Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird has filed a lawsuit accusing an out-of-state company and two of its top executives of failing to properly dispose of over 1,000 decommissioned wind turbine blades.
According to the Iowa Attorney General’s lawsuit, General Electric and MidAmerican Energy paid millions to a company in Washington state to cut up, transport and recycle wind turbine blades. The attorney general says that company, Global Fiberglass Solutions, illegally dumped about 1,300 wind turbine blades at parking lots in Newton and in fields near Ellsworth and Atlantic.
The attorney general says those stockpiles posed an environmental risk and the company refused to act despite orders from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. The lawsuit seeks civil penalties of $5,000 per day, over a roughly five year period, for violations of the state’s solid waste disposal rules.
Both General Electric and MidAmerican Energy have had the blades removed from the three sites in Iowa and recycled out of state. General Electric has also sued Global Fiberglass Solutions for failing to dispose of retired wind turbine blades in Texas AND in Iowa.
Attempts to reach a spokesperson for Global Fiberglass Solutions were unsuccessful.
