheltered homeless individuals. Palmdale’s, meanwhile, rose from 177 to 537.
Inquiries to Palmdale city officials, including the mayor and city councilmembers, were not returned.
LAHSA also did not respond to a request for comment on the increase in the homeless population in Antelope Valley.
While many municipalities across the West stopped clearing homeless encampments after a series of Ninth Circuit Court decisions determined anti-camping laws violated the Eighth Amendment, Lancaster bypassed those restrictions with procedural caveats, by offering shelter before moving people.
Since the Supreme Court reversed the lower court rulings earlier this month, officials say enforcement is easier.
Critics of such enforcement, such as the ACLU, have long argued Lancaster is pushing people who have nowhere to go into dangerous, extreme conditions. But officials say there are beds available, and enforcement is attended by offers of services and shelter.
So why are thousands of people homeless in the desert?
End of the Line
Lancaster Mayor Rex Parris, an outspoken critic of what he says is the county’s neglect of the region, allows there are various factors that might contribute to an increase in homelessness—former inmates at California State Prison, in Lancaster, who end up in the community without services, along with a small percentage of people losing housing or falling on hard times.
Lancaster has always been a far more affordable bedroom community, but median rent is currently $2,595 a month—only about $200 cheaper than Los Angeles, according to real estate website Zillow.
But the main reason, Mr. Parris told The Epoch Times, is L.A.’s systematic tendency—not a conspiracy, exactly, more like a default setting—to send its problems north.
“I think it’s tied to the L.A. area pushing them up here,” he said of the homeless count increase. “They tend to push all of their problems up here, if they can. And now you’ve got the World Cup, and you’ve got the Olympics coming, and they’re in a mad rush to get rid of their homeless, and so they encourage them to come here.”
Mr. Parris says his teams are “constantly interviewing people who were given a ticket and told, “go to Lancaster, we’ll feed and take care of them,” but did not specify by whom.
“It’s at the end of the Metro line, literally. This is not unusual.”
The county’s transit system, plagued by violence in recent months, has its own problems. Used as a de facto shelter by thousands during the day, its buses and trains are emptied for cleaning each night, which some end-of-line cities say has resulted in sharp increases in their transient homeless populations.
Lancaster, 60 miles north of Los Angeles and at the very end of the Metro transit system, is far more remote than other such cities.
(Lt. William Kitchin, who oversees the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department’s (LASD) homeless outreach team for the entire county, said he has not personally seen evidence to support the idea that people are being directed to the region, but has observed migration to end-of-line cities.
However, they end up there, once in Lancaster, civil rights groups say, authorities have routinely pushed homeless people out into the desert.
In a study based on interviews with 53 unhoused people in and around Lancaster from February 2019 to October 2020, the ACLU claimed the LASD “banished” people to remote county areas, combining the threat of criminal and civil sanctions with “suggestions” to leave town.
Such claims, the lieutenant said, are easily disproved by body cameras that record deputies’ interactions when enforcing local ordinances.
Lt. Kitchin’s team works with LAHSA to resolve encampments of more than five people, and he said such operations are always done with advance notice and offers of services and housing.
“We can’t dictate or tell people where to go. We just say you can’t be here. We prefer you take the services that were provided, so you can go inside and get your life started on the right track, but we can’t force them into it,” he said.
Starting on July 22, his team plans to clear desert encampments in an area north of Lancaster and place an estimated 40 people in hotels as part of the county’s “Pathway Home” program.
“Prior to the pandemic,” the lieutenant said, “what we used to see is that people who were homeless in that area either grew up there or had roots there, parents or family. Now we’re seeing more people from out of state.”
Officials who asked not to be identified by name said they see a constant influx of new faces in Lancaster and the surrounding area. “We know everyone here and everyday we’re seeing new people. It’s not people losing their homes, there’s some of that, but mostly it’s not. They came from somewhere else, they moved here,” one said.
The city’s team has access to five beds for immediate shelter. After two weeks, they moved people to Kensington, Lancaster’s sprawling homeless housing campus—so those five beds always stay open for people who might need them, officials said.
Mayor Parris told The Epoch Times that beds remain open at Kensington throughout the year, except when extreme weather drives occupancy up.
Opened in 2019, the campus has 153 interim beds and 150 permanent supportive housing beds, and receives more referrals than it has availability, a representative for A People Concern, the organization that operates the campus, told The Epoch Times in an email.
