DES MOINES, Iowa — Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird is suing a Washington state-based company for allegedly violating Iowa's solid waste laws by abandoning wind turbine blades at various locations across the state.
In the lawsuit, Bird says that although Global Fiberglass Solutions (GFS) was contracted and paid millions of dollars by major wind turbine companies General Electric (GE) and MidAmerican Energy to recycle decommissioned turbine blades back in 2017, 1,300 of them sat in stockpiles for years in the towns of Ellsworth, Newton and Atlantic.
"Defendants illegally disposed of solid waste by speculatively accumulating decommissioned wind-turbine blades at several locations in Iowa beginning as early as November 2017, and made no effort to recycle or otherwise legally dispose of the blades," the lawsuit reads.
The Newton site, located where the old Maytag appliance production facility once was, reportedly housed approximately 868 blades. The Ellsworth site would end up with 400 blades after they were moved from an original Fort Dodge site, and 22 additional blades would be located at Atlantic.
At each site, Bird notes that the turbine blades would be stored on the ground, whether it be an old parking lot or field.
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The first complaint received about the sites was sent to the Iowa DNR (Department of Natural Resources) in August 2018 concerning the Newton site.
Following the complaint and some inspections at both the Newton and original Fort Dodge site, DNR staff raised concern over GFS's accumulation of turbine blades.
By early 2020, after the Fort Dodge site's property owner said GFS was no longer making rent payments or removing the turbine blades as the owner and GFS had agreed upon, the Iowa DNR issued a Notice of Violation, the lawsuit says.
The notice stated that neither the Newton nor Fort Dodge site were a permitted location for sanitary disposal, and that GFS had not received a permit from the DNR for dumping the blades at either site.
GFS allegedly moved the turbine blades from the Fort Dodge site to the Ellsworth site in September 2020 before receiving another Notice of Violation from the DNR, this time including the Ellsworth site's owner.
The lawsuit continues to say that in October 2020, the Newton site owner sent a letter to the DNR detailing efforts to remove the turbine blades from the location, including that GFS had outstanding rent it owed.
The DNR made its inspection of the Atlantic site in November 2020.
Throughout 2021, GFS would receive a series of orders and deadlines from the DNR attempting to get the company to begin proper disposal, which would not happen, the petition said.
On July 7, 2021, a vote by the Environmental Protection Commission to refer GFS to the Iowa Attorney Generals's Office passed.
According to Bird's office, MidAmerican disposed of the abandoned blades at the Ellsworth location in 2022, sending the blades to a recycler outside the state while GE cleaned the Newton and Atlantic sites in 2024, also sending the blades to be recycled outside of Iowa.
Cleanup at all GFS sites would be completed on June 28, 2024 according to GE and MidAmerican.
"GFS failed to do its job, and instead, dumped and abandoned 1,300 decommissioned wind turbine blades in stockpiles across the state," Bird said in a statement. "Despite efforts from my office and the DNR, GFS refused cleanup, allowing these blades to pose an environmental risk. We are taking action to hold them accountable."