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OAKHAM
FROM THE BOSTON GLOBE, July 11, 2025
A battery storage facility is being proposed in a rural Mass. town. Residents are pushing back.
Locals are citing concerns over the risk to the Quabbin watershed and the destruction of local habitat.
Lithium-ion batteries at an energy storage facility in California. Bing Guan/Bloomberg
Signs reading “STOP! Lithium Battery Storage” and “No Battery Park in Oakham” dot front yards across the rural community in Central Massachusetts. The signs show opposition to a proposed 180-megawatt energy storage facility slated for a 43-acre site off Coldbrook Road.
Moraga Storage LLC, or Rhynland Energy, wants to build the facility on a former auto salvage yard. But locals say the location poses a serious risk. If a fire were to break out, they warn, pollutants could enter the Ware River Watershed, which feeds the Quabbin Reservoir, a drinking water source for 2.7 million people.
The proposal is now under review by the state’s Energy Facilities Siting Board (EFSB), leaving residents facing a tough fight against a powerful regulatory agency and a private energy developer.
“This is not a fair fight,” says Aaron Langlois, co-founder of the nonprofit Advocates for Conservation of Oakham’s Rural Nature and Safety (ACORNS). “It’s a David and Goliath, state versus town. It’s a David and Goliath, battery company versus the citizen.”
The town has fought this battle before. In 2022, residents successfully stopped another proposed lithium-ion battery storage project by amending their zoning bylaws prohibiting it.
However, Rhynland Energy plans to circumvent the bylaw by going directly to the state.
The new clean energy law that Gov. Maura Healey signed in 2024 allows energy storage system projects of at least 100 megawatt-hours to receive a comprehensive exemption from local zoning bylaws if the EFSB issues a certificate.
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“The residents of Oakham, we’re not against clean energy,” says Tim Howe, the town’s fire chief. “If anything, the residents of Oakham are more concerned about protecting the environment than anyone.”
But, this project, he says, “isn’t what it says it is.”
What is a battery energy storage system?
The lithium-ion batteries in phones, laptops, and wearable electronics are the basis of the technology used in energy storage facilities.
The company buys power to charge the batteries during low-peak times by siphoning it off the power lines. It sells it back to the grid during high-peak times to make a profit and help alleviate the system’s demand.
“The world turns on energy,” says Milosh Puchovsky, a fire protection engineering professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. “There’s been a movement to have greener energy. But this is a battery. It does not care where it gets the energy from.”
Puchovsky said the problem with green energy is that things like wind and solar need to be captured, unlike a power plant that simply adds more fuel when energy is needed. Battery storage units help solve this problem.
However, the batteries don’t discriminate where the energy comes from. The power can be from renewable sources, like wind, solar, and hydropower — or traditional sources, like natural gas.
Residents raised safety concerns following several fires at battery storage facilities, including a January incident at Vistra Energy’s Moss Landing site in California that nearby residents feeling ill following the blaze, a 2024 fire in San Diego that burned for five days, and a 2023 fire in Warwick, New York, that lasted three days and forced local school closures.
What causes the fires?
Puchovsky said that even though lithium batteries have a longer life span than traditional batteries, many wear out over time. The batteries can overheat and go into a thermal runaway.
According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), a thermal runaway occurs when a battery cell releases uncontrolled heat energy, creating more heat than it can dissipate. A thermal runway in a single cell can result in a chain reaction that heats neighboring cells.
Once this happens, Puchovsky said, it is “rather difficult to stop.” It can be a gradual fire or it can explode.
The biggest concern for the town is the risk of a fire.
Howe, the fire chief, says the developers’ engineers told him that “this can never catch fire.” His response to them was that engineers said, “The Titanic can never sink. And it did, and they didn’t have a plan.”
“Don’t tell me it can never catch fire,” he said. “Tell me what to do if and when it catches, right?”
Howe said his concerns have been met with it’s “safe technology.”
Howe has a group of well-trained, on-call professional firefighters, but there isn’t enough water. If there were a fire, it would all have to come in by tankers. He said the town currently lacks the resources to handle a disaster of this magnitude.
The engineers allegedly told him, “If it burns, let it burn.” However, the contaminants will have to go somewhere, and Howe said they would most likely end up in the nearby watershed.
The proposal states that the battery energy storage system (BESS) will include 296 lithium-ion battery enclosures, weighing about 84,000 pounds. An integrated cooling and heating system will manage each unit’s temperature, and sensors will support monitoring and controls.
The proposal also says the BESS will include safeguards to mitigate the risk of fire and thermal events, and it’ll follow NFPA standards.
However, Howe says, there is always a risk, no matter how many safeguards there are.
“That one in a million chance that it happens, we’re going to pollute all of metro Boston’s drinking water,” he said.
Langlois adds that an incident would also affect the 600 or so homes in the town that rely on wells for drinking water and dramatically impact the protected natural habitat in the area — and could close the local school that is a half-mile away from the site.
Company’s response:
In response to a request for comment, Rhynland Energy said in a statement, “The project is being developed in compliance with applicable state and federal regulations and includes modern safety systems designed to meet or exceed the established standards.”
The company said that it is reviewing public comments submitted to the EFSB.
The company’s website says it plans to clean up the former auto salvage yard, which once housed 3,000 cars.
On March 27, 2025, the company held an open house inviting business owners and residents within a half-mile of the project to meet with representatives from Moraga. About 150 people attended the event, which lasted over three hours.
The EFSB is going to schedule a public hearing regarding the project. The board says it will be in Oakham.
Since the project is under review, the EFSB says it cannot comment on the proposal.
As part of its push to lead the emerging energy storage market, Massachusetts is advancing more battery storage projects under its Energy Storage Initiative, which set a 1,000 megawatt-hour target by December 2025.
According to Cleanview, a company that tracks clean energy developments, as of July 2025, there are 111 utility-scale battery storage projects in Massachusetts. Their total operating capacity is 302 megawatts. Seven battery storage facilities were built in 2024.
Puchovsky expects more to come.
However, in Oakham, residents say the risk is too high.
“We are desperate to be heard,” Langlois said.