There have been some new developments surrounding the fire that raged at the Moss Landing Battery Plant in January and reignited in February, including a community survey, warnings from the EPA about potential flare-ups, and Erin Brockovich helping residents in a lawsuit.
The January fire at the battery plant in Moss Landing caused the evacuation of 1,200 residents, and the community has since been dealing with ongoing side effects, including headaches, nausea, and sore throats. According to KSBW in Monterey, the Health Departments of Monterey, San Benito, and Santa Cruz Counties are currently conducting a community survey in collaboration with the California Department of Public Health about the fire's impact on residents' health, which ends on Friday.
The EPA issued a warning that there's still the potential for more flare-ups at the plant as workers continue to clean up the site and delink the batteries that caused the initial fire. Officials at the plant said that a private fire company and air resource monitors are watching the site around the clock.
Additionally, Mercury News reports that famed environmental activist Erin Brockovich is working with a San Diego law firm to represent the residents of Moss Landing against Vistra as well as other defendants, including PG&E, which operates another energy storage facility at the Moss Landing plant.
Although Vistra says testing of the air, soil, and water in the area show no risks to public health, Brockovich thinks the company is concealing information. The lawsuit claims that the amount of cobalt, manganese, nickel, and copper in the preliminary state data exceeded federal EPA risk levels for residential soil. The lawsuit also alleges that the facility’s fire-suppression system was deficient.
Brockovich also told Mercury News that the state's rush to implement cleaner energy standards could be exacerbating the problem:
I’m concerned that in our quest to do something good, we’re not going to do it right. And then we’re going to have something bad — more fires. If you get fires like that in any Santa Ana wind condition, you could have a much larger, uncontrollable scenario.
The state is pushing through in haste, to hurry. They’re not going to catch their mistakes, and we’re going to have a bigger problem.
Mercury News notes that a dozen more battery plants are being planned in California, which raises concerns about the wellbeing of nearby residents. A new bill has been introduced by Assemblywoman Dawn Addis, D-Morro Bay, (AB 303), which would ban new battery storage plants from being built within 3,200 feet of homes, schools, businesses, and hospitals.
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