Monterey County officials call Moss Landing lithium battery storage fire ‘wake-up call’

Monterey County officials declared a local emergency after a fire ignited at a power plant and one of the largest lithium battery storage facilities in the world on Thursday, releasing a large plume of toxic smoke into the air.

Roughly 1,200 people were ordered to evacuate their homes as a section of the Moss Landing Power Plant burned overnight. The plant is about 18 miles northeast of the city of Monterey.

The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office lifted all evacuation orders shortly after 6 p.m. Friday.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency “conducted cooperative quality monitoring with environmental agencies and data confirms no threat to human health,” sheriff’s officials wrote in a social media post.

However, out of an “abundance of caution,” they said, health officials are still advising residents living nearby to remain indoors with their windows closed and ventilation systems turned off.

County Supervisor Glenn Church, who represents the district where the lithium battery facility is located, said the fire raises important questions about why the plant, owned by Texas-based Vistra Energy, is near an environmentally sensitive area like the Elkhorn Slough estuary sanctuary.

“I think this is best described as a worst-case scenario disaster that’s happened here,” Church said during a Friday morning media briefing. “This is really a lot more than just a fire — it’s really a wake-up call for this industry.”

During an emergency briefing at the county Board of Supervisors meeting on Friday, officials said the fire mostly burned out, but there was a plume released from the plant that contained hydrogen fluoride, a toxic compound that by evening was pushing north from the plant, according to county spokesperson Nick Pasculli.

“It appeared last night and early this morning that the plume was reaching elevations where it might not endanger the human population, but that’s something that we’re monitoring constantly, and that’s something that we’re going to be looking at closely as the day goes on,” Pasculli said.

Early air monitoring reports by Vistra Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency showed no signs of harmful chemicals detected, according to officials.

Brad Watson, senior director of community affairs at Vistra Energy, apologized for the effect the fire had on the community.

“Our company takes very seriously what happened last night, and we are hurting today, because we know primarily it’s impacted and disrupted the people who live around our site, our neighbors, our friends and businesses, and for that, we are sincerely sorry,” Watson said during a press briefing.

The company plans to hire an outside consult to check the air quality and safety.

In a statement, an EPA spokesperson confirmed it had provided “technical assistance to provide perimeter air monitoring” at the plant site.

“EPA and contractors were mobilized and arrived on scene. Additional EPA personnel, including four air monitoring specialists, and equipment are currently en route,” the spokesperson said.

Church compared the fire to the partial nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979.

“If renewable energy is going to be the future, it really needs to rest in safe energy,” he said.

Several factors contributed to the spread of the fire and complicated the response carried out by firefighters, North Monterey County Fire Protection District Chief Joel Mendoza said at a Friday morning media briefing.

A fire suppression system that is part of every battery rack at the plant failed to keep up with the fire.

“It was overridden and that led to the fire overtaking the system and eventually overtaking the entire building,” Mendoza said.

Firefighters arrived around 3 p.m. to find a smoke coming out of a building and at least one battery on fire, according to Mendoza.

The fire department requested help from the county and other agencies when it confirmed that lithium batteries were on fire. But several factors hindered its response, including a camera system in the plant that was not working and superheated gases.

Firefighters manned the fire overnight and it grew in intensity, but it had mostly burned out by Friday morning.

The public was notified early on during the incident, Mendoza said, and local highways were closed.

In a statement, Vistra Energy confirmed personnel at the plant called firefighters from the North Monterey County Fire District after “a fire was detected in the 300-MW Phase I energy storage facility at the Moss Landing Power Plant site.”

There were no reports of any injuries.

“Our top priority is the safety of the community and our personnel, and Vistra deeply appreciates the continued assistance of our local emergency responders,” a company spokesperson said. “The cause of the fire has not yet been determined, but an investigation will begin once the fire is extinguished.”

Crews from the North County Fire Protection District have responded to the blaze, according to an alert shared by Monterey County.

Dustin Mulvaney, a professor of environmental studies at San Jose State University, is working on a research project about the life cycle impacts of lithium batteries and energy storage systems.

Mulvaney is interested to know what Vistra Energy has learned from the previous fires at the plant and how that has informed its preparedness in the event of an emergency.

He agrees that the fire should be a wake-up call for the industry to work together and figure out how safety measures can be improved. But this isn’t the first time a fire has forced Monterey County to respond to a potential disaster.

In 2023, the state signed into law Senate Bill 38, which requires battery storage operators to develop a plan in the event of an emergency. That was in response to a September 2022 fire at the Elkhorn Battery Storage Facility in Moss Landing.

Mulvaney doesn’t expect the battery storage projects in California to slow down, but it doesn’t look good for the industry.

“The question for California is: what did we get wrong?” Mulvaney said. “How can we better regulate the design and safety of these things?”

The plant is a natural-gas-powered electricity generation plant near the Moss Landing Harbor in an unincorporated area of Monterey County. The plant also has storage sites for lithium ion batteries, which can release toxic gases into the air if ignited. Mulvaney said that includes heavy metals and PFAS, which are “widely used, long-lasting chemicals, components of which break down very slowly over time,” according to the EPA.

In September 2022, a Tesla Megapack battery caught fire in an energy storage facility at the power plant.

The cause of Thursday’s fire is currently unknown.