Quick Take
Santa Cruz County has completed environmental testing to gauge the Moss Landing battery plant fire’s impact on local air, water, soil and agriculture, it announced Friday. While results show that there are “significantly lower” levels of metal in Santa Cruz County than in neighboring Monterey, both counties are circulating a survey to gather data from residents.
Santa Cruz County released results from its environmental testing following the fire that ignited in January at the Vistra Corp. lithium-ion battery storage facility in Moss Landing, showing “significantly lower” metal levels in samples than in Monterey County, according to a news release – which also said that the results do not suggest elevated public health or food safety concerns.
The fire, which broke out on Jan. 16 not far south of the Santa Cruz County line, resulted in the evacuation of about 1,500 Monterey County residents and shut down a portion of Highway 1 for three days.
The fire reignited last Tuesday night, with North County Fire Chief Joel Mendoza telling Lookout on Friday that “things are looking pretty good,” and that his agency still had personnel on scene with a drone team monitoring temperatures from the facility. “Temperatures are trending downward and nowhere near ignition temperatures, which we’re happy to see,” he said, adding that there had not been visible smoke since some light wisps Thursday afternoon.
Following the January fire, researchers later detected high levels of toxic metals in Elkhorn Slough Reserve soil as Central Coast lawmakers called for a transparent investigation of the incident and Moss Landing residents filed a lawsuit. The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors pushed for local soil and water testing, too.
That board of supervisors direction resulted in county testing in cooperation with the Santa Cruz County Agricultural Commissioner and Santa Cruz County Environmental Health, focusing on soil, plant material, surface water and sediment in South County, which was believed to be the area of Santa Cruz County most affected by the fire. According to the county’s news release, the metal levels detected in Santa Cruz County “do not suggest elevated public health risks or food safety concerns.”
The release notes that a number of metals detected through testing — like cobalt, manganese, nickel and lithium — also occur naturally or in fertilizer and “should not be presumed to represent a public health concern.” The testing also included samples from both surface-level and subsurface-level agricultural soils to compare the two, and showed no elevated levels of metals in surface samples, where heightened levels of metals would be most present.
Testing showed elevated levels of manganese at Drew Lake in Watsonville, Antonelli Pond in Santa Cruz and in Watsonville Slough, but according to the release, the levels were “not consistent with deposits from a battery fire and are likely due to natural or other anthropogenic sources.”
Testing of plant material initially showed elevated levels of cobalt and nickel, but county spokesperson Jason Hoppin told Lookout that follow-up testing showed a significant decline in those levels and, at this time, it’s unlikely the county will perform further testing. “There’s nothing there that indicates the need for more testing,” he said, adding that metal levels detected in Santa Cruz County were orders of magnitude lower than in Monterey County.
Andrew Strader, director of county environmental health, said that it’s somewhat difficult to gauge the hazard level, since the metals detected are also naturally occurring. However, the agency has forwarded the findings to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to get a more detailed analysis of the risk to human health, but he said Friday’s results were a good sign.
“We may do some additional sampling or we may not, but the feeling is that there’s not too much of a hazard,” Strader said, adding that he’s aware that concerned residents could push for more testing. “If we’re directed to, then we’ll collect more samples.”
County agricultural commissioner David Sanford also said that the testing results were positive.
“In terms of ag production ground in South County and throughout the county, we’re feeling good about the fact that health impacts are not something we’re seeing,” he said.
Sanford added that, without baseline data for the sampling, it is difficult to attribute the presence of metals to the fire, as many of them can be found in soil and organic material anyways. However, he said the reason that the initial outlier amounts of nickel and cobalt in plant material may have drastically decreased is due to high water uptake following the February storm.
“It was a dry January, so plants were probably sucking up a lot of water [after the rain], which can dilute anything you find in those plants, whether it’s micronutrients, macronutrients, or metals,” he said.
Sanford said that when the fire broke out in January, he was mostly concerned about the safety of field workers, and wasn’t thinking much about contaminants until he began hearing the public’s concern. While he said he’s feeling positive about the testing results, and he is not an expert on battery storage facilities, he agrees with District 4 Santa Cruz County Supervisor Felipe Hernandez’s take on a battery storage facility proposed for Watsonville — the impact of the facility must be closely evaluated.
“It needs to be extensive and exhaustive and look at what these things mean for the community and for agriculture,” Sanford said. “Make sure that every safety protocol and environmental impact report is done. I would guess this fire will probably have people looking even closer at those types of studies and reports.”
Despite the apparently positive environmental testing results, Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties have circulated a survey aiming to gather more information about health concerns and impacts related to the fire. Some local residents complained of exposure symptoms in the days following the January blaze.
“We recognize that residents have concerns about their health,” said Monterey County Health Officer Dr. Edward Moreno in a release announcing the survey launch. “We want to reassure the public that the information shared is valued and will be used to improve future health department responses.”
Santa Cruz County Public Health did not return Lookout’s request for comment on whether residents are still reporting symptoms they believe were caused by the fire and if there will be a mechanism to report them going forward.
The survey is available through March 14, and can be accessed on the Monterey County Health Department’s website in English here and in Spanish here.
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