Lea este artículo en español aquí.
In its first review of a draft battery energy storage ordinance on June 17, the San Benito County Planning Commission opted to continue its consideration of the proposed regulations until its next meeting on Aug. 9 to give commissioners more time to prepare.
Among the issues being considered are zoning changes to be included in the ordinance for Longroad Energy’s proposed 945-acre Allium Solar Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) project.
After a briefing from County Planning Director Abraham Prado and public comments, the commission agreed in a 4-1 vote (with Commissioner Katherine Sanchez dissenting) that they needed more time to better understand the project, including battery technology, fire safety measures and what benefits there would be for the county.
“I want to thank the staff for putting this together,” Commissioner Robert Gibson said. “Obviously, this is not my field, so I feel a little nervous. I do have a lot of concerns. In particular, I certainly don’t want to hand over our local control to the state because they certainly don’t have our welfare at heart.”
During his presentation, Prado summarized the proposed ordinance’s six amendments to the Title 25 Zoning Code. One of the amendments spelled out how the project would be built primarily on grazing land. However, some of the land is classified by the California Department of Conservation as “prime, state-wide, and local important farmland.”
Prado mentioned that a 50,000-gallon water tank would be included on the site. Commissioner Richard Scagliotti said he thought this insufficient, even though he said he understood that battery fires cannot be smothered with water.
“I wondered if there were alternatives to water,” Scagliotti said.
Hollister Fire Battalion Chief Charlie Bedolla told the commissioners the water tank’s size wouldn’t matter.
“We have to basically let them burn,” he said.
He added that the water would instead be used to protect the surrounding grass in order to keep sparks from igniting vegetation around the battery units.
After having a chance to read the ordinance, Longroad Energy’s Development Manager Laren Cyphers described it as a “first draft,” and said it needed more time to be developed. Earlier this year, Cyphers had criticized the time the county was taking to draft an ordinance.
“We submitted detailed written comments on the ordinance, and then also the landowner leasing acres to us also submitted a comment, pointing out that most of these acres, while considered prime and important, [only] a small portion is farmed for crops,” she said, “and even those are low productivity, challenging ground.”
She then said the ordinance goes “far beyond what the already rigorous and up-to-date state and national safety codes lay out. My concern here is that it adds actual cost and complications for these types of projects without necessarily adding real safety.”
Cyphers said some of the provisions being proposed would make similar projects extremely hard to build.
“An ordinance can be strict on safety without effectively closing the door to development,” she said, noting several more points that she thought needed to be addressed. “So rather than move it forward as written, I’d ask the commissioners to send it back to the staff to keep working and present a refined draft at future hearings.”
Public comment
Speaker Jessica Ayala offered her husband’s services as an expert consultant, who she said wrote the draft ordinance for Santa Cruz County. Even though she said the proposed ordinance was a “good draft,” she criticized the “cut-and-paste” nature of it and claimed there were “a lot of critical topics that are missing in here.”
Sophia Schwirzke spoke on behalf of Central Coast Community Energy (3CE) and said the organization encourages the county to be “guided by the safety standards” established through state Senator John Laird’s SB 283, the Clean Energy Safety Act.
“Those standards were developed in consultation with experts and provide a strong foundation for ensuring storage projects are reviewed and operated safely while preserving local decision-making authority,” she said.
John Freeman, a 3CE policy board member for six years, claimed there are approximately 400,000 deaths annually related to power plant pollution from fossil fuels and that solar power is the better choice.
“I would have Abraham add one line among the others that would basically mandate that you cannot use NMC [lithium-ion batteries that use nickel, manganese, and cobalt] batteries in this project,” he said. “Their thermal runaway propensity is much greater than that of LFP [Lithium Iron Phosphate] batteries. For example, LFP batteries start to burn at 270 degrees Celsius. The nickel-manganese [batteries] burn at 150 degrees Celsius. That’s a huge difference. The LFPs are much less likely to ever catch fire.”
Resident Stacy McGrady said it was unfair to compare the proposed BESS project to the fire at Moss Landing in January 2025, because the technologies were different. She also wanted more public transparency and said she was concerned about “being a commodity for Silicon Valley.”
She also asked for an explanation of how the facility would benefit the county and agreed with others who thought it was premature to consider the draft ordinance because of what she called a lack of public transparency.
“We do not actively suppress nor extinguish these fires,” said Mike Nicholas, a retired captain and assistant fire Marshal from the Kern County Fire Department, where he served for 26 years before retiring. During his tenure, he was a key figure in developing and implementing Kern County’s BESS program, working closely with industry leaders to advance safe deployment of energy storage systems. “In fact,” he said, “we have pivoted away from the term ‘suppression’ because of the misnomer that it creates.”
After public comments, the commissioners continued to ask Prado to clarify more technical details, especially about thermal runaway, as well as mapping for the project to include details about agricultural lands. They also pondered engaging a technical expert for assistance. One major concern was that the ordinance might prove to be so restrictive that it would essentially prove to be a ban against all such projects.
The four commissioners agreed the draft ordinance was still a long way from being acceptable.
On June 18, Prado told BenitoLink that because the commission continued its review of the draft ordinance, the San Benito County Board of Supervisors will not take action to adopt the ordinance at its June 23 meeting. However, he said it will remain scheduled on the June 23 meeting agenda for acknowledgment of its continued status, with no action to adopt it.
Related stories
We need your help. Support local, nonprofit news! BenitoLink is a nonprofit news website that reports on San Benito County. Our team is committed to this community and providing essential, accurate information to our fellow residents. Producing local news is expensive, and community support keeps the news flowing. Please consider supporting BenitoLink, San Benito County’s public service nonprofit news.
You must be logged in to post a comment.