As Nantucket continues to reel from the Winery Wind turbine blade failure, critics are elevating issues round how the venture’s mum or dad firm, Avangrid, has donated hundreds of {dollars} in marketing campaign cash to state elected officers.
A Herald evaluation discovered that workers who checklist Avangrid as their employer have made 217 donations totaling $57,677 to dozens of state and native campaigns since March 2018, two months earlier than the Baker administration chosen a Winery Wind bid for contract negotiation.
Notable figures embody venture supporters Gov. Maura Healey receiving 38 donations totaling $16,425 since 2018, and state Sen. Julian Cyr, a Democrat whose district represents the Cape and Islands, gathering 17 contributions for $3,036 since 2021, in keeping with the state Workplace of Marketing campaign and Political Finance.
Whereas the donations characterize minuscule parts of Healey and Cyr’s cumulative marketing campaign funds, sharply lower than 1%, respectively, critics argue the electeds are placing their pursuits with Avangrid forward of their constituents.
Winery Wind, a enterprise of Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Companions, continues to scrub up particles — a mixture of foam and fiberglass items of varied sizes — on Nantucket and the encircling space within the aftermath of the turbine blade failure.
“Campaign donations have bought their support for a project that makes very little sense at this point,” stated Paul Diego Craney, a spokesman for watchdog Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. “Elected officials should think objectively on policy decisions, but in this case, their judgment is getting blinded by the campaign donations they are receiving.”
The Healey marketing campaign declined to remark.
The $3,036 that Avangrid workers have donated to Cyr since 2021 counts for 0.4% of the $688,518 in contributions he’s acquired in that point, the senator informed the Herald.
Cyr highlighted how Massachusetts marketing campaign finance regulation limits the utmost contribution a candidate can obtain per particular person per calendar 12 months to $1,000.
“By capping contributions, we ensure that the voice of every voter matters, rather than allowing those with deep pockets to dominate the political landscape,” the senator stated in an announcement Saturday. “This promotes fairness, transparency, and trust in our elections, ensuring that our representative democracy is truly for the people, not for those who can spend the most.”
Christopher Lauzon, a Barnstable resident and Republican candidate operating for Cyr’s seat, referred to as the Winery Wind scenario “one of the biggest disasters to hit the Cape and Islands since Hurricane Bob.”
“It’s having devastating environmental and economic impacts,” Lauzon stated of the Winery Wind blade failure in an interview with the Herald on Friday.
“Senator Cyr has been completely MIA on this issue,” the candidate continued, including how he visited Nantucket final weekend to talk with island residents. “They are not happy. They feel like they’re being ignored.”
An evaluation of Cyr’s social media exercise for the reason that blade broke aside on July 13 confirmed that the senator has not made any posts relative to what many Nantucket officers and residents are calling a disaster.
Healey additionally hasn’t made any social media posts about her response.
In a July 16 put up on X, Cyr included a hyperlink to his month-to-month publication. In it, he highlighted a visit he made with Healey to the Winery Wind warehouse facility on June 6 and a celebration of “Global Wind Day” at Craigville Seaside in Barnstable per week later.
“Vineyard Wind has demonstrated a commitment to the Island,” Cyr wrote within the publication. “I am proud to have played my part in working to forge the partnership between Islanders and the nation’s first utility-scale offshore wind installation, and I’m excited to see this effort create a whole host of good in our community.
Healey, during her trip with Cyr, remarked, “To all of the workers, contractors, the people who financed and so many others, thank you for bringing this home. We were serious when we said we were going to make a big bet on wind. It’s where we need to go.”
Lauzon is taking exception to how Cyr has collected 5 contributions totaling $1,300 from his former chief of workers, Patrick Johnson, who at present serves as Avangrid’s director of public affairs.
Johnson donated 5 different presents to Cyr for $1,101.38 below prior employment.
“When you get into the thousands of dollars it does add up. That’s significant,” Lauzon stated. “Honestly, it presents a conflict.”
Cape Cod Involved Residents highlighted the way it “holds the strong opinion that the pattern of campaign contributions that is publicly available for all to see reveals a giant grift that is poisonous to the democratic process and silences the voices of Cape Cod constituents.”
Cyr stood agency with how he makes his “decisions and votes based on what I believe is best for Cape Codders and Islanders, not for any political contributors.”
“I have been all in on clean energy, including offshore wind, but I am clear-eyed that can only happen if we get it right,” Cyr informed the Herald. “That means doing right by the local people and communities who host these projects. Anything else is unacceptable.”
Throughout his employment with Avangrid, Johnson has contributed to roughly 25 different campaigns together with $500 to Healey, $825 to Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll and $900 to Rep. Jeffrey Roy, the Home chair of the Telecommunications, Utilities, and Power Committee.
“Avangrid always supports the ability of its employees to exercise their rights and participate in the political process,” firm spokesperson Leo Rosales informed the Herald in an announcement Sunday, “including supporting public officials on important issues like clean energy and climate policy.”
GE Vernova, the designer, producer and installer of the generators, has pointed to a “manufacturing deviation” and never an engineering design flaw within the failure of its wind turbine off the coast of Nantucket. An preliminary third-party environmental evaluation of the catastrophe has discovered the particles from the 351-foot blade to be “inert, non-soluble, stable and non-toxic.”
Winery Wind is prohibited from producing electrical energy from any of its generators and constructing any further towers, nacelle and blades, below a federal order.
The corporate is permitted to “install inter-array cables and conduct surveys outside of the damaged turbine’s safety exclusion zone,” the Bureau of Security and Environmental Enforcement stated in a Friday launch.
Nantucket officers, in a Friday replace, highlighted how they met with the state for the primary time on Thursday to debate the state’s “monitoring and response efforts.”
The Biden administration restarted allowing for Winery Wind 1, the topic of a federal attraction, in February 2021, only a month after the president took workplace. GE Vernova has put in 24 generators thus far.
Winery Wind 1 is deliberate to develop to 62 generators which can be anticipated to have the capability to generate 806 megawatts, sufficient electrical energy for greater than 400,000 properties and companies throughout the state, in keeping with state officers.
Avangrid has both begun building on or is in overview of different wind farm tasks within the Nantucket Sound, which Barnstable residents are combating towards.
“The offshore wind industry is critical to our ability to combat climate change and produce clean, affordable energy,” a spokesperson for the state Govt Workplace of Power and Environmental Affairs informed the Herald, “and the Healey-Driscoll Administration is committed to delivering these benefits to our residents.”
