 Borough President Vito Fossella, State Senator Jessica Scarcella-Spanton and Assemblyman Charles Fall united in a bipartisan, state-level effort to combat the siting of Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) facilities in residential neighborhoods and to announce the introduction of legislation to stop their construction on Staten Island.
They stood outside the construction site of a BESS facility at 2166 Forest Ave. in the heart of Mariners Harbor, a dense residential neighborhood that sits between a strip mall and a deli, and across the street from Lowe's and Kohl’s, as well as two gas stations. Borough President Fossella said they have been calling on the city to say, “we don’t want them here.” “It seems like those cries have been falling on deaf ears to date, so we’re going to take another arrow out of the quiver and approach it from a state level,” said Borough President Fossella at a press conference at the site. “There are other parts of the country where there is a minimum distance between a home or a business. We just keep banging that drum as loudly as possible to say that we don’t want these things near people’s homes or businesses. We believe they’re unsafe.” The elected officials also pointed to large-scale fires near BESS facilities across the country, including one in Warwick, N.Y., which ignited last month and took 24 hours to extinguish. It was the third fire at the site since 2023. To combat the construction of sites on Staten Island, Senator Scarcella-Spanton is introducing legislation which would require Community Boards are notified when a battery storage system is planned for a nearby neighborhood. The legislation would also require annual safety inspections for the BESS sites. “We see how quickly they can go up in flames and we want to make sure that they are not by your homes, by your businesses and collectively, we’re all working together with our community partners to make sure we pass this legislation,” said Senator Scarcella-Spanton. Comments are closed.
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