Quick Take
Battery cleanup and disposal continues at the Moss Landing battery storage facility that burned almost a year ago, according to Monterey County officials. Approximately 12,000 of the 35,772 batteries have been removed and transported for recycling.
Crews continue to remove and dispose of batteries at the Moss Landing battery storage plant, nearly a year after a massive fire that burned a portion of the facility, according to Monterey County officials.
“Battery removal work continues at a steady pace,” Kelsey Scanlon, director of Monterey County’s department of emergency management, told county elected officials Tuesday afternoon.
Approximately 12,000 of the 35,772 batteries have been “deenergized” and processed for recycling, according to Scanlon. She added that deenergization (when the energy in the battery is discharged to a different energy source) is happening in 24-hour shifts, excluding Sundays, and to date, there have been no flare-ups throughout the ongoing battery removal process.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency continues to oversee cleanup efforts at the facility, which is owned by Texas-based Vistra Energy. The two reached an agreement in 2025 to begin the battery removal process, with Vistra footing the bill for removing and disposing of lithium-ion batteries damaged in last year’s blaze.
An EPA representative previously told Lookout that Vistra is cleaning up the building in sections, to allow crews to stabilize and get access to the entire facility just south of the Santa Cruz-Monterey county line. The first phase of that work — safely removing batteries — wrapped up in December, Scanlon told Monterey County elected officials. The batteries are being taken to a recycling facility in Ohio, according to the EPA website.
“This work successfully stabilized and demolished key areas of the damaged building to allow workers to safely access an additional set of intact batteries,” she said. After all the intact batteries are removed, crews will continue to the next phase of the cleanup that will focus on the damaged areas of the building, which is expected to begin later this year.
The EPA will sample burned debris from the building to identify its physical, chemical and radiological properties, which will determine how to properly dispose of it, Scanlon said. Results from the testing will be shared with the public in the future, she said, but did not provide a date. The federal agency will also continue overseeing air monitoring.
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