Southampton Town Continues Tinkering With Failsafes in BESS Codes but Nears Finish Line

As it nears the finish line on crafting and adopting a new town code to govern battery energy storage systems, or BESS, the Southampton Town Board this week continued to tinker with wording in the new legislation as it tried to assuage the fears of those in the public who see the construction of the power storage structures as a looming hazard to human safety.

In response to input from the Town Planning Board, town staff clarified details about the required separation between industrial properties that will be eligible to host BESS facilities and residential areas, evacuation routes and the Long Island Rail Road tracks.

The board labored over how the inclusion of municipally owned properties in the list of five types of properties that would be eligible for the largest BESS facilities the town will allow, up to 19 megawatts, should be worded, to give fearful residents assurances that a BESS system couldn’t be rammed though the process by another municipality, or PSEG and the Long Island Power Authority, just because the land is not privately owned.

Board members on Tuesday evening, February 25, at the latest public hearing on the proposed new codes, told town Planning Administrator Janice Scherer that they would like municipal properties to be expressly restricted by the same separation requirements that all other properties would be.

“For right now, I would feel more comfortable limiting those properties as well, with the technology as it exists,” Councilwoman Cyndi McNamara said. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving a loophole open to a municipality coming in on their property. I’d like this to adhere to all property.”

“I think the community would be more comfortable, too,” Supervisor Maria Moore echoed.

But the legislative calisthenics of trying to impose uniform guarantees of separations from residential areas for all properties did come with a hitch that would appear to have potentially disqualified at least one of the main components of the new code, for allowing larger-scale BESS systems on closed down sand mines in conjunction with new solar generation systems.

Solar farms have been pegged as one of the potential beneficial uses that have been foreseen for the large, heavily disturbed sand mine properties that the town is trying to force to shut down. And the BESS codes allow for the largest battery systems, between 5 megawatts and 19 megawatts, to be installed only on so-called “opportunity sites” that would transform problematic properties like the mines, contaminated brownfields sites or government-owned land into renewable energy generation sites — solar farms — with accessory BESS systems to store the energy generated to be distributed most optimally.

But sand mines, in particular, are almost always surrounded by residential neighborhoods, which would make them ineligible for BESS systems if the same 300 foot separation between property lines is required for the opportunity sites as for the light industrial sites that the code makes eligible for much smaller BESS facilities, under 5 megawatts.

Scherer said that the separation requirements were not initially put on the opportunity sites like public lands because developing them would require a detailed review of any proposal by the Town Board, akin to a zone change, and that any such concerns would weigh on the board’s decision whether or not to simply reject such a proposal.

“Typically, you are acting on behalf of the greater good for the public — if you’re assuming that the public doesn’t want it there and it’s not a public good, then you would not elect to consider it, you have the option,” Scherer said. “In some cases it might be great. Right now, because we’re in the beginning of all this, and it’s still uncertain and it still doesn’t feel right, maybe that it doesn’t seem like a good idea. But let’s say that there’s great new batteries in 10 years that are no problem and you want to put them on a municipally owned property. You get that choice here. If you take it out entirely, it’s not on the table. But you as a board are always acting in the public [interest].”

Scherer said she would take another look at how the renewable energy opportunity sites could be restricted to increase assurances that any use of BESS on them would be of the utmost safety to the public even before a proposal is made.

The board on Tuesday closed the public hearings on the proposal to repeal the old BESS code and replace it with the new, and to extend a moratorium on new BESS project applications for another three months while the town finishes its work. A new public hearing will be held next month on a minor additional component of the new codes and the town is also waiting for an assessment of the new regulations by the Suffolk County Planning Commission.

The public, on Tuesday, reminded the board that at least some are still very afraid of the emerging energy storage technology that has suffered from a smattering of highly publicized fires, including one in 2023 in East Hampton.

“It is egregious that you are contemplating a technology that you just admitted is not safe — that you said in 10 years might be safe,” Laura Zubulake said. “Suffolk County rejected nuclear power plants. Why? Because there are not enough evacuation routes.

“Why are we doing this now and not waiting for better technology?” she added. “Let someone else be the guinea pigs.”

But representatives of BESS and renewable energy developers said that the technology of the storage systems has already advanced by leaps and bounds since even the most recently installed facilities and the ones that have caught fire and that municipalities like New York State are already updating safety requirements for all developments that will ensure the sort of cataclysmic situations like those Zubulake envisioned would be impossible.

Other residents who had been among those that called on the town a year ago to trash its newly adopted BESS codes and start anew, said that the work the town has done over the last year has paid off.

“I’m here to say thank you, because I think we have made tremendous progress,” said Brigid Maher, a Hampton Bays resident who had been one of the vocal opponents of a proposal there for a 100 megawatt BESS facility that was nearly approved by the Town Board in 2023 before being put on pause when a moratorium on all new projects was put in place. “I think there are people who are just getting into it and the anger and frustration that they’re feeling, I understand it. But I think what you’ve come up with is a solution that many of us can live with for the time being.”