Letters

In journalism school over 60 years ago, we were taught the maxim: “The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

Having turned that lesson on its head, your editors obviously skipped that class. The message in your February 29 editorial, “Change the Subject,” to the BESS-beset residents of Hampton Bays is: Stop sniveling about 100 million watts of explosive battery storage destroying the character and possibly the structure of your residential neighborhood. Your betters know better. And they have decided that you will pay the price for their virtuous green energy aspirations.

One would hope that when your editors got the lesson wrong, at least they’d get some of the facts right.

Start with this absurdity: You accuse us of burying our heads in the sand, saying: “Nope — no BESS here. That’s like pretending electrical substations don’t exist in our midst.” I assume you are well-intentioned and just misinformed when you equate the impact of an electrical substation with Canal BESS’s proposed 30 trailer-sized, highly combustible battery storage units.

Your implied characterization of my Hampton Bays neighbors as NIMBY no-nothings is a grotesque slur. We have not said: “Build it somewhere else and we will stop protesting.” We have said that Canal BESS is an enormous industrial installation. It should be located in one of our town’s many industrial zones, not jammed in next to our bedrooms, our families, our gardens, our lives.

Regarding the very spotty safety record of BESS, you glibly note: “Other, more high-profile incidents are more worrisome, but the technology will get safer, and communities can take precautions in the meantime.”

My neighbors are not lab rats or smoke jumpers. I refer you to the BESS Failure Event Data Base. These things continue to blow up with some regularity. They should be located in industrial zones, where such events can be anticipated and safely addressed.

Having participated in a number of the BESS public commentary meetings, one fact is clear: All the virtuous sermonizing about having to make sacrifices for a glorious green energy future comes from folks who remain comfortably sacrifice-free, now and into the foreseeable future.

It’s terribly discouraging to see the editorial board of what should be a courageous community voice mock the afflicted and join the self-congratulatory chorus of the safely comfortable.

Bill Muir

Hampton Bays