'Potential nightmare:' Hampton Bays residents protest proposed lithium battery storage facility near homes
The residents are strategizing on how to notify as many people as they can about the potential dangers of a lithium battery storage facility being built near their homes.
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A group of Hampton Bays residents are protesting plans to build a lithium battery storage system close to their neighborhood.
The nearly 5-acre facility would be built off of North Shore Road.
Residents say this is the wrong location as it's just about 100 feet from the nearest neighborhood. They say there are too many safety, environmental and noise pollution issues that have not been considered.
The residents are strategizing on how to notify as many people as they can about the potential dangers of a lithium battery storage facility being built near their homes.
"This is a game changer, this could change the neighborhood,” says resident Philip Metzger.
Resident Brigid Maher adds,” This is turning my dream into a potential nightmare."
Canal Southampton Battery storage submitted the application to build the site, proposing the construction of a battery energy storage unit system that would contain 30 battery enclosure units. Each would hold 24 battery modules.
“Which is a very, very large facility, that's one of the bigger ones I've seen,” says Ray D'Angelo, director of the Hampton Bays Civic Association. “And you know the bigger they are, there's more potential for one of these batteries to fail in one of these containers…it could set one of the containers on fire and that could spread to the other containers. That's what I'm talking about with catastrophic failure."
The group says they're concerned about the potential for fires that are difficult to extinguish, as well as the environmental impacts the facility could pose to the area.
"Water doesn't actually extinguish it to cool the facility to stop the reaction. This could take a matter of days,” D’Angelo says.
The proposal has the storage center to sit next to Route 27, near the Shinnecock Canal, as well as several homes, which residents say is too close to a busy area if there was an issue.
"I'm not a climate change denier, I'm not against new technology or green energy. But I don't want to solve one problem with another. And in this case, I really think it's a bad location,” Maher says.
News 12 reached out to the attorney representing Canal Southampton Battery Storage.
The Town of Southampton says they don't comment on something that is before a planning board.
