Unextinguishable fire. Nickel, manganese, and cobalt in the air. Tremors, tight lungs, and itchy skin. These are a few of the results emerging from the recent Moss Landing battery plant fire in Monterey County.
With the fire heightening concerns about a recently completed battery energy storage system Nipomo and a proposed facility in Morro Bay, 4th District San Luis Obispo County Supervisor Jimmy Paulding said battery facilities have had different safety requirements since the construction of the plant in Moss Landing, and the Nipomo battery facility is much safer.
“It’s my understanding that all the tests performed to date have been compliant with current codes,” Paulding told the Sun.
On Jan. 16, the Vistra-owned Moss Landing battery facility caught fire for the third time since 2021, shutting down Highway 1 and causing mandatory evacuations in the area. The 750-megawatt facility was ablaze for three days.
Weeks later, research scientists at San Jose State University’s Moss Landing Marine Laboratories reported detecting unusually high levels of heavy metal nanoparticles in the marsh soils of Elkhorn Slough Reserve, a site that provides habitat for nearly 700 species.
According to the lab, scientists found high levels of nickel, manganese, and cobalt in the marsh soils.
“These heavy metals will chemically transform as they move through the environments and potentially through the food web, affecting local aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems,” according to a statement from the San Jose State lab.
Monterey County residents created Facebook pages where they share their post-fire symptoms, including labored breathing, a tight stomach, hand tremors, itchy skin—which, according to the National Institutes of Health, are side effects of heavy metal exposure.
These are impacts that the residents of Nipomo and Morro Bay don’t want to experience.
Morro Bay residents resisted the proposed 600-megawatt Vistra battery plant by passing a ballot measure, and the City Council established an urgency ordinance on Jan. 28 to block future battery plant applications. But the 100-megawatt Caballero facility in Nipomo, owned by Alpha Omega Power and Fengate, flew under the radar, according to public commenters at a Feb. 4 SLO County Board of Supervisors meeting.
Decades-long Nipomo resident Sherry Fitzgerald told the board that she felt the community hadn’t known about the Caballero battery plant, which was processed in 2020, approved in 2023, and completed in February. If residents had known, she said they would have opposed it.
Another resident told supervisors she had heard that the Nipomo facility was “way better” than Moss Landing.
“I’m not buying that,” she said.
The most recent Moss Landing fire started after the facility’s safety and fire suppression systems failed. With the facility’s batteries all in the same enclosure, the fire reportedly spread easily and quickly.
Supervisor Paulding said technology has progressed since the Moss Landing facility was built, and that the Caballero facility has better safety measures, with its batteries in separate enclosures 10 feet apart to prevent fire from spreading.
“The batteries in this project had to undergo rigorous testing to ensure their safety,” Paulding told the Sun, explaining that the batteries were heated up to see if they would catch on fire. The batteries did not catch fire, he said.
CTO and co-founder of Alpha Omega Power Guillaume Dufay told the Sun via email that the Caballero facility meets all safety standards that make a catastrophic event “near impossible,” including early fire detection and automatic shut-off systems.
“Caballero meets [code] requirements and goes beyond in many areas that our team and Cal Fire found important for public safety,” he said.
This article appears in Feb 27 – Mar 9, 2025.
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