Halsted residents urge Harvey County to press city on battery-storage moratorium to protect Equus Beds

Several residents of Halsted and nearby rural areas urged the Harvey County Board of Commissioners on March 25 to press the city of Halsted to apply the county's existing restrictions on commercial battery energy storage systems inside the city limits or to adopt a short moratorium while planners study the issue.

At the commissioners' public comment period, Kevin Henderson, who identified himself as a Halsted resident, said Halsted's recent planning-and-zoning meeting drew more than 80 people and that attendees asked the city to align its rules with what Henderson called the county's ban on commercial battery storage to protect the Equus Beds aquifer. "A lot of water for Harvey County comes from the plant just two miles east of Halsted," Henderson said. He added that if a storage facility has an incident near the Equus Beds, "this could be a very serious disaster for everybody in Harvey County and beyond."

Henderson pointed to two California incidents where battery-storage fires led to…