Battery farm backlash

By Bill Lucia | Editor

By Tom Banse

A rising number of local governments around the region have enacted moratoriums over the past year on permitting large battery facilities. During that time, some developers have also withdrawn their proposals to build the installations.

“There’s a dawning awareness of the awful effects of (battery energy storage system) installations such as thermal runaway fires and toxic smoke, and the horrible noise from cooling fans,” wrote Anacortes resident Elke Siller Macartney in a public comment to the Skagit County Commission. “It’s the height of arrogance for these companies to pretend to install these things for the supposed good of all.”

Battery farm developers say fires at the sites are rare, and that technology has improved and is safer compared to earlier generation systems.

Environmental groups concerned about climate change, and electrician unions are among those pulling for more of the projects. “This is not infrastructure that is just nice to have. It’s critical infrastructure. We need to develop, particularly batteries in western Washington, to make up for our lack of transmission capacity across the Cascades,” said Isaac Kastama, government relations director for the group Clean & Prosperous. “We are facing increasing risks of brownouts and blackouts.”

By Jake Goldstein-Street

Facebook parent Meta must pay a $35 million campaign finance penalty after the state Supreme Court affirmed the fine in a split decision yesterday. Washington’s Fair Campaign Practices Act requires digital companies like Meta to maintain records related to campaign ads they run on their platforms, including the cost of the ad, its sponsor, its targeted audience and other information. The state attorney general’s office sued Meta over allegations it didn’t follow those requirements. Meta argued that the state law was unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

By Rodney Coates

Today is Juneteenth. Although Congress enacted the 13th Amendment on Jan. 31, 1865, abolishing slavery, word of the amendment did not reach enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, until June 19, 1865. This marks the origin of the holiday. In this column, Rodney Coates, a professor of critical race and ethnic studies at Miami University in Ohio, delves into the history of the steep obstacles Black Americans faced in accessing education after slavery was abolished. “Juneteenth made clear that freedom was not just confined to someone’s physical enslavement, but mental enslavement as well, bound in the laws that barred enslaved people from receiving an education in Southern states,” Coates writes. The holiday, he adds, “also offers an important reminder that true freedom must also include the right to an education.”

By Mia Maldonado

The Trump administration is dropping its plan to remove a decade-old ocean monitoring system, following bipartisan pushback. The National Science Foundation this month began dismantling the Ocean Observatories Initiative system. It includes more than 900 instruments worth $386 million located along the coasts of Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina and Greenland. People rely on information from the system for fishing, recreation, science and emergency services.

ICYMI

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