A California Battery Plant Burned. Residents Have Gotten Sick, and Anxious.
The New York Times
Heavy metals detected in the soil have also created health implications for Monterey County’s agriculture industry, and the workers who pick the produce.
The vast farmlands just off the coast of California’s Monterey Bay are usually quiet during the winter, when there are no crops to pick.
This winter, a different kind of stillness has taken hold. First, fears of immigration raids paralyzed the immigrant communities that make up the agricultural work force. And now, anxiety has spread over what some in the region believe is a sprawling and silent environmental disaster.
Last month, a battery-storage plant went up in flames and burned for days, prompting the evacuation of more than 1,000 residents and shutting down local schools. The plant, located in Moss Landing, an unincorporated community in Monterey County, is the largest facility in the world that uses lithium-ion batteries to store energy. Residents have reported feeling ill, and many of them worry that the fire polluted the air, soil and water with toxins.
“Now you don’t see anybody walking outside because it’s terrifying, everything that’s going on,” said Esmeralda Ortiz, who had to evacuate from her home in Moss Landing after the plant began burning on Jan. 16.
She noticed an odd metallic odor as she and her two young children fled. She said she later took her children to the doctor after they complained of headaches and sore throats, symptoms she also had. Eventually, her children felt better, but Ms. Ortiz said she worries about the potential long-term health effects and whether the strawberry fields where she and her husband plan to work during the harvest have been contaminated.
No homes were damaged in the fire, which unfolded more than 300 miles north of the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires in the Los Angeles area. For weeks, residents, officials, researchers and environmental and public-health experts have been trying to understand the scale of damage, but so far there have been few answers. What was unleashed by the plumes of smoke from thousands of burning lithium-ion batteries? And where did it go?
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