NEW BEDFORD — The last shipment of turbine blades for the $4.5 billion Vineyard Wind 1 project left New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal on March 10.

Mayor Jon Mitchell said, “The deployment of the final major components of the  Vineyard Wind project represents the closing argument of the case we have been making for years: that New Bedford is well-suited to be a center of the offshore wind industry. No matter when the next projects are ready to proceed, we and our many partners have shown that the industry can successfully compete and operate projects from here while working cooperatively with the fishing industry.”

Gordon Carr, New Bedford Port Authority executive director, said, “Today’s final shipment of Vineyard Wind turbine blades from the Port of New Bedford represents an important milestone, not only for this project, but for the role our port has played in this process over the last few years. New Bedford Harbor has shown it can be a critical marshalling and logistics center for large projects while continuing to support our world-class fishing industry.”

The project had been in danger of stalling when the Trump administration in late December issued a stop-work order.

According to documents filed with the U.S. District Court in January, at the time the project was 95% finished, with 61 of 62 turbines installed and 44 turbines already commissioned to produce 572 megawatts of the project’s 800-megawatt capacity. The company had been looking to finish the project, which began construction in 2022, by March 31, according to the Cape Cod Times.

U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts granted the company a preliminary injunction on Jan. 27 allowing Vineyard Wind 1 to restart full construction activities in its lease area south of Martha’s Vineyard while a broader legal challenge moves through the court system, according to the Cape Cod Times.

Offshore wind battle: Vineyard Wind 1 blows past federal stop-work order, project to resume

That ruling blocked a Dec. 22 suspension order issued by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to five major East Coast offshore wind projects, including Vineyard Wind.

Vineyard Wind 1 filed a lawsuit and a request for an injunction on Jan. 15 after BOEM ordered construction paused for at least 90 days while the agency reviewed it and the other four projects against a classified national security assessment the Department of War submitted in November, the Cape Cod Times reported. The order also affected Revolution Wind, Empire Wind, Sunrise Wind and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind-Commercial.

All five were granted injunctions. Revolution Wind, Empire Wind and Coastal Virginia all received injunctions from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia earlier in January. Sunrise Wind’s was approved Feb. 2 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.