The representative said they are currently “nearing capacity,” with a “fluctuating occupancy as individuals may choose to transition between programs.”
Mr. Parris draws a hard line between what he characterizes as a minority of the homeless population in his city, who have fallen on hard times or been pushed out of housing—and an overwhelming majority, who refuse housing and choose the streets and drug abuse as a lifestyle.
“I was a drug addict, and I have been homeless. And I have been in jail,” Mr. Parris, a lawyer, said. “So, none of this is foreign to me. You know, I probably have a better understanding of it than most. But I know the difference between a looter and someone who needs help—and wants help.”
For the latter, he said, “we have the most state-of-the-art homeless shelter in the entire county—and we did it for about a third of the cost they spend in L.A. And we have beds available for people who want them. But that means you’ve got to follow some rules—not a lot of rules, but some rules. And so, beds go empty, except for when the heat is extraordinarily high, like it is now, or when it’s really cold.”
Like all publicly funded homeless programs and facilities in California, where “housing first” and “harm reduction” policies are written into the law, Kensington cannot not require sobriety or treatment as a pre-condition or condition of housing.
“It’s challenging, a lot of what we see is either substance abuse or mental illness or combination of both,” said Lt. Kitchin. “So, we’re trying to create that balance ... of giving people respect and dignity.”
But, he added, “they’re not going to be allowed to stay if they don’t accept [housing offers].”
Many people living on the streets do not want to go to congregant shelters, for a variety of reasons, ranging from previous trauma to a dislike of the structure or rules.
Hotel rooms, like those offered as part of Pathway Home, are often a more attractive option, and more costly.
“I’d love to have a beach house in Malibu,” Lt. Kitchin said. “Some people don’t like congregate shelter, but if it’s offered, they need to realize it’s a step, it’s progress, out of the elements.”
Shelter Space
In a large parking lot beside the Metro system’s final stop and across from the LASD Lancaster Station, small clusters of tents line the shady edges. Authorities moved people out and cleared away the garbage about a week prior, but some have returned.
Squalid piles of rotting trash, tents, broken furniture, stained mattresses, and boxes filled with rapidly spoiling food make up a micro village. Ron, a middle-aged man reclining in a low-slung chair, says outreach workers do “come around” to help people with housing, “but there’s a lot of hoops you have to jump through.
“And no one wants to go to that shelter on 60th Street,” he said, referring to a LAHSA congregant shelter that serves three meals and welcomes pets.
“It’s dark, it’s gloomy ... the lighting sucks. You see people walking around listlessly,” he said. “The place itself is depressing.”
That facility is part of the Glenchur Interim Housing Project, a $1.4 million remodel of a former medical facility. The first phase was completed in December 2023, expanding a former seasonal shelter to a year-round program in April, while a second phase, expected to wrap up by early August, will add more beds.
A spokesperson for Volunteers of America Los Angeles, the nonprofit that runs the shelter, said they currently have 139 beds that are at capacity for referrals, but said cots are added as needed if people show up, and they are “not having to turn anyone away.” A spokesperson for LAHSA said in an email that the shelter has a total of 162 beds, which are at capacity.
Volunteers of America Los Angeles, which received $55 million in federal funding in 2024, last year received a $359,750 grant from the county to operate the Lancaster shelter.
Asked if he feels safe in the Metro parking lot, Ron, the man living in the encampment, said, “Hell no ... We spend most of the evening awake. They walk up and down here, it’s relentless. I call them the walking dead,” he said, describing theft and assault by people high on meth.
A few yards away, a minivan belonging to a local nonprofit was passing out care packages—basic toiletries and sunblock, as well as other harm reduction staples such as syringes, in paper bags.
Melissa Chavez, co-founder of Velnonart Transformative Health, which provides street medicine, treatment for substance abuse disorder, and case management, says the challenge is keeping track of people—and coordinating with housing agencies.
“In this area there’s a huge scarcity of service providers. One of the biggest issues is these folks are constantly moving,” she told The Epoch Times, making follow-up “almost impossible.”
As the government enforces camping bans, she said, “everyone starts to shift over to the desert, where there are absolutely no resources, no water. People are dying out there, I’ve had to call the paramedics a few times.”
