As the lithium battery storage facility that prompted evacuations in Moss Landing last week continues to smolder days later, concerns are being raised about the impact on the surrounding area.
The fire at the Moss Landing Vistra power plant, about 90 miles south of San Francisco, broke out last Thursday afternoonescalating in the early evening to the point where the incident occurred led to evacuations for about 1,200 Monterey County residents in the area and closes a portion of Highway 1 in both directions.
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Concerned about the potentially toxic discharge if firefighters were to turn hoses on the burning lithium batteries, officials are instead allowing the battery to burn itself out.
Officials said the fire was mostly out by late Friday morning during a press conference, but it flared up significantly for a few hours that afternoon before subsiding.
At the news conference, Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church mentioned the incident a “Three-Mile Island event” for the industryreferring to the partial meltdown of a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, the worst nuclear accident in American history. The battery energy storage systems industry, known by the acronym BESS, develops systems to store energy from electric, solar, electric, wind and other energy systems.
“I think this could best be described as a worst-case scenario of a disaster that happened here. No one really predicted anything in this area,” Church said. “This is truly much more than just a fire, it is a wake-up call for this industry. And if we want to move forward with sustainable energy, we must have safe battery systems in place.”
Church said he has answered numerous questions from his constituents about why it happened, how it happened and how to prevent a similar accident in the future. Kerk added that it is the fourth fire at the locationa former Pacific Gas and Electric facility, since 2019, and said he and other county officials were previously confident that wouldn’t happen again. He called for better safety protocols for the industry at the federal, state, local and private levels.
The church is calling for the Vistra facility to remain closed until an independent investigation can determine the cause of the incident.
There are also ongoing concerns about the environmental impact the fire has had on the region.
Monterey County officials will begin testing the area’s water this week. In the meantime, despite the toxic smoke released when burning lithium batteries, they have made everything clear about air quality.
“The air quality is good and … it’s safe to breathe there,” said Marni Flagg, chief of Monterey County’s Environmental Health Assistant Bureau.
Evacuation orders were lifted on Friday eveningbut the closed section of Highway 1 did not reopen until Sunday.
Health officials still advised residents near the plant to limit exposure to outdoor air and keep doors and windows closed until further notice.
The ongoing fire is not only a concern for residents living in the area, but also for the endangered sea otters that live in the sensitive wetlands near the Vistra plant.
“They are a keystone species. They help protect the kelp beds off the coast by consuming sea urchins, and they help protect the seabeds here in the marsh,” researcher Lilian Carswell of the University of California, Santa Cruz. “So healthy sea otters mean a healthy environment.”
The otters live in the Elkhorn Slough Reserve. Investigators will keep a close eye on them as the fire continues to burn.
The Elkhorn Slough Reserve is closed until further notice. There are only about 3,000 sea otters left in California.
