OAKHAM, MASS. (WHDH) – Clean energy or a ticking timebomb? That’s the question residents in one Massachusetts town grapple with as a proposal for a new energy project targets their backyards.
“It’s devastating,” Danielle Stevens explained.
The quiet rural town of Oakham, Massachusetts quickly captured Jim and Danielle Stevens’s heart.
“It’s perfect, it’s quiet, we’re growing all our fruit trees here, we have our animals here,” Jim Stevens said.
The couple moved to the central Massachusetts town four years ago but now they can’t imagine living anywhere else.
“I don’t think we’re going to find a place, for us that is as perfect and quiet as this,” Jim Stevens said.
But that quiet may not last.
In April, Rhynland Energy submitted a proposal to the state to build Moraga Energy Storage just steps from the Stevens’s backyard. The facility would house nearly 300 lithium-ion batteries. The 42 tons of batteries would store energy for when it is most needed. Projects like this are being proposed to support clean energy options and stabilize the power grid but the Stevens said the location of this facility puts them in jeopardy.
“We’ll lose our peace and quiet, we are going to lose all the equity in our home. Everything we have worked our whole lives for and put all of our eggs in this one basket,” Danielle Stevens said. “Now that is all at risk. We are not going to be able to be happy here.”
They aren’t just concerned for themselves, but for the whole town.
“We just happen to be in the worst spot for the construction but this is bad for the whole town,” Jim Stevens said.
Lithium-ion batteries power phones, laptops, e-bikes and electric cars. Over the past few years, fire departments across the country have warned that these batteries can explode, start fires and spread toxic gases when overheated or damaged.
When these batteries are scaled up, like at a battery plant, the damage is even greater.
“The potential is there….