East Hampton board votes to sue owners of 2 battery plants over fire system demands

The East Hampton Town Board, days after demanding that the owners of two East End battery energy storage plants cease operations and remove a contested fire suppression system, unanimously approved a resolution Thursday to sue the plant owners. 

East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez introduced the resolution at a regularly scheduled board meeting Thursday night, saying the owners of the battery plant on Cove Hollow Road had failed to respond to the town's demands.

The board resolution authorizes an outside firm to sue for declaratory and injunctive relief to stop the East Hampton and Montauk plants from operating until the suppression system, found to have caused forever chemical contamination of groundwater and soil, is removed.

Burke-Gonzalez pointed to the prospect of another thermal runaway fire at the Cove Hollow Road plant, which she said "could happen at any time."

The demand follows a meeting between town officials and co-battery owner NextEra earlier this week, and preliminary findings by the state earlier this month that a fire suppression system called Novec 1230 was responsible for toxic contamination discovered at one of the sites earlier this year.

In the letter to NextEra on Tuesday, a copy of which was obtained by Newsday, Burke-Gonzalez wrote that the town remains "deeply concerned" about the "pace and scope" of actions being taken by the owners to "protect the health and safety" of town residents and the environment.

Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine and East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen have previously called for the East Hampton facility on Cove Hollow Road to cease operations, Newsday reported. NextEra spokesman Chris Curtland at the time said NextEra remains "committed to working with local and state officials on the investigation. The project is operating safely."

NextEra didn't respond to several requests for comment.

Newsday reported in May that the plant was the subject of a federal lawsuit by the Suffolk County Water Authority concerning forever chemicals from the East Hampton plant that affected drinking water wells. New York State has since determined that the toxins known as PFPrA were the result of a fire suppression system used during a May 2023 thermal runaway fire at the facility that took 30 hours to get under control.

No agency, state or local, or NextEra have released information about the cause of the fire. Earlier this week, the state Department of Environmental Conservation in an email told Newsday it "does not have the authority to regulate the design or operations at the [East Hampton] facility, nor does DEC have the authority to investigate causes of a fire beyond the environmental impacts it may have caused."

In her letter to NextEra, Burke-Gonzalez referenced a Sept. 25 meeting she had with battery plant officials, noting the company said it could remove all Novec 1230 fire suppression equipment from both the East Hampton and Montauk battery plants in two weeks, and to take the system’s automatic fire suppression system offline even sooner.

But Burke-Gonzalez said the town would not approve that modification to the fire suppression systems "without a detailed report from a qualified engineer confirming that water alone is sufficient to extinguish any fire at the facility."

East Hampton also requested that the company take "immediate" interim remedial measures to ensure the safety of residents around the plant, including excavation and off-site disposal of "all impacted soil," demanding that the soil be removed to a licensed facility outside of East Hampton Town.

East Hampton also is demanding that soil and groundwater sampling be done at 5-foot intervals around the plant "to determine whether additional remedial measures are necessary," including remediating groundwater. Tests by the state and Suffolk County have shown PFPrA at upward of 10,000 parts per billion, well above a site-specific screening level set by the state Department of Health of 3 parts per billion, Newsday has reported.

"In the interim," Burke Gonzalez wrote, "and until Novec 1230 [fire suppression system] has been taken offline under an approved alternative fire-suppression plan and the required remediation at the 3 Cove Hollow Road facility has been completed, the affected facilities should cease operations by Friday, Oct. 2, 2026."

The town, she wrote, "does not believe continued operation is appropriate while these unresolved risks remain."

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.