Courtesy of Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), a lithium-ion battery power plant is being built in the Hauppauge Industrial Park.
Not if the people of Hauppauge and the greater area have anything to say about it.
Outraged residents and local leaders united at the Hauppauge Fire Department on Monday, August 18th—where former Congressman, gubernatorial candidate and current Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Lee Zeldin led the charge against BESS.
The Shirley native turned White House cabinet administrator confirmed he has been in rooms with President Donald Trump and Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul wherein local concerns are being heard across party lines.
“This goes well beyond Hauppauge,” he said—evoking the “apocalyptic” scene that was the Jan. 2024 Los Angeles wildfires.
“Since January, people have been contacting me with concerns” over lithium battery plants and the damage they inflict upon communities—like nearby Warwick, Jefferson County and even East Hampton.
The antidote to catastrophe, says Zeldin, is not sacrificing volunteer firefighters in bulk; rather, a combination of compliance, logic adherence and cooperative federalism.
Checking partisan mentality at the door to defy disaster is paramount, he continued: “I don’t know anyone’s ideology, who they voted for in the past, who they’ll vote for in the future… none of that matters. The most important people here today are concerned residents who demand a voice and a seat at the table. They want their fire commissioners to be heard.”
Teeing up Hauppauge’s Fire Commissioner Scott Munro, the second-generation police officer by day and blaze runner by night expertly informed the masses that lithium battery fires in a sensitive ecosystem such as Hauppauge’s “are notoriously difficult to extinguish.”
He revealed 20 lithium fires have been reported at BESS facilities nationwide—including one at a California location that called for the mandatory evacuation of 1,000 residents. These types of fires can burn for days, and in some instances, have even lasted a week.
Needless to say, but repeatedly said anyway—they can release toxic chemicals that pose a significant risk to the community at large.
BESS’ proposed plant would be located on the corner of Rabro Drive and Rt. 111—less than half a mile from St. Thomas More Church, Hauppauge’s HYO Little League baseball fields, 3,000 feet from Nissequogue Riverwaters—and as alarmingly close to Bretton Woods Elementary School.
“It is unreasonable to expect our volunteer firefighters—who have families and jobs—to handle a disaster of this magnitude,” Munro said. “We can’t put our residents and firefighters at risk. We urge the developers to reconsider this proposal.”
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman followed suit by classifying BESS’ controversial intentions as a regional issue. “It’s just common sense that we would oppose environmental hazards like battery warehouses in our communities.”
Echoing Zeldin’s sentiments, Blakeman intimated decisions about the safety of these sites should be made by towns, villages and cities—not in Albany. “That’s called local control,” he said, “and we need to have local control.”
As a “preventative maintenance guy” who has been “fighting at every committee meeting,” State Senator Mario Matteria, of St. James, also emphatically aligned himself with the “who’s who” of BESS lithium battery plant opponents. He chalked up lithium battery ions to “nothing but an experiment that’s not going to work.”
“God forbid we do have a blackout… [this type of wind solar energy storage] is going to last an hour, maybe two? It’s going to cause not millions or billions, but trillions of dollars—and guess who’s going to pay for it? The rate-payer,” said Mattera. “We can not have these energy storage facilities in our neighborhoods!”
Getting rid of natural gas on the quest for different sources of renewable energy is not the answer, Mattera professed to those in attendance and in an earlier letter he penned to Gov. Hochul.
“Our president is working with the governor right now, [urging] that we bring in the Constitution Pipeline [which would open up a vital corridor of energy to the Northeast territories], that we retool our natural power plants.”
“That’s the right investment,” Mattera—along with Zeldin, their fellow leaders and the constituents they vow to protect—believe. “Not this.”