21-05-2025
Monterey County launches dashboard to track battery plant fire data amid wave of lawsuits
A wave of lawsuits, large and small, have been waged against Vistra Corporation, PG&E, and many of their associated companies in the months following an explosive Jan. 16 fire at their battery storage facility in Moss Landing.
A single judge will be assigned to coordinate the cases and will manage all of the common facts and law; but the individual differences will be handled on a case-by-case basis, according to a description of the "mass tort" process on the website of one of the law firms, Danko Meredith.
Whether the cases will be held in state or federal court is yet to be determined.
The January fire caused the declaration of a local emergency. About 1,500 residents were evacuated and parts of state Highway 1 in Monterey County were closed for three days. Several businesses and restaurants in the Moss Landing Harbor area across from the plant have since closed, and some of the owners are suing for damages, saying the fire has affected their health and livelihoods.
Since 2021, there have been four previous smoke or fire incidents at the Moss Landing site. Two months after the January fire, as hazardous materials crews approached the site to begin removing the burned batteries, the fire reignited.
In the days and weeks that followed the fire, many residents around the facility reported experiencing respiratory distress and rashes. As with most industrial accidents, it is difficult to collect evidence that directly links human harm to a source. People are continuing to seek blood and hair tests in search of dangerous levels of nickel, manganese, cobalt and lithium -- the metals found in batteries.
The biggest lawsuits allege that Vistra had previous knowledge of the flaws in their BESS-300 building where the fire ignited, and the company failed to upgrade its technology to safer standards.
Environmental testing has shown the presence of battery metals in the soils and waterways near the fire, but whether they were present at dangerous levels is still inconclusive.
On Tuesday, Monterey County, which has shared all available environmental testing results with the public, launched a new map-based data dashboard. The public can now track where environmental testing and monitoring have taken place across the counties of Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito in response to the fire.
Ground, air and water testing has been done by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Vistra consultant CTEH, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, the Santa Cruz County agricultural commissioner, Santa Cruz County Environmental Health and a grassroots community group called Never Again Moss Landing.
"One question is how can I find out if I'm in the area affected and if I can be included in this case?" asked one Moss Landing resident in a Monday night virtual public meeting with Singleton Schreiber, the law firm handling one of the biggest cases. The advice given was to contact the firm for a conversation about where she lives and whether she has had any harms.
Also present was environmental advocate and paralegal Erin Brockovich, who helped sue PG&E for contaminating the groundwater in the San Bernardino County area of Hinkley. It was, in 1996, the largest such settlement ever paid and the subject of a Hollywood film starring Julia Roberts.
PG&E runs a battery facility adjacent to the fire at the Vistra 300-BESS building, but the PG&E facility did not burn. Both facilities have been offline since the fire. On May 7, PG&E wrote to the county and asked that their facility go back online.
"I've never seen an agency resolve one of these issues," said Brockovich, referring to the citizen group's frustration with what they see as a lack of government oversight. "It's always a people movement with the law, and that's where we can make legislative changes."
The Singleton Schreiber lawsuit asks for financial compensation and a trial for damages for civil battery, trespass (physical intrusion of contaminants), nuisance, negligence and liability.
Brian Roeder, who facilitated the Never Again Moss Landing citizen group in the collection of their own environmental samples, is the lead plaintiff for a suit filed by the firms Fiore Achermann & Danko Meredith.
"We had to leave," said Roeder, who recently moved to Pebble Beach, where he said the air is cleaner. "My wife had an emergency appendectomy that's been sent off to be tested by toxicologists up at UC San Francisco because we've heard a few people that have had emergency appendectomies. Apparently one of the metals, it might be lithium, is tied to calcium spikes."
Karen Smith, spokesperson for the Monterey County Health Department, said in an email that medical providers are not required to report health care visits for chronic medical conditions like asthma and diabetes to the health department. However, the county issued a community survey, and epidemiologists are working on analyzing the results.
"Local surveillance systems indicate that while some people did seek medical care in the days following the fire with air-quality related symptoms, the proportion of emergency department visits due to air-quality related symptoms did not significantly change from what was seen prior to the fire and from we would expect to see at this time of the year," Smith said.
In an email statement received Tuesday, Vistra spokesperson Juliette Alper indicated they are responding accordingly to the lawsuits.
"Moss Landing is our home, and we are committed to working with local officials, regulatory agencies, and the public to ensure the safety of our neighbors and community," said Alper. "Multiple agencies and organizations have monitored local air, water, and soil. To date, no risks to public health have been observed."
