Churchill County planning commission approves Redwood Materials special-use permit for battery storage and testing

The Churchill County Planning Commission on a 6–1 vote approved a special-use permit for Redwood Materials to install an outdoor end-of-life battery storage yard and a battery testing (R&D) facility on a 438.42-acre industrial parcel along Bangor Road.

The permit covers a roughly 35-acre outdoor battery staging area north of Bangor Road and a separate roughly 2.5-acre R&D/test pad south of Bangor Road. The commission approved the permit subject to conditions in the staff report and an additional condition requiring a two-person, on-site fire/response team at all times.

Why it matters: the site sits near the Truckee Canal and Carson River watershed and adjacent to agricultural land. Residents at the meeting said fires at other lithium facilities have released heavy metals and toxic fumes, and they raised water‑quality, health and traffic concerns. Redwood Materials and county staff said the company has monitoring, containment and emergency procedures intended to limit those risks.

What the project would do and how it would operate: planning staff described the application as two uses now (outside battery storage and battery testing) with a potential third use — a solar-plus-storage facility — to be considered later. The outdoor storage would be arranged in grid “pallet” stacks of roughly 30 by 30 feet (900 square feet) with a 10-foot spacing in the application; stack height was described as limited to 10 feet. Planning staff said the storage yard would cover three proposed phases. Redwood’s presentation said on-site operations would be primarily 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., with about 12 employees and 1–2 night guards; the company said security, FLIR (infrared) cameras, AI monitoring and on-site first-responder trucks would be staffed 24/7.

Redwood Materials’ case: Don Tetrault, representing Redwood Materials, framed the project as local recycling and domestic…