Slow, Costly and Often Dangerous Road to Wind Power

rucks carrying silvery blades nearly half a football field long have been lumbering through this placid coastal town all summer, backing up traffic as they slowly exit the roadway. Huge, tubular chunks of tower also pass through. Tall pieces of machinery looking somewhat like jet engines travel at night because they require special routing to avoid overpasses.As demand for clean energy grows, towns around the country are finding their traffic patterns roiled as convoys carrying disassembled towers that will reach more than 250 feet in height, as well as motors, blades and other parts roll through. Escorted by patrol cars and gawked at by pedestrians,

Plenty can go wrong despite months of planning. In Idaho and Texas, trucks laden with tall turbine parts have slammed into interstate overpasses, requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs. In Minnesota last year, a truck carrying a tubular tower section got stuck at a railroad crossing; an approaching train stopped just in time. Also in Minnesota, a woman was killed last September when her car, driven by her husband, collided at an intersection with a truck carrying a wind turbine. (After a police investigation, local officials found that the truck driver was not at fault.)

Maine had a glitch of its own two years ago, after a truck carrying a big piece of turbine got stuck for hours while trying to round a corner near Searsport, a port near Belfast that receives many turbine parts from overseas.

In Belfast, the onslaught of turbine-toting trucks did not receive a warm welcome at first from some local business owners, who feared that rerouting traffic during the summer tourist season — the best time to transport turbines in a wintry state like Maine — would keep patrons away.

“We were afraid that the state was going to put up signs to avoid Belfast because of the delays,” said Jerry Savitz, the owner of Darby’s Restaurant in Belfast, who added that locals nonetheless supported the idea of windmills because of the clean energy they create.

After discussions with the town, the wind developers agreed to send the tall nacelles, which sit at the top of the turbine towers and contain the electrical generating components, through town at night, so few people would be delayed. Because they had to pass through residential neighborhoods to avoid low underpasses, residents feared that a few trees would need to be chopped down. But in the end, the trees were spared.

There is talk of breaking a blade up into multiple pieces, but “that’s a very significant structural concern,” said Mr. Stricker, who also noted that tower bases were getting too large to squeeze through underpasses.

In Texas, the state with by far the most wind turbines, the constant truck traffic has created another challenge: it is tearing up small roads in the western part of the state, where the turbines are being rapidly erected.

“You get what we call alligator cracking,” said Stacey Young, a pavement engineer for the Lubbock district of the Texas Department of Transportation, referring to small seams in the pavement.

One paved road in her area is “basically a gravel road now” because of the trucks going through, Ms. Young said. She has appealed to state lawmakers to require the developers to help pay for the upkeep of the roads, but so far to no avail.

A partial solution for Ms. Young’s concerns may be at hand. The vast majority of turbine parts travel by truck, but in Texas and elsewhere, some wind companies are looking to move more turbine parts by train to save money. General Electric, a big turbine maker, says rail transport can be up to 50 percent cheaper over long distances, and the rail company Union Pacific saw its wind-related shipments more than double last year.