Letters

On August 22, the Southampton Town Council voted to place a moratorium on battery energy storage system sites, including Canal BESS in Hampton Bays.

I would be more effusive in my thanks to the council if fighting their initial attempt to put 100 million-watt hours of combustible batteries in my neighborhood had not cost me most of the summer. I’ll be 83 years old next month and don’t have that many summers to give away trying to fix dumb moves that could have been avoided if the Planning Department had done its job and accessed readily available safety information. Note to Planning Department: Check the BESS Failure Data Base, numerous sources for risk-management actuarial data and Federal Emergency Management Agency BESS hazard alerts dating back to 2019.

It’s not very gracious to shoot the wounded, but our council members have gone on record with a number of unrecanted miscues that compel correction.

Supervisor Jay Schneiderman: Our community is closer to 100 feet from Canal BESS than the 400 feet you continue to cite. We asked you to visit the community so that we could show you. Also, there were four BESS explosions this summer, not three. You missed that there were two separate blowups at two separate Warwick sites on the same day. Tell the Planning Department to look it up.

Councilman John Bouvier: We were not “scared” of BESS. We were outraged. “Negative Ddeclaration.” “Fast-track approval.” “Remote industrial area.” “Benign impact.” This affair has been a catalog of misstatements and municipal malpractice that outraged informed citizens who fought it to a standstill.

Councilman Tommy John Schiavoni: The planet is not saved by cramming huge piles of explosives into residential communities. Endangering lives and property is a disservice to the environmental movement.

When the Canal BESS application, which supposedly had received extensive community input, finally raised its ugly head in our neighborhood this May, we were stunned. Typical reaction: A neighbor, who is a graduate environmental engineer, offered a professional opinion: “Are they crazy?”

But Hampton Bays was not stunned for long. We were energized and will stay energized. BESS is an evolving industrial application that belongs only in industrial zones, where inevitable mishaps can be mitigated effectively. This is not a bargaining position. This is a nonnegotiable fact.

We should spend this moratorium fixing our zoning rules, not tinkering with BESS, downsizing it, changing battery chemistry or adding a fresh batch of safety gadgets. That’s been going on for years, and they’re still blowing up.

So, while seeking the magic formula, save the town some high-priced consulting fees. Allow BESS only in industrial zones, where a malfunction is a nuisance, not a tragedy.

Bill Muir

Hampton Bays