Velnonart receives private grants and contracts with the county to provide substance abuse prevention and control services. In 2024, it received a $346,800 grant from the California Department of Healthcare Services, partly funded by the state’s legal settlements with opioid manufacturers.
Ms. Chavez says mandating treatment for substance abuse and mental health doesn’t work, that the process requires trust-building and patience. But even if people decide they are ready, it’s difficult to connect with treatment centers and housing providers.
Asked if she tries to find shelter for people on the streets, she said, “We do. The problem is there’s really no response in return.”
The same goes for treatment centers. “After a few times of us sending our patients, they don’t take our calls anymore,” she said. “I can’t get a treatment center to partner with us.”
(Top) A pipe used for drugs lays near a homeless encampment in Lancaster, Calif., on July 10, 2024. (Bottom) Used heroin syringes are stuck in a tree at a homeless encampment in Seattle on March 13, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times, John Moore/Getty Images)
Crisis of Extremes
The crisis of homelessness in the Antelope Valley takes place in a context of extremes. In winter, temperatures can reach 2 degrees F, and in the summer 115 F, making shelter a more urgent concern. The area is removed from the metropole by a mountain, and in many ways already beleaguered, with high burdens on existing infrastructure.
In 2022, the region had by far the highest rate of fentanyl overdose emergency room visits—more than double that of the next highest region—and from 2016 through 2023, the third-highest fentanyl overdose death rate in the county. In 2019, it had the lowest life expectancy and highest mortality rates.
Between Las Vegas, Central, and Southern California, the Valley is also home to a convergence of volatile forces—including organized crime.
“We had a gang war break out in the middle of the city,” Mr. Parris said, referring to a series of 10 shootings in 48 hours last month that left several people dead. “They were using high-power assault weapons. And our sheriffs were powerless, because we’re usually running at about 50 percent less than what we need,” he said.
According to LASD data, the first five months of 2024 have seen Part 1 crimes—such as homicide, arson, and theft—increase only 3.53 percent in the area. But unincorporated areas had a 150 percent increase in rape, a 180 percent increase in robbery, and an overall increase of 33 percent in violent crimes in the same period.
The Lancaster Sheriff’s Station, among the busiest in the county, patrols a 600-square-mile area that includes 159,000 residents plus several thousand more in unincorporated areas. Amid a staffing crisis, it uses overtime to fill contractual obligations to the city, which Mr. Parris said results in deputies regularly working 16- to 18-hour shifts.
One deputy told The Epoch Times there are typically no more than a dozen deputies on duty any given day, and fewer at night; he once worked 37 days without a break.
“We’re forgotten about. That’s why they ship everybody out here,” said the deputy, who declined to be identified by name.
The city recently created its own Lancaster Police Department, but its first sworn officers have yet to be recruited. According to the mayor, it will primarily assist with technology.
“We’re putting cameras everywhere. “We’ve got a drone program where we can launch them in 60 seconds,” Mr. Parris said. “I don’t like living that way ... but what alternative do we have?”
In March, Lancaster sued the LASD for overcharging it and dozens of other cities it contracts with for policing services. When L.A. Sheriff Robert Luna announced a “surge” of resources following the June shootings, the mayor thanked him but said it would not deter legal action “to ensure Lancaster has the public safety resources we pay for and are entitled to.”
Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) deputies work in Lancaster, Calif., on July 10, 2024. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)
However, funding is only part of the problem. Law enforcement agencies across the country are struggling to recruit. Anti-police sentiment following the death of George Floyd, early retirements, and a waning interest in the profession have decimated staffing. Despite funding increases, as of January, the LASD has more than 1,200 sworn vacancies.
In Antelope Valley, aside from a few who are from the area and care about its future, “no one wants to stay here because it’s so dangerous,” a law enforcement official said. “It’s not worth it. They all leave.”
Encampment Living
Along the banks of Amargosa Creek, just off State Route 14 in Lancaster, sections of the dry bed are scorched carbon-black from encampment fires. Sections of the fence have been scrapped for metal, and trash is strewn in every direction—a half-filled job application flutters next to a greasy rotisserie chicken bag, shattered smartphones, suitcases, wheelchairs, cosmetics, and electronics, the sundry signs of developed-world homelessness.
“We’ve cleaned up more than 100 tons of trash so far this year. It’s like whack-a-mole, nonstop. There’s so much trash we can’t keep up with it,” a city worker told The Epoch Times.
