Letters

This began as a catalog of all the questions surrounding the idiotic placing of battery energy storage systems in a residential zone. Behind the questions are bad and venal decisions. Repeating such a list is a waste of time and an insult to those paying attention, but look at a map and see that most of BESS locations in western Southampton are in Riverside and Hampton Bays. Interesting.

Instead, some words on a broken system and those who infest it.

Our board always starts determined to do the right thing for us, the town, the environment. We know where they are headed and usually go along. Not so with BESS.

We were informed well after the fact about BESS and its location.

Residents started asking questions about placement, size, reasoning — and got castigated. Portrayed as poorly informed, their sources questioned and their opinions dismissed as trash. (No apology for this calumny.) Later comes a defense of this dangerous planning for BESS. Aspersions follow for anyone who dares question any of this.

Meanwhile, the community listens to constant harangues from another board member who thinks of himself as the holder of all useful scientific knowledge and the deliverer of existential truths to those he treats as third-graders who forgot yesterday’s harangue. Meanwhile, Canal BESS goes forward.

Finally, the community’s outrage gets through. The wonderfully unique solution of kicking the ball down the field is enacted: a moratorium. Our supervisor, in his latest amateur edition of “Hamlet,” muses on a future he helped develop but will not be here to see. He attempts to please everyone — choke point, reduced size of the facility, change zoning. But the problem his benign thinking helped create is no longer his to help solve because his tenure ends.

Our government has given us delay as an answer for the dangers of BESS in a thriving community. Those coming as new board members and supervisor will hire experts to figure out how the best invention since we learned to use electricity will save us, the town and the state. And they will have the best Planning Board this side of Maui to help.

Evidently, the moratorium delay has not yet allowed the board to understand that their only issue is where else to site BESS. It is too dangerous in a residential community, no matter its size.

Please, stop waiting, defy donors, the rich, Albany, and do something right — get rid of BESS in a residential community. Now.

And, 27east, we do believe you are capable and have the right staff to add reporting on BESS, its dangers and the range of issues surrounding it, to your wonderful reporting on lawn parties and sold real estate.

Steve Crispinelli

Hampton Bays