Hempstead Hearing Scheduled For Battery Storage Facility Moratorium

HEMPSTEAD, NY. — The Town of Hempstead will be holding a public hearing on Jan. 13, giving residents the chance to comment on a proposed local law forbidding the town from reviewing battery storage facilities. The public hearing was scheduled at the Dec. 9 meeting, as the eighty-seventh and final item on the administrative calendar.

The proposed local law would forbid Hempstead agencies, boards, and employees or officers thereof, from accepting or reviewing any application regarding battery energy system storage facility until Aug. 25 of next year. The law would also prevent review of any special exceptions, variances, site plans or building permits regarding battery energy system storage facilities until the same date.

In this case, “battery energy system storage facility” is defined as, “A facility, structure, building, or parcel of land that holds or houses electrochemical devices that charge, or collect energy from, a power grid and are then discharged to provide energy to parcels, structures, facilities, dwellings, or utilities serviced by that grid.”

In September, ABC News reported that there were over 6,000 such facilities in the state. In that report, ABC news also said that some New Yorkers had begun expressing concerns about the fire safety at battery storage facilities.

Proponents of the facilities, like the New York League of Conservation Voters, call battery energy storage systems, “an increasingly important and increasingly discussed component of the renewable energy future needed to displace fossil fuels.” The first state-owned battery energy facility was announced in August of 2023.

New York State plans to develop 6,000 megawatts of energy storage by 2030, a goal that was increased from 1,500 to 6,000 last summer by the state’s public service commission.

“Storage will increase the resilience and efficiency of New York’s grid, which will be 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. Additionally, energy storage can stabilize supply during peak electric usage and help keep critical systems online during an outage,” NYSERDA says.

While the state’s goals on battery energy facilities are clear and the hearing is almost a month away, questions persisted about fire safety at the December meeting.

“I’m not a resident of the town of Hempstead, so why am I here? I’m here to talk about battery storage, which can create environmental problems, can create dangerous situations for residents far, far away from battery storage facilities when they go on fire,” Glen Head resident Doug Augenthaler said.

Augenthaler expressed his particular concern at the potential presence of lithium batteries at facilities in Hempstead, calling lithium, “highly, highly flammable, virtually impossible to put out and [it] winds up putting toxic chemicals and heavy metals into the air when they burn.”

Augenthaler noted that these batteries don’t burn often, but said that, “Even under new fire codes, the system is to let them burn out, because they can’t be put out. There was a large fire earlier this year in Moss Landing, CA, and they’ve had environmental issues, and issues with residents being harmed physically as many as 20 miles from the battery storage facility. Think about where the battery storage facility here is going to be proposed, draw a 20-mile circle around that, you enclose most of Nassau County. That’s why I’m here, because it affects North Hempstead, it affects Oyster Bay, it affects Suffolk County when you build these things. These things are not safe, they should not be in residential areas, they should not be anywhere near Long Island, yet New York State is proposing these things all over the place.”

The Moss Landing fire took place in January, leading to the evacuation of over 1,500 people and reigniting a month later. Days after the reignition, residents of the area around where the blaze had taken place filed suit against the plant's operators. In September, the EPA announced that workers had begun removing batteries from the facility.

“I do hope that…you will be pursuing a year [moratorium], just given the gravity of the fallout from disasters at these facilities, and protecting public health,” Glen Head resident Chris Panseca said at the meeting.

On this point, however, Town Supervisor John Ferretti said the board’s hands were tied due to an earlier one-year moratorium on battery energy facility review.

“The board is well-aware of the risks. We will not be pursuing a year,” Ferretti said. “The courts have held that the maximum amount of time you could set for a moratorium is 18 months. And so, since we’ve already had a year, the most we can do is six months.”

Ferretti noted to the crowd in attendance that the resolution approved Dec. 9 was only scheduling the public hearing, encouraging concerned residents to return in the new year for full comment.

“On item 87, that is an item to set a hearing for Jan. 13, so come back on Jan. 13 and you’ll be able to speak on the item,” Ferretti said. “But, going forward, anybody who wants to speak on that [agenda item], it’s only with regards to setting the hearing [date], not the actual content of it.”