From the other side, a long-legged woman in a pink skirt steps gingerly through an encampment and down the embankment. She is barefoot, picking her way across the burning sand. A public safety team member chats with her and tosses over a bottle of water.
He points to a burned out, condemned motel across the highway where they say she lives, and where she is being prostituted. Law enforcement has gone in with warrants and shut the place down—inside they found a “king pin” and the women he prostituted, mothers with small children, and people still paying for their rooms with government vouchers.
The city boarded it up, but people ripped off the boards and climbed back in.
“Most of our homeless population are criminals,” a city worker said plainly.
Outreach workers say they notice an uptick in crime with the heat, which also exacerbates drug-induced psychosis among unsheltered residents. “They’re strung out on meth and it’s 110 degrees,” one said, exasperated.
While more attention has been given to mental health and substance abuse treatment as California confronts its escalating homeless crisis, efforts to mandate treatment or expand conservation are met with stiff political resistance.
Meanwhile, effective decriminalization of hard drug possession means that people suffering from addiction—especially in the age of fentanyl and “super meth”—can remain addicted on the streets, without interruption.
“Before Prop 47,” said the sheriff’s deputy, referring to the 2014 voter-passed ballot measure that reduced penalties for misdemeanors such as shoplifting, loitering, and hard drug possession, “if I caught you with a pipe and some meth, minimum you’d get two days, see a judge and go to mediation.”
Now, law enforcement knows those crimes won’t be prosecuted in L.A. County, where the district attorney’s office has eliminated prosecution for many misdemeanors.
For those like Ms. Chavez, who provide medical care and opiate-blocker Narcan as well as clean needles to people on the streets of Lancaster and in the rural desert beyond it, a “harm reduction” approach is better than punishment.
“Requiring treatment and punitive consequences ... it doesn’t work. At some point you have to try something different,” she said.
Harm reduction, she said, is a spectrum, less about needles and meth pipes and more about reductions in HIV and other communicable diseases.
Some of her counterparts working in outreach and law enforcement question the outcome of a decade of policies based on that philosophy.
“We have not seen the effects of 10 to 12 years straight of hardcore meth abuse. Nobody’s even studied that,” the deputy said. “It’s not so much about mental illness, but this unprecedented drug abuse.”
Researchers have increasingly acknowledged the links between meth-induced psychosis and schizophrenia, but the two diagnoses have overlapping clinical profiles, and their differences, similarities, and correlation remain under-defined.
To some watching the crisis unfold, the link seems clear enough, especially in the punishing summer heat.
Unfortunately, they can do little to intervene in the slow-motion catastrophe happening at scale.
“When we go out and offer [treatment] services, 99 percent turn it down. So, we give them flyers and information,” a city outreach worker said.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on July 25 issued an executive order directing state agencies and departments to “urgently address encampments on state property,” as well as “guidance for cities and counties to do the same.”
Per the order, state bodies are to adopt California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) policy, which prioritizes clearing encampments that “pose a threat to the life, health and safety of the community,” while offering advance notice, working with local service providers to support encampment residents, and storing their personal property for 60 days.
Despite Mr. Newsom’s tough rhetoric, telling local governments “there are no longer any excuses” after the state has invested more than $1 billion in encampment resolution grants, the order “encourages” local governments to follow suit, but doesn’t mandate that they must.
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Breaking Wind
The disintegration of the turbine blade and resultant pollution that forced the closure of Nantucket’s beaches should scuttle the offshore wind scam. But it’s only the tip of Big Wind’s problems.
JUL 22, 2024
On Saturday, the Nantucket Select Board announced it was considering legal action against Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, the foreign corporations that own the $4 billion Vineyard Wind project now under construction in Massachusetts waters. The Select Board will meet today, Monday, in executive session to discuss the litigation.
The news of the possible litigation, which the Nantucket Current published on Saturday, comes less than a week after tons of debris from the broken wind turbine blade that was part of the massive offshore project began washing ashore on the island. The pollution forced the town to temporarily close many of its beaches during the peak summer tourist season while the debris was removed. The beaches have since reopened.
Aerial view of debris from the wind turbine being removed from Nantucket’s beaches. Credit: WBZ Boston.
