Monterey County ad hoc urges halt to indoor battery projects, schedules monthly public updates after Moss Landing fire

The Monterey County Board of Supervisors on Feb. 25 accepted recommendations from an ad hoc committee formed after the Jan. 16 Moss Landing battery fire and directed county staff to hold public update meetings at least once a month until cleanup is complete.

County counsel Susan Blich read five recommendations developed by the ad hoc committee, which include opposing any future indoor battery storage facilities in the county; requiring existing battery facilities to be upgraded to current industry safety standards, including consideration of non-lithium technologies and improved fire suppression; coordinating remediation and recovery with the operator, Vistra Energy; urging Vistra and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) not to resume operations at affected sites until the cause of the Jan. 16 incident is determined and safety remediation is implemented; and urging Vistra and PG&E to halt expansion of battery storage until state legislation establishing stronger safety rules is passed.

“The county really doesn't hold a strong hand of cards when it comes to utilities such as Vistra or PG&E,” Supervisor Clint Church told the board during the discussion, urging a cautious approach while state-level rules evolve. Church said the county must keep public discussion local to avoid industry using a state permitting streamlining process (AB 205) to bypass local oversight.

Public comment at the meeting was dominated by residents and local advocacy groups demanding more testing, faster cleanup and greater state involvement. “I want Vistra out of Moss Landing,” said Joanne Guerrero, who described elevated heavy-metal concentrations on her street and said she and neighbors are weighing whether to leave the area. Other speakers pressed the county for environmental testing, real-time air monitoring, clearer evacuation and alert zones and a third-party health oversight contractor.

Vistra’s senior director of community affairs, Brad Watson, told the board the company was working under U.S. EPA direction to “delink” remaining battery modules to reduce the risk of interaction and that delinking and other remediation work would be “a long, deliberate, and methodical cleanup process.” Watson said the delinking would take roughly two weeks targeting about one-third of remaining modules, and that natural gas operations at the site were returned to service; the battery facilities remained offline.

PG&E’s Central Coast representative, Jasmine Venegas, told the board PG&E’s adjacent Alcorn (Elkhorn) battery remained electrically deenergized and “in a safe state” after its infrared fire detection system detected flames at the neighboring Vistra facility and automatically disconnected.

Residents and community groups, including Never Again Moss Landing, pressed for more soil testing and repeated sampling after each flare-up. Technical data supplied by community groups and outside researchers were cited in public comment as indicators of heavy-metal fallout; advocates asked that state toxicologists review those results. Several speakers urged the board to seek state and federal resources and to press state officials to appear locally.

After the public comment period and discussion, Supervisor Church moved to accept the ad hoc committee’s recommendations and to schedule at least monthly public updates to the full board; Supervisor Chris Daniels seconded the motion. The board approved the motion.

What the board did: accepted the ad hoc committee recommendations, urged industry pauses and upgrades as described above, and directed county staff to hold regular public briefings on Moss Landing response and cleanup until the work is complete. The board also directed staff to coordinate ongoing community outreach and to continue compiling testing/monitoring data for public posting.

Context and next steps: county staff noted ongoing multi-agency response work with state and federal partners (including EPA and Cal OES) and that air, soil and water sampling results and weekly briefings are posted on the county’s incident web page. The board and public repeatedly asked for independent, third-party oversight of long-term environmental sampling and remediation; county staff and the ad hoc members said those issues would be part of follow-up discussions and that state legislation under consideration (including bills referenced during the meeting such as AB 303 and SB 38) could change the regulatory framework within 90 days.

The board’s vote does not itself change state law or CPUC authority but formalizes local policy positions and a schedule for public oversight.

Ending: County staff said the next scheduled full‑board public Moss Landing update will be posted on the county website and via AlertMontereyCounty; residents who raised health or property concerns were urged to submit written materials to the county clerk’s office for the public record.