Wind farm surveys turn up legacy of wartime: unexploded ordnance

As offshore wind companies scan the sea bottom in preparation for laying cables and placing turbines, some are finding a potentially deadly legacy of wartime on the coastal seabed: unexploded weapons.

Many of the objects, known as unexploded ordnance (UXO), date to the World War II era and older. When encountered, they are usually not moved or even touched, according to a representative for Sunrise Wind, a project that will feed energy to Long Island from its location off the Rhode Island coast.

Orsted spokeswoman Meaghan Wims called the finds “not unusual” because the survey is being conducted near “old WWII training areas.”

In each case, she said, contracted experts in unexploded ordnance “assess that they do not pose an active threat,” and notify the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency “so that the ordinances can be appropriately charted.”

The company has confirmed finding 11 unexploded weapons, from “6-inch artillery shells to a 250-pound bomb.” The federal government has acknowledged the issue and issued guidelines on "munitions and explosives of concern" for wind-farm work. 

Orsted, developer of the Sunrise Wind project with partner Eversources, said in recent survey work off the Rhode Island, “We found unexploded ordinances as part of the ongoing Revolution Wind survey work and outside of state waters as part of the Sunrise Wind survey work.”

Wims said the company also includes information about the objects in “our regular mariner briefings," to alert fishermen.

But commercial fishing advocates say the companies aren’t sounding the alarm loud enough to make sure fishing captains don’t mistakenly haul up the objects.

“Notice is not getting to people,” said Meghan Lapp, general manager of Sea Freeze Shoreside, a fish producer and trader based in Rhode Island, who noted she was first made aware of one set of ordnance finds from a recreational fishing magazine.

She said information about the 11 finds by Orsted had not been included in the company’s weekly notice to mariners until she asked about it. Then, she said, the company confirmed having known about the issue since July.

Lapp said she put information and coordinates for all the UXO into a mail blast to fishermen herself.

“But why aren’t the wind farm companies doing this?” she said. “Why am I having to be the one saying, 'Oh, my God, people can get blown up' and I’m the one spreading the word and sending information to local agencies. This is only going to become more intense.”

Both wind companies said they proactively reach out to federal agencies and fishing groups to alert them.

It's not first time weaponry has been discovered at sea, and the amounts are not small.

As Newsday reported in 2010, the U.S. Army from 1919 to 1970 dumped more than 60 million pounds of unexploded ordnance and deadly chemical agents in the waters along the East and West coasts and throughout the rest of the world. Some 17,000 tons of chemical agents are located off the Atlantic coast alone, Newsday reported. The practice was banned in 1972.

In 2010 Newsday reported a clam-dredging company hauled up 126 hand grenades, some still in wooden crates with detonators intact, as it operated 10 to 20 miles off Long Island's coast. 

A month earlier, another clam dredge operating 45 miles south of Moriches hauled up eight containers of deadly mustard agent, injuring one seaman. 

One piece of unexploded ordnance this year reportedly involved a 900-pound bomb. 

Andrew Doba, a spokesman for Vineyard Wind, which is scheduled to begin construction off the Massachusetts coast later this year for electricity production in late 2023, said, “I can confirm we found [one] UXO. No others were found, and we did take the proper steps, notifying federal agencies and they map it and it goes out to everybody so they know it’s out there.”

Equinor, which is developing two wind farms called Empire Wind 1 and 2 off the South Shore of Long Island, will begin survey work for unexploded ordnance later this year, spokeswoman Lauren Shane said.

Wims of Orsted noted the survey work taking place this summer that has found the ordnance is "for identification and confirmation and nothing is being moved or touched." The ordnance findings, she added "do not impact the project schedule." 

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.