Letters

In upstate Jefferson County last week, the third New York battery energy storage system facility in two months burst into flames. At this writing, it was still on fire and expected to take a week to burn out.

How many more BESS blow-ups this summer will it take for town government to get the message: Battery storage is an industrial facility. It belongs in an industrial zone. Dangerously fiddling with the zoning codes, as the town did, will not change that fact.

Putting 100 million watt-hours of potentially explosive battery storage in a residential community in Hampton Bays isn’t just a dumb idea, it’s a dangerously dumb idea, so dumb and so dangerous that only an expert could dream it up.

I’ve sat in meetings and listened to the town’s experts explain how the Underwriters Lab seal on the batteries will protect my neighbors from harm, and how in the infinitely remote possibility of a mishap the problem will be contained in a single unit. The problem is that the still-smoldering units in Jefferson County all had the UL seal of approval, which didn’t stop them from burning and didn’t stop the fire from spreading to four units.

So how will our town’s leaders propose to keep the conflagration from your door? Bring in more experts? Do a study? Downsize Canal BESS? Add some secret sauce to the batteries? Or maybe all of the above?

One look at the pictures of this latest BESS fire will give you the answer. Restore the integrity of our zoning code. Industrial should mean industrial. Residential should mean residential.

In Jefferson County, the batteries are burning away in complete isolation. The fire crews are directing their hoses from about a hundred feet away, while smoke containing who knows what is blowing downwind across broad fields. The area has been on lockdown for a mile around. But the good news is that there does not appear to be a single resident for a mile around.

Not like the proposed site in Hampton Bays, where if, for myriad reasons, a single battery of the hundreds to be installed were to disregard the experts and decide to ignite, we’d have a real problem. My neighbors would be trapped, as would everyone from here to Montauk, by a toxic fire at one of the narrowest points on Long Island.

Proposing a volatile facility at this residential, busy, transportation choke point takes more than expertise — it takes some kind of twisted, comic genius.

Let’s just keep it simple. Industrial means industrial. Residential means residential. It’s the difference between a nuisance and a tragedy.

Bill Muir

Hampton Bays