As I noted here a week ago, the development of offshore wind energy on the Eastern Seaboard has been promoted by some of America’s biggest climate NGOs, including the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Wildlife Federation, and Conservation Law Foundation, as well as numerous Democratic politicians at state and federal levels. But the disaster at Vineyard Wind — and it is a monumental disaster for the offshore wind industry — is spotlighting the environmental risks posed by installing dozens or even hundreds of massive wind turbines and offshore platforms in our oceans. This disaster happened in calm weather. It doesn’t take much effort to imagine what will happen when a hurricane hits the East Coast.
The NGOs have been shameless in their collusion with foreign corporations, including oil companies like Equinor and Total, which are eagerly queueing up to collect billions in federal tax credits. But the turbine blade failure at Vineyard Wind is only part of a broader crisis facing Big Wind, both onshore and offshore. Before I talk about that crisis, and hurricanes, a bit of background is needed.
The Vineyard Wind project aims to have 800 megawatts of capacity. It will require installing 62 offshore platforms on the Eastern Seaboard in the midst of the known North Atlantic Right Whale Habitat. Each turbine will have a capacity of about 13 megawatts. A handful of turbines have been installed and the project began producing power in January.
Public sentiment about “clean” energy on display in Nantucket. The Nantucket Current posted this photo on Twitter on Friday.
On Saturday, I talked to Amy DiSibio, a board member of ACK 4 Whales, the Nantucket group fighting offshore wind. “People are pissed,” she said. “They are really upset for a lot of reasons.” (ACK 4 Whales has sued to stop the project, arguing that the federal government ignored the Endangered Species Act when it issued the permit. A federal judge rejected their case in April, but the group is appealing their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.)
One of the reasons for the anger is obvious: the turbine blade began disintegrating on Saturday evening and sent some 17 cubic yards of debris into the ocean. But the owners of Vineyard Wind didn’t notify officials in Nantucket until Monday at about 5 pm. On Tuesday, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which is part of the Interior Department, issued a stop work order at Vineyard Wind, “until further notice.”
On Thursday, as the beach cleanup was ongoing, the remaining portion of the massive turbine blade, a chunk about 300 feet long, fell into the Atlantic Ocean. The Coast Guard warned mariners in the area of the wind project, which is located 15 miles south of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, to “use extreme caution” when passing through the region.
On Sunday afternoon, Nantucket fisherman and former Select Board member Bob DeCosta sent me this selfie from his boat, The Albacore. “Big Wind is not green. The only thing green about it is the money going to the offshore wind companies.”
On Sunday afternoon, I talked to Bob DeCosta, a fisherman on Nantucket who started fishing with his father when he was nine. “I’ve been on the water for 56 years,” he told me from his boat. “I don’t have a Ph.D. But like the other fishermen here, I know the tides, and the waters better than anybody. They never talked to us. These wind turbines are getting steamrolled over us. Big Wind is not green. The only thing green about it is the money going to the offshore wind companies.”
DeCosta, who served on the Nantucket Select Board for six years, operates a 35-foot charter boat, The Albacore, with his son, Ray. DeCosta said he steered his vessel through the area near Vineyard Wind early last Sunday morning through thick fog but didn’t know that debris from the shattered turbine blade was in the water. DeCosta said he could have unwittingly hit the debris which would have done significant damage to his boat. “For 48 hours, that stuff was floating around, and we knew nothing about it. It’s unacceptable.”
In addition to the public relations disaster at Vineyard Wind, Big Wind is facing a crisis caused by simple physics. The turbines now being deployed onshore and offshore are failing far sooner than expected. Why? They have gotten too big. Yes, bigger wind turbines are more efficient than their smaller cousins. But the larger the turbine, the more its components get hit by the stresses that come with their size and weight. The GE Vernova Haliade-X wind turbine used at Vineyard Wind stands 260 meters high and sweeps an area of 38,000 square meters. That means the turbine captures wind energy over an area five times larger than a soccer pitch.
But here’s the critical part: its blades are 107 meters (351 feet) long and weigh 70 tons. In addition, the rotor of the massive machine spans 220 meters. For comparison, the wingspan of a Boeing 737 is 34 meters. In other words, the turbines at Vineyard Wind are nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower and each of their blades weighs more than a fully loaded 737.
As shown in the graphic above, the Haliade-X rotor is six and a half times wider than the wingspan of a 737. Given the enormity of the machines, it’s no wonder they are failing.
