Letters

Your last week’s Letters to the Editor included what, hopefully, will be among the last gasps of the Canal BESS disinformation machine. These misguided epistles enthusiastically support the obviously loony idea of jamming 100 million watt-hours of explosive lithium-ion batteries into a peaceful Hampton Bays residential neighborhood for the financial benefit of hedge fund speculators in Singapore.

Kathleen Boziwick of Sag Harbor virtuously rails against my neighbors: “Will the NIMBYism never end?” [“Existential Risks,” Letters, August 1]. Her indignation would carry more weight if she lived a lot closer to the proposed site. While safely practicing “NIMZC” (“Not in My Zip Code”), she preaches at my Hampton Bays neighbors to overcome their “fears of local battery storage” and get comfortable with the prospect of 30 trailers full of explosive chemicals in their laps.

A second morally indignant missive comes from Casey Petrashek [“Trust the Experts,” Letters, August 1], a paid staffer at a Manhattan-based advocacy group. While urging the town to “trust the experts” and immediately suspend the BESS moratorium, Petrashek ignores the fact that the systems that blew up in New York last year had been designed and approved by “the experts” and bore the gold-standard Underwriters Lab seal of approval. Petrashek’s account of the battery storage safety record is a selective, sugar-coated fantasy.

While busy fretting about the moratorium, Boziwick and Petrashek have obviously missed the significant progress that the BESS Steering Committee, chaired by Supervisor Maria Moore, has made on the issue. Rather than rehashing the battle of Canal BESS, the committee went back to basics to establish parameters for community-friendly sites that would best serve the town’s needs.

Significantly, at the latest Town Board open meeting to discuss the merits of continuing the moratorium, neither Boziwick nor Petrashuk showed up to voice their grave concerns. Perhaps the commute was too long. While at all the committee and board meetings, Hampton Bays was well represented by community members supporting the moratorium and the analytical work of the town’s expert site selection team.

Rather than fighting a time-wasting rear-guard action, preaching to the already converted about the merits of renewable energy, and scolding the community about our reasonable reluctance to cuddle up to dangerous new lithium-ion neighbors, your correspondents would better serve the clean energy cause by getting informed and supporting the steering committee’s common sense efforts to bring green energy to Southampton.

Bill Muir

Hampton Bays