EPA Secretary Lee Zeldin writing for the NY Post warned that state Democrats are putting residents’ safety and well-being at risk with their reckless handling of Battery Energy Storage Systems.
These sprawling installations of lithium batteries have cropped up in our neighborhoods under the banner of “green” progress.”
He wrote, On Monday, I visited Long Island to speak with Hauppauge residents who oppose a proposed BESS site in their community.
Have very serious concerns. State Democrats are putting putting these facilities near schools, playgrounds, private homes, the Nissequogue river watershed, etc. The local fire departments are volunteers and don’t have the training for any fires that may follow. These fires burned for weeks and release toxic gases.
Hochul and her crew don’t care.
From Suffolk County to Staten Island, Western New York and the North Country, New Yorkers have been vocal about their BESS safety concerns, but state officials have largely ignored them.
In fact, Albany has sidelined local voices with a barrage of legislation that minimizes community input.
The 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act set impossibly ambitious targets that even the state’s own Draft Energy Report admits cannot be met.
Is adding battery storage facilities for their useless wind and solar projects. They won’t give up climate extremism no matter the cost to the residents who have no say.
The RAPID Act gives state bureaucrats final say over projects of 25 MW or larger, even when local communities overwhelmingly oppose them.
Host communities are reduced to spectators in their own backyards, stripped of the zoning authority that is part of the foundation of local government.
We Have Been Screaming About This
We have written about this. These facilities are planned for small plots of land. They are putting battery storage facilities in heavily populated and beautiful residential areas in Mt. Sinai, Port Jefferson Station, and Setauket. This is as a battery storage facility burns in Mesa, California. These facilities do blow up and their fires are very hard to extinguish.
Coincidentally, they are mostly Republican enclaves.
The fires usually go on for a couple of weeks, and there is potential for explosions. There is also the potential for carcinogens in the air, especially if the wind blows.
New York can’t do enough bad things to Republican Long Island residents.
Hochul Is Destroying LI Energy
These proposals arrive amid a statewide effort to increase green energy sources and transition away from fossil fuels. In 2022, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) doubled the state’s energy storage goal. Further, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) in 2019, aims for 100% zero-emission electricity by 2040.
They also plan these facilities for Holtsville, Island Park, and other towns. The lure is a reduction in our very high taxes.
These battery storage facilities are among many proposed across Long Island as power plants close.
Long Island is Republican.
Hochul also has plans to build 800,000 multi-use units in high rises, ruining the single-family home culture of Long Island.
Hochul is trying to uglify and industrialize Long Island, ruining a way of life. The New York Democrats want Long Island to become urban and vote Democrat.
The far-left governor has also banned selling gas-powered cars by 2035.
She’s a lunatic and very incompetent.
I remember going to one of these climate change meetings several years ago and a young woman who looked like she could be accepted into antifa membership at any moment said, You people on Long Island don’t know what you’re in for. You are going to be forced to do the right thing. She was referring to our carbon footprint being too large. She wasn’t kidding. The person in charge shut her down since she was revealing too much.
Hochul is a totally corrupt Imbecile. Investigate her and her husband and Buffalo.
I am an older Connecticut woman. This Green New Deal, is destroying essential
functions in America and certain other countries. My Dad used to call such people
EDUCATED IDIOTS, and he was so right.
the local fire departments are volunteers and don’t have the training for any fires that may follow. The volunteers are just as capable as the learning how to fight these types of fires as the career firefighters are, just provide them the training. Many volunteers have the exact same certifications as the career firefighters it’s just that they fight fires… Read more »
Well, each and every one of you voted for her, so die.
Long Island voted overwhelmingly for Lee Zeldin, a LI Republican. Upstate voted for Lee as did Staten Island. New York City has all the power and they go with the D no matter how bad he or she is. We are captive to the Ds.
Sounds like she should be first.
We are the carbon they want to reduce.
eradicate is more like it. It’s the only way to Net Zero
Hochul was complicit in Cuomo’s mass murder of the elderly, so there is precedent for what this author claims.