How bad is the problem? On June 28, Ohio-based American Electric Power sued GE Vernova in New York court, claiming widespread issues with the turbines it has deployed at three wind projects in Oklahoma. The complaint says:
Within only two to three years of commercial operation, the GE wind turbine generators have exhibited numerous material defects on major components and experienced several complete failures, at least one turbine blade liberation event, and other deficiencies...[a]significant portion of the wind turbine generators have completely failed or have otherwise been rendered inoperable, requiring immediate repair
According to a July 2 article in Renews.Biz, AEP, a publicly traded utility with 5.6 million customers, says that it has already incurred:
“millions of dollars in costs and damages in the future” because it will “inevitably need to repair and/or replace” additional wind turbine generators in order to meet the energy production requirements of its customers. It went on to allege that GE Vernova has refused to acknowledge responsibility to repair and/or replace all defective wind turbine generators. AEP said that in addition to its claim for cash damages, it is seeking a declaratory judgment that GE Vernova is liable for expected future failures of its wind turbine generators.
Adding intrigue to the AEP lawsuit and the failure of the turbine blade at Vineyard Wind is that GE Vernova has not issued any press releases or filed any documents with the SEC to acknowledge its potential liabilities. The company will hold its second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday and it may disclose more dismal results from its wind business. In the first quarter, it reported a 40% decline in new wind turbine orders from a year ago. It also saw a 6% decline in revenue.
How much is at stake in the AEP vs. GE Vernova litigation? According to one report, the turbines in question have a capacity of 1.5 gigawatts and cost $6.4 billion. Thus, it’s easy to imagine that GE Vernova could be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. Furthermore, those losses may be only part of the company’s long-term liabilities.
GE Vernova isn’t the only wind turbine maker being mauled by physics. Last year, Germany’s Siemens Energy, announced it would take a $2.4 billion loss on its wind business due to quality problems with its wind turbines. And remember, these failures and losses are happening with onshore wind turbines. The looming operation and maintenance costs for offshore wind will be astronomical.
Among the most disgusting aspects of the offshore wind scam — including the fact that foreign companies are collecting billions of dollars in tax credits so they can industrialize our oceans and do harm to our fisheries, and the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale — is that the current disaster was easily foreseen. Just 16 months ago, during the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston, the CEO of NextEra Energy, John Ketchum, called offshore wind “a bad bet.”
NextEra has been hyper-aggressive in its push to site solar and wind projects in rural communities across the country and Canada. And while its business tactics are often odious, NextEra is the world’s largest producer of alt-energy, which means Ketchum knows the industry. Ketchum said of offshore wind, “We find it hard enough just to take care of a fleet onshore with some of the issues that we deal with as a company, and we're best in class.”
Reuters went on to quote him thusly:
Ketchum said some of the industry's complications included saltwater corrosion, the threat of hurricanes, the availability of ships, and the installation of subsea transmission cables, and added that supply chain issues have driven up the costs.
The crucial part of Ketchum’s statement, is, of course, “the threat of hurricanes.” If GE’s wind turbine blades are coming apart now, during a calm summer day, imagine the calamity when a large hurricane slams the Eastern Seaboard. The damage to turbines at Vineyard Wind and other offshore projects will be massive and the damage to beaches and fisheries will be enormous.
DeCosta is staggered by the size of the wind turbines and furious at how Nantucket’s residents and fishermen have been ignored. “There are other ways to produce energy without doing this to our oceans,” he said. “I know a thing or two about the saltwater environment. I can’t imagine what it will take to keep these things running in salt water.” When asked about the damage a hurricane would do to the turbines, he said, “We will be picking up the pieces from this on the beaches at Nantucket for the next 20 years.” He then asked a critical question that remains unanswered: “When this stuff is obsolete, who’s going to pay to remove it? They are talking about a total of 1,400 of these things.”
DeCosta told me the turbine blade failure at Vineyard Wind is, in a way, good for opponents like him. “My hope is that we make enough of a stink that they don’t put up any more of these things. We aren’t giving up.”
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Peter Huessy is a Member of the Montgomery County Republican Central Committee. Since 1981 he has been President of Geo-Strategic Analysis of Potomac, Maryland. He was a former special assistant to the Secretary of the Interior and consultant to the US Air Force. He can be reached at [email protected]