IN THE COMING WEEKS, Monterey County will be publishing a geo-located visualization map of all the verifiable data collected in and around the Vistra Moss Landing Battery facility since a massive Jan. 16 battery fire there resulted in environmental and public health concerns.
In a Wednesday public briefing, Ricardo Encarnacion, Monterey County’s director of environmental health, also announced that a new round of testing will be done by the California Department of Toxic Substances Control in response to public concerns. That data will also be included on the interactive map.
“This additional sampling is related to enforcement and oversight,” said Encarnacion. “We want to do as much as we can to get all the information that we need.”
The data, which includes tests for elements and chemicals related to battery fires, will include samples taken from agricultural lands, sediment soils around wetlands, surface water, public storage tank water and air monitoring devices. It was gathered during and after the fire from a geographic range that spans across three counties. The data will not include pre-fire environmental sampling.
It was gathered by the Monterey County Environmental Health Bureau, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Monterey Bay Air Resources District, Vistra Corporation, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control and Santa Cruz County’s Agricultural Commissioner and Environmental Health Division.
“Our number one concern and priority is public safety and obviously public trust,” said Monterey County spokesperson Nicholas Pasculli.
Data collected in January by a team led by Ivano Aiello of San Jose State University’s Moss Landing Marine Laboratories revealed elevated levels of heavy-metal nanoparticles associated with batteries in the marsh soils at the Elkhorn Slough Ecological Reserve. According to Pasculli, that raw data is still being held by the marine lab while it is peer reviewed by the scientific community, but the county intends to include that data once it is available.
The county has received results collected by the citizen-led group called Never Again Moss Landing. The volunteer group collected over 120 surface wipe samples across Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties to detect the presence of heavy metals that might have been released in the fire plume. That information was shared in the form of a lab analysis.
“Maybe the question is why not include it,” said Pasculli. “If you think in terms of this being an investigation, there’s something called an ‘evidentiary chain of custody,’ which we need to ensure was maintained. If we cannot verify a chain of custody, in good faith, we cannot publish data because there’s no way to ensure that the collection of data was not compromised in some way, shape or form.”
There was another study conducted by farm advisors from University of California’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources who serve Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties. A published summary of their limited study indicated that a slight deposition of copper and manganese may have occurred in one agricultural field, but the concentration was within normal ranges for all soil types evaluated. The county has also requested that data for the graphic information map.
All available data are online on the county’s website.