Battery fire douses Santa Cruz County proposal with skepticism
Good morning, readers. Much has happened since last week’s edition — Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire, an old president took the oath of office once again, and a massive fire broke out at the battery storage plant in Moss Landing, which is the focus of this newsletter.
Last Thursday night, a scene at the Moss Landing Power Plant began taking shape that began with irony and evolved into disaster: the 500-foot-tall smokestacks appeared to start smoking. Since 2022, those decommissioned cement columns have towered over a campus of lithium-ion battery packs that make up what is considered the largest renewable energy storage facility in the world and key to the state’s clean power push. Texas-based Vistra Corp owns 750 megawatts’ worth, and a partnership between Tesla and Pacific Gas & Electric controls a separate 182.5 MW.
The smoke was billowing from one of Vistra’s three on-site battery facilities. Flames shot up the smokestacks, reportedly reaching 100 feet. Monterey County issued an evacuation order affecting around 1,200 residents and Highway 1 shut down. Emergency responders converged on the scene but there was little to do as only time, not water, can extinguish a lithium-ion battery fire.
Political leaders, however, wasted no time in calling for accountability. Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church, whose district includes the power plant, referred to this as a “Three Mile Island event for the industry,” referencing the 1979 nuclear meltdown at a plant in Pennsylvania. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas called the event “a catastrophe and I expect accountability.” Assemblymember Dawn Addis, whose district stretches from San Luis Obispo into Live Oak, said officials “were told this facility is safe. Clearly there’s issues here.”
In Santa Cruz County, however, where residents were advised to stay indoors and keep their windows shut, the tone was different.
Almost exactly a month before the fire erupted at the Moss Landing battery facility, Santa Cruz County received an application from a Massachusetts-based company for a $200 million, 200MW lithium-ion battery storage facility just outside of Watsonville. The project is expected to come before the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors later this year. Now, in the wake of the Moss Landing disaster, county officials are acknowledging that the proposed battery plant is going to be a much tougher sell, and will depend, in part, on the investigation into the Moss Landing fire.
Read what officials are saying about the South County project.
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OF NOTE
Some splash from a new supervisor: For many, the hope for a new elected official is that they change up the status quo. That could be intentional through policy decisions, or unintentional by dint of unfamiliarity with the process. We witnessed the latter last week, when District 2 County Supervisor Kim De Serpa interrupted the often-passive flow of the consent agenda, the meeting’s first leg in which supervisors decide a bundle of issues with a single vote. De Serpa had a series of questions about a behavioral health contract.
De Serpa, who spent the past three decades as a behavioral health professional, asked a series of arcane questions about a $700,000 contract with Los Gatos Therapy Center for psychiatric evaluations and treatment for a variety of disorders. Before asking her questions, De Serpa apologized, saying she was asking these questions in public only because she had “not received her orientation yet” with the county’s Behavioral Health Division.
Through her incisive questioning, the public learned — straight from its behavioral health staff — that requests for eating disorder treatment in Santa Cruz County have been on the rise in recent years. That’s information the public should know about its own community. Yet, if De Serpa had had her orientation, that comment would have remained behind closed doors — where so many of our elected officials’ exchanges with staff seem to occur — and that detail would have remained buried in the text of a report.
Here’s to hoping De Serpa never receives that orientation, and questions and details like these remain in the public’s chambers.
An uncertain Capitola City Council changes course: After Mayor Yvette Brooks abruptly vacated her seat earlier this month, the council originally opted to fill the vacancy by choosing between two candidates who ran unsuccessful campaigns for the city council in November: former councilmember Margaux Morgan and Enrique Dolmo Jr., campus supervisor and athletic director at New Brighton Middle School.
But members of the public pushed back, urging the city council to reconsider its plan and pursue a more open selection process that cast a wider net beyond the two unsuccessful council candidates. The city council agreed, and began accepting applications for the city council seat last Thursday. Residents can apply through this Thursday, Jan. 23, at 5 p.m. The city council will vote on the appointment during its Jan. 30 regular meeting.
Santa Cruz’s housing petition kicks off: After nearly two years of discussion and negotiation, a group of local politicos and housing advocates last Thursday began circulating a petition for a housing funding measure it hopes to place on the ballot this November.
The group officially introduced the petition for the so-called Workforce Housing Solutions Act with a sizeable event outside the new, 65-unit affordable housing complex at 525 Cedar St. The proposed funding measure could raise around $5 million per year, deriving revenue through a pair of new taxes: an annual $96 tax on every individual parcel throughout Santa Cruz, and a 0.5-2% real estate transfer tax tacked onto home sales greater than $1.8 million. The petition will need nearly 4,000 signatures from city of Santa Cruz voters over the next 180 days to qualify for the November 2025 ballot.
POINTS FOR PARTICIPATION
Santa Cruz Public Safety Committee will analyze the rise in use-of-force incidents: On Wednesday at 5:30 p.m., the city’s Public Safety Committee will receive a report on how its police department fared in 2024. According to the report, use-of-force incidents have risen in recent years, from 146 in 2022 to 162 in 2024.
The board of supervisors and the city councils in Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Scotts Valley and Capitola are all off this week.
ONE GREAT READ
The terrifying ride of Copter 17, by Thomas Fuller for The New York Times
The Los Angeles County Fire Department has been nationally renowned for its use of helicopters in fighting wildfires, particularly at night. The department was the first to adopt the military Black Hawk helicopter into a firefighting vehicle. LACFD pilot Mike Sagely, who has flown dozens of combat missions for the U.S. Army, is revered for his ability to fly a helicopter while wearing night-vision goggles, something he likened to steering a car while looking through two toilet paper tubes.
When the Eaton fire broke out after 6 p.m. on Jan . 7, Sagely and battalion chief Chris Siok took off in Copter 17 to help extinguish the flames. However, the pair soon met some of the most dangerous conditions either of them had ever witnessed, and the unusually strong winds nearly killed both of them.