Green-energy madness will turn family homes into – Latest News
You’ve bought to be kidding me.
A large lithium-ion battery facility is being quietly pushed into the coronary heart of Middle Village, Queens — proper throughout the road from PS/IS 128, the place a whole lot of kids go to highschool.
And it doesn’t stop there: It’s additionally subsequent door to an animal hospital, a day-care middle and a kids’s enjoyable home.
This will not be a joke. It’s a fire hazard disguised as inexperienced infrastructure, as half of the City of Yes.
And I’m right here to say: Not in my neighborhood. Not subsequent door to our children.
Not with out a struggle.
NineDot Energy, the company behind this plan, is eyeing a residential lot smack within the center of a residential neighborhood — a place the place children experience bikes, households stroll their canines and academics loosen up on their lunch break.
It’s the final place a harmful industrial-battery facility ought to ever be allowed.
These lithium-ion battery systems, essential to adjust to the inconceivable clean-energy targets of Albany’s 2019 Climate Act, are a catastrophe ready to occur.
Look no additional than Moss Landing, Calif. — the place a giant battery facility caught fire this yr and burned for 5 days, releasing poisonous smoke and forcing over 1,000 residents to evacuate.
A month later, it caught fire again.
In 2023 alone, lithium-ion battery fires in New York City killed 18 people and injured 150.
And these had been from smaller batteries — think about what a 40-foot container full of high-capacity battery racks might do within the center of a neighborhood if it explodes.
Now think about that occuring throughout the road from a college with 1000’s of children inside.
This project is being allowed as-of-right — which means no public listening to, no environmental review, no enter from the neighborhood — as half of the City of Yes for Carbon Neutrality, a citywide zoning modification that I strongly opposed and voted towards.
And Middle Village isn’t alone: Similar giant battery websites and proposals are popping up in residential areas everywhere in the outer boroughs — Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, The Bronx.
The communities most at risk are those with the least political clout, and essentially the most working-class households.
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This is what occurs when City Hall passes sweeping laws with out doing its homework — with out understanding the results.
They known as it “green,” wrapped it in good language, and pushed it by way of with out asking: What occurs once we web site hazardous battery amenities within the center of residential communities?
Moss Landing is aware of.
This wasn’t about climate. It wasn’t about serving to on a regular basis New Yorkers.
It was about serving to builders and particular pursuits. The similar teams who pushed for this plan — who stood to benefit financially — had been those who helped write the principles.
And too many of my colleagues within the City Council did their bidding, whether or not as helpful idiots or as a result of they had been in on it.
That’s why I’ve joined a lawsuit with the Common Sense Caucus to strike down the complete City of Yes zoning overhaul — as a result of it’s getting used to fast-track initiatives like this one which put people at risk.
And we’re additionally exploring a separate legal motion particularly concentrating on the carbon-neutrality piece of the zoning law that makes this battery facility attainable.
We’re demanding accountability. And we’re demanding a full stop to the reckless placements of these amenities.
Let me be clear: I’m not towards clean power. I assist renewable energy, accountable planning and actual options to our climate challenges.
But that doesn’t imply handing our neighborhoods over to builders and crossing our fingers that no person will get harm.
We can construct a sustainable metropolis with out turning faculties into blast zones and blocks of family homes into firetraps.
I’m calling for town to position an fast moratorium on all large-scale lithium-ion battery amenities in residential areas, till actual safeguards are in place and actual people have a say.
That means public hearings, fire-safety critiques, neighborhood enter and accountability — not simply backroom offers and rubber stamps.
Middle Village will not be a testing ground. Our households will not change into the inexperienced lobbyists’ collateral harm.
We’ve fought too laborious to keep this neighborhood protected, and I’m not about to let it go up in flames — actually.
This is about common sense. And I’ll keep preventing till it prevails.
City Council Member Robert Holden (D) represents District 30 in Queens.
