Op-Ed: Take Fears About Battery Storage Facilities Seriously

Guest Op-Ed by Michael P. Mezzacappa

Dozens of Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) facilities are currently proposed or being built in some of New York City’s tightest-knit communities. As policymakers prioritize climate goals over the health and safety of neighborhoods like Middle Village and, most recently, St. Albans, residents are right to be concerned.

The push for battery storage centers is born out of the desire to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The New York Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (NYCLCPA) calls for cutting emissions 40% by 2030 and 85% by 2050. However, this law totally disregards the reality of fire science, which is within my area of the practice of law.

Toxic Chemicals Forced Fire- fighters to Let Fires Burn Out

While the FDNY is the best and most experienced in confronting fires and fatalities from small-scale lithium-ion battery fires – 277 toxic fires in 2024 – it’s entirely different on an industrial scale. Lithium-ion batteries burn hotter and faster, requiring much more water to extinguish. In fact, incidents involving these are more akin to an explosion, followed by a fire. Putting aside the fact that harvesting lithium has grave environmental consequences, including emitting 15 tons of carbon dioxide for every 1 ton of lithium harvested, New York is rushing too far, too fast down this road. Consider what happened this past January at the Moss Landing Power Plant, about 90 minutes south of San Francisco. While the facility has now caught fire on five separate occasions, the scale of the January 2025 blaze was incomparable. Due to the emissions of hydrogen fluoride and other toxic chemicals, firefighters were forced to let the fire burn itself out, rather than risking severe damage to their own lungs along with that of members of the surrounding community. Upwards of 1,200 people were forced to evacuate and in the days that followed, community residents report- ed feeling unwell.

While that west coast power plant had the benefit of being over half a mile from any built-up residential areas, imagine such a fire in a crowded New York residential neighborhood like St. Albans, where the latest planned BESS center is set to go up across from the St. Albans Veterans Hospital, on the site of a former gas station, where the underground gas tanks have been left in place for decades.

The borough is already home to 16 other functional BESS centers, only accounting for a minuscule 11.9 megawatts, the equivalent to power less than 12,000 homes. At least 14 more are planned for the borough, putting our homes and schools in the shadow of these potentially hazardous facilities. The FDNY deserves credit for its successful crackdown on illegal manufacturing and battery repair sites, and their ingenious use of specialized fire blankets to smother lithium-ion fires. Having litigated dozens of cases involving building infernos that resulted from lithium- ion batteries, I can personally attest to the insurance underwriting nightmare these massive scale facilities pose.

Most Batteries are From China – Companies Uninsured

What the BESS sponsors might not tell you is that the U.S. currently gets most of its lithium-ion batter- ies from China. It’s relevant because the producers responsible for mak- ing these batteries never respond to a single court summons and are, in the majority of cases, completely uninsured. Also, attorneys often cannot obtain jurisdiction over the manufacturer or the supplier of the batteries due to laws that, in many instances, favor foreign countries more than our own citizens. When something goes wrong, buyer beware!

Directly Across From PS 128

Yet while most new commercial, industrial or residential buildings here are required to have sprinkler systems, there is no current fire suppression technology capable of confronting industrial-sized lithium-ion battery fires.

While the FDNY has specialized fire blankets that can cover an electric vehicle, is it even possible to deploy one to cover an entire industrial building? The countless families in Middle Village, where a BESS facility is planned directly across from K-8 school PS 128, should be rightly concerned, as should those living near the 250-bed St. Albans VA Medical Center.

While New York City law prohibits smoking within 100 feet of a school building, why on earth can it be sensible to put a building packed full of materials that can emit toxic fumes when set alight, adjacent to a school, or a hospital serving our veterans?

As New York recklessly gallops ahead with building more BESS facilities, it should heed the concerns of its citizens before it is too late. The instability of lithium-ion batteries will simply not go away because they want it to. The time has come for a moratorium on any further construc- tion of BESS centers, near schools and residential neighborhoods.

Michael Mezzacappa, a partner and general counsel with New York-based Coffey Modica, represents insurers, property owners, managing agents and other professionals in major litigations that include lithium-ion battery explosions and fires.

Need to address safety in subways

Workers are steadily returning to their offices in Manhattan and across the five boroughs, but a new poll shows that 60 percent of them still fear for their safety.
But they aren’t worried about contracting COVID-19, they’re worried about their physical safety as they return to the city’s subway system.
Stations across the city were nearly deserted for the first few months of the pandemic last year except for the brave men and women working on the front lines, paving the way for an unsavory element to feel more comfortable taking over the system.
We have all heard the stories of random attacks, including people being assaulted or pushed onto the tracks or both, that have become far too common in the mass transit system. If the city is going to get back to work, people need to feel comfortable using the subways.
Would more cops patrolling the platforms and trains help? Mayor Bill de Blasio recently added 250 more cops to the 3,000 already safeguarding the subways, and it certainly can’t hurt.
But in addition to the criminal element, there is a far bigger problem with the homeless and mentally ill living in the stations. More cops won’t necessarily solve that issue.
Instead, the city and MTA need a social solution. They need people who are trained in dealing with the homeless and mentally ill to join the police in engaging these individuals and try to get them help.
Simply locking them up and then releasing them back on the street won’t accomplish anything.
After a year of us all worrying about our health due to the pandemic, we need to feel safe in the subways as our lives slowly return to normal.

City bracing for a summer of violence

If Memorial Day weekend is any indication, it looks like it’s going to be a bloody summer in the city.
On Monday night alone, a teenager was killed and eight others were injured in incidents across the five boroughs. That’s on top of several other acts of violence over the weekend.
Police sources were quoted in published reports saying crime would have been a lot worse over the weekend if the weather hadn’t been so awful.
In other words, as the calendar turns to summer we can expect the violence to get much worse.
This is on top of the spike in hate crimes, primarily directed at the Asian community. On Monday, another woman was randomly punched in front of a restaurant in Manhattan’s Chinatown.
The city is trying to address the growing violence, from flooding troubled neighborhoods with extra police to employing community groups to try to stop the shooting before it starts, but it doesn’t seem to be working.
The de Blasio administration and the NYPD will have to get creative if New Yorkers are going to feel safe walking the streets this summer.
But residents need to do their part, too, when they can. If you see something suspicious or witness an act of violence, make sure you come forward and help our officers get the dangerous elements off our streets.

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