Letters

Your March 28 editorial, “Charged Up,” injected a refreshing note of common sense into the Canal BESS melee.

In his valedictory interview with your staff, Thomas Falcone, retiring CEO of the Long Island Power Authority, validated the alarm of my Hampton Bays neighbors who were being asked to cuddle up with 30 trailer-sized loads of combustible lithium batteries being dumped in our neighborhood.

As you report, Mr. Falcone shared that “concerns about BESS facilities are legitimate, in part because the technology is new and there is demonstrated volatility around them.”

In a lot plainer language, this is what my well-informed neighbors have been saying and writing for the past year, with the help of credentialed experts in chemistry, environmental engineering, fire safety and emergency management. Coming from Mr. Falcone on the editorial page of The Southampton Press, it is welcome validation after being constantly maligned as science deniers and NIMBY knuckleheads.

Your editorial also offers this helpful disclaimer from Mr. Falcone: “For now, proposals like the one in Hampton Bays are being presented not by LIPA but by contractors, who then hope to interest the utility in using them.” In other words, Canal BESS is a “spec job.” It traces its ownership tortuously back through a maze of lawyers and shell companies to a giant hedge fund in Singapore and their investment partners in Melbourne, Australia.

To speculate on their speculation: Can we assume that they’re motivated more by cashing in on Long Island’s green energy boom than on saving the planet? And, as a result, they were happily well on their way to jamming 100 million watts of explosive lithium batteries into our residential community under a cloud of COVID distraction and green virtue signaling.

It was all a “done deal,” until one neighbor, then another, then a community, and then a hamlet stood up and started to fight back.

For now, Mr. Falcone said there were “no plans to develop a BESS site before 2026 or 2027 — and potentially not at all. LIPA recognizes the opposition to BESS facilities in residential areas.”

While he never said “never,” Mr. Falcone noted, “The utility is very likely to seek locations where there is less resistance. Certainly, on the crowded South Fork, there won’t be many places that qualify.”

Should that time come, start with industrial zones before deciding to drop a BESS in my neighbors’ laps again.

Bill Muir

Hampton Bays