Monterey County declares state of emergency over Northern California lithium battery plant fire
Monterey County declares state of emergency over California battery plant fire; questions remain
03:07
Monterey County supervisors on Tuesday declared a state of emergency in response to last week’s major fire at the Vistra lithium battery plant in Moss Landing.
The emergency declaration came during a special meeting where officials gave updates on the fire and ongoing response. While the fire has burned itself out, there are still a lot of questions from local leaders and neighbors about what’s next.
“This was the beginning,” said Josh Contreras as he showed photos he took of the incident from his houseboat.
The images show a fireball on the horizon, not even a mile away.
“I walked up the docks, and then I took more photos,” he said. “Because you could see the flames, probably almost as tall as the towers that stand here.”
The fire at the Moss Landing Vistra Power Plant, located about 90 miles south of San Francisco, broke out last Thursday afternoon, escalating in the early evening to the point where the incident triggered evacuations for about 1,200 Monterey County residents in the area and shut down a section of Highway 1 in both directions.
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Concerned over the potentially toxic runoff if fire crews turned hoses on the burning lithium batteries, officials instead are allowing the to burn itself out.
Officials said the fire was largely out as of late Friday morning during a press conference, but it flared up significantly for a few hours that afternoon before dying down again. Officials were eventually able to lift the evacuation orders by early Friday evening. The stretch of Highway 1 near the plant remained closed until Sunday.
Now that the fire is out, he is one of the many people living in the area what lies in the future for the facility.
“If they do battery packs, they should keep it in more deserted areas,” Contreras said.
“This technology is ahead of the government’s ability to regulate it,” Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church said during the emergency meeting Tuesday. “And the industry’s ability to control it.”
Supervisors were asking similar questions about the fire. A representative from Vistra said were just getting access to the burned-out lithium battery facility. The incident was enough for Church, who last week likened the fire to a “Three Mile Island” event for the emerging industry — to draw this conclusion:
“Battery storage is essential for the future. And that’s the direction we’re going,” Church noted. “But — as I said last night and I’ve tried to emphasize — we just can’t put that above safety. That’s got to be the priority at this point.”
Church is calling for the Vistra facility to remain closed until an independent investigation can determine the cause of the incident.
“Unfortunately, we’re on a pretty steep learning curve with battery safety still,” said Dustin Mulvaney, a professor of environmental sciences at San Jose State University. “And we’re still figuring out ways that these batteries catch on fire. We’re still figuring out how to best suppress them.”
Mulvaney said the Moss Landing facility fire will be a wake-up call for the entire industry, right down to the people who insure the batteries. A lot of people will want to know what went wrong, and where, in a plant that is a hodgepodge of lithium battery technology.
“That site is actually an example of different ways to design it,” Mulvaney explained. “Because it was built in different phases. They took advantage of different opportunities to put things in different places. But this example will cause the industry to reflect on how they built these things. Because they have to be better neighbors to the community.”
Those who live in the community are reflecting on what it means to have this plant as a neighbor.
“Yeah. It should be out in the desert,” said plant neighbor Julie Nieman. “Somewhere in Nevada, out in the desert where people aren’t around. Why would you put it where people live, in this beautiful area by the ocean?”
With the exception of one closed roadway beside the plant, things in Moss Landing are pretty much back to normal. The parks and beaches have to reopened, though some people have raised additional questions about the impact the fire had on the environment, particularly the sensitive Elkhorn Slough Reserve. The wetlands area is home to a number of endangered sea otters.
The county says it is going to start water quality testing this week, but they say that is not as high of a concern as the air quality was during the fire.
Wilson Walker
Source: cbsnews.com