Letters

I watched the Southampton Town Board work session this week and was dismayed to hear the same old song-and-dance, this time addressed to the BESS facility controversy.

Janice Scherer described the beneficial reason the town decided to allow BESS facilities to be built in the town: to allow growth in the use of green power sources and to protect people east of the Shinnecock Canal from power outages due to inconsistent wind and solar power sources. Then, just in case we idiots didn’t understand the concept, John Bouvier explained how the new technology is necessary to wean us off fossil fuels.

Again, they are setting up a straw man to easily knock down. No one is against BESS facilities. We are against building them in residential neighborhoods.

Don’t lecture us about the need for these facilities. We get it. Find more appropriate locations.

This is the same tactic they used to promote the bad idea of a sewage treatment plant wedged in between Good Ground Park and Good Ground Cemetery. There, they also talked more about the need for a sewer district than the fact that they picked the worst location possible for a sewage treatment plant. We are not against a sewer district. The problem is location.

In this vein, I was misquoted in the report of the Planning Board’s public hearing concerning the proposed North Road BESS facility [“Adamant Objection to Hampton Bays BESS Continues,” 27east.com, June 14]. I did not say that ours was the only town to approve BESS facilities on Long Island. I said that Southampton was the only town to approve BESS facilities in residential areas. Three other towns have approved BESS facilities, but all of them restrict the zoning to nonresidential areas, especially ones the same size as the proposed North Road facility.

Why didn’t Southampton’s Planning Department take a closer look at the safety risks before making this ill-conceived decision to allow BESS facilities in our residential neighborhoods? What did the planning departments of those three other towns know that ours did not?

Tommy John Schiavoni also eagerly extolled the virtues of BESS facilities and explained that the North Road site was chosen because BESS facilities need to be close to substations, since power is lost in longer transmissions. He didn’t mention that the other proposed BESS location in Hampton Bays is not near a substation, and the developer is proposing to build a substation as well. Proximity to a substation is only a concern if you want it to be.

It’s tiring to keep fighting Town Hall to get our elected representatives to listen to our concerns and make informed, educated and rational decisions.

BESS facilities are needed. Find a better place for them.

Elizabeth Hook

Hampton Bays

For the record, the article paraphrased Hook as saying “other municipalities recognize that a massive facility doesn’t belong in residential communities” — Ed.