County supervisors move toward progress after catastrophic battery fire.

Ten months after a catastrophic battery fire consumed the entirety of the battery energy storage system (BESS) at Vistra’s Moss 300 facility, cleanup has finally kicked into full gear. Officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are overseeing cleanup of burned battery modules, with operations taking place 24 hours a day, six days a week. As of Tuesday, Nov. 18, they had de-energized and removed 5,560 battery modules from the Moss Landing property, about 15 percent of the 35,772 total.

Four truckloads carrying up to 24 pallets of battery modules at a time are transporting themto recycling facilities in Ohio and Nevada. Batteries have a propensity to re-ignite in wet conditions but tents are being used to keep things dry and so far, no flare-ups have been reported.

That’s good news, for now. But the community is waiting with bated breath as this unprecedented cleanup of hazardous materials continues, and will certainly continue into 2026. A detailed presentation from the Department of Toxic Substances Control is expected in March, but that will come after some businesses and homeowners have already given up on the community.

Despite the opposition to battery energy storage systems, and the potential for catastrophe that happened right here in Moss Landing, there is the reality of a technical need to store renewable energy.

That future almost definitely includes battery energy storage, as State Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, notes. “We’re not going to get off fossil fuels without wind and solar, and we’re not going to have wind and solar unless we have storage for times the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining,” he says. “We need to have battery storage – it just needs to be safe.”

Laird’s Senate Bill 283 gets at least part of the way there, requiring fire departments to be involved in every phase of BESS consideration and development. It also requires safer design guidelines, such that Moss 300 could not be built today. (Not to mention that industry standards have also evolved.)

“The bottom line is, we want safer battery storage,” Laird adds.

I think everyone agrees, including the industry. The immediate question before the County Board of Supervisors is how to best achieve that in the short term.

In the immediate aftermath of the fire, County Supervisor Glenn Church called it a Three Mile Island moment, referring to a partial nuclear meltdown in 1979 that prompted more stringent safety regulations.

“We need to have battery storage – it just needs to be safe.”

As the County gets there, with the process of crafting an ordinance, Church is asking for a moratorium on new BESS facilities. “We’re going to have batteries, but we need to have them as safe as possible,” he says. “I am really hoping Monterey County will be at the forefront of having safe regulations and let us move forward to the future.”

The question is whether a moratorium is the safest and most effective way to get there. Laird rightly points out that the best of intentions to protect the community could have a potential unintended consequence of driving potential BESS developers to circumvent the county entirely. Assembly Bill 205 from 2022 enables developers of large BESS facilities to go straight to the state Energy Commission, in essence dodging local decisionmakers, enabling the state to advance its clean energy goals.

That is a concern that Supervisor Wendy Root Askew echoed. “Any developer who sees that we have a moratorium could simply take the alternate path of going to the state, leaving us without any ability to engage in negotiation,” she said.

Supervisor Luis Alejo shared similar concerns about a loss of local control. “It sounds good but it undermines the very thing we are trying to achieve,” he said.

Some speakers advocating for a moratorium dismissed the supervisors as spineless or puppets, but I think they’re anything but – they are articulating reason, not weakness. Noting the continued operation of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, Supervisor Chris Lopez noted: “We have to find a way to strike a balance.”

A moratorium requires a four-fifths vote to pass. Comments on Nov. 18 revealed it would have just one. Instead, the county will proceed with an ordinance that hopefully strikes a balance.

SARA RUBIN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@montereycountynow.com.