Key Part of "New" Electric Grid Opposed in SE Mass.

Groups and individuals across Southeastern Massachusetts are demanding that the Baker Administration reject the PowerPlus plan to site a 150-megawatt battery storage facility in a dense residential neighborhood and next to cranberry bogs in Carver. The proposed project site is over the Plymouth Carver Sole Source Aquifer which provides all drinking water for public and private wells for about 200,000 people in seven towns.

Power Plus, an investor-owned Texas corporation is seeking siting approval from the state’s Energy Facility Siting Board (EFSB) and environmental approval for its’ Single Environmental Impact Report (“SEIR”) from the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (“MEPA”) office. Both agencies are under the Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs headed by Baker-appointee Beth Card. The Baker administration is promoting the project, called Cranberry Point Energy Storage LLC, as part of the state’s “clean energy” plan. The project will store electricity generated by burning fossil fuels, and possibly solar and wind at some point in the future. Opponents say this is not “clean energy” or a solution to the climate crisis. The facility will be one of the world’s largest lithium-ion battery storage facilities. These facilities pose a risk of catastrophic fire, explosion and release of toxic gas.

Calling the project a “battery bomb”, opponents say it should be sited in an industrial area, not a dense neighborhood near schools and low income housing.

Public comments submitted to MEPA on the SEIR on October 11, 2022 cite to expert reports concluding that PowerPlus has not met siting and safety standards to deal with a “thermal runaway” event which is the rapid uncontrolled release of heat energy from a battery cell resulting in fire, explosions and air pollution.

Air pollution expert John Hinckley reports PowerPlus has not identified the specific pollutants that will be released in a thermal runaway event and the extent to which the pollutants will travel off site into the residential area and cranberry bogs. This makes it impossible to plan for emergency response. Hinckley concludes the project risks fire and threatens workers and emergency responders. Fire safety expert Milosh Puchovsky, Professor of Fire Protection Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute reports that the project does not meet National Fire Protection Association 855 requirements for risks and hazards, and emergency planning is inadequate.

Carver Concerned Citizens’ comments to MEPA explain that a closed-door deal in 2018 between town officials and the company, all to benefit the landowners, cranberry bog owner and sand and gravel mining operators Gary and Craig Weston, duped Carver voters into passing a zoning change in 2018 that opened the door to PowerPlus. Without the zoning change, the facility would be prohibited in the residential and cranberry bog district. When the facts and dangers of the project became widely known, Carver voters passed a moratorium on siting battery storage in April 2022.

“Over the sole source drinking water aquifer, next to cranberry bogs, wetlands and 100 feet from residential properties is not the right location for this battery bomb,” said Meg Sheehan, spokesperson for Save the Pine Barrens, a non-profit group based in Plymouth. “Southeastern Mass is being exploited by for-profit investor-owned corporations greenwashing these projects as “renewable” and “clean energy.” Large cranberry bog landowners like the Gary and Craig Weston, owners of the Power Plus site, and AD Makepeace are exploiting taxpayer and ratepayer subsidies. Projects like this don’t live up to their promises of helping the climate crisis and should not be foisted on small rural towns like Carver. It’s telling that PowerPlus will be storing dirty fossil fuel energy and calling itself “green.”

Mary Dormer of Carver Concerned Citizens said “Carver has grown weary of the flagrant manipulation and games our town government has been playing at for years. Not only are we dealing with the environmental impacts of deforestation by industrial sand and gravel removal -- tens of millions of cubic yards being stripped and our highest hills leveled -- we now have to stop the Cranberry Point battery bomb. Rural and agricultural communities like ours are collateral damage in the state’s mindless push for 'renewable energy.' The Baker Administration is destroying our sole source drinking water and community character. Cranberries are being poisoned by toxic poles for dual use solar and now Cranberry Point threatens to spew toxic air pollution from this project.”