Burnt batteries are going to be removed from the Vistra Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility starting in September, and cleanup will likely continue for a year. That’s according to Kazami Brockman, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s on-scene coordinator who spoke at a Monterey County press event this week.

The facility has been offline since a massive Jan. 16 fire burned for two days, causing area evacuations and widespread public health concerns.

On July 17, the EPA reached an agreement with Vistra Corp. to oversee the removal and disposal of batteries damaged in the fire at Moss Landing. The state of California requested EPA’s oversight.

The agreement included capturing stormwater runoff from the work area for testing before disposal, keeping a private firefighting crew on-site 24/7, and having an EPA-approved emergency response plan should any issues arise.

“Damaged batteries can be unstable. An emergency response plan was developed by Vistra and reviewed and approved by EPA for this response to address any potential flareups,” Brockman said on Wednesday.

The initial work on the fire-damaged Moss Landing 300 building involves clearing access to the building, partial demolition, and adding structural supports to facilitate safe retrieval of batteries, said Brockman, adding that dust control and community air monitoring measures are already in place.

Once the batteries are removed from the building, they will be inspected, treated or de-energized onsite in preparation for offsite transport and disposal, according to a news release from the EPA.

Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.