New York State has been building Lithium-Ion Battery Storage Facilities across its cities and towns with many issues alongside their production and existence. The safety regulations and technologies are not keeping pace with the rate of which facilities are being built. There are loop holes in New York State that allow these facilities to be silently green lit and built wherever local politicians decide without any input or knowledge from tax paying citizens.

A most recent battery storage facility is planned to be built in North Patchogue, Long Island next to the neighborhood of Canaan Lake.

As residents of Canaan Lake and North Patchogue, we hold a deeply rooted love for our community. Many of our neighbors are second or third or even fourth generation residents who have kept a unified and safe community, but we now live with the unsettling knowledge that lithium-ion battery storage facilities are being planned next door to our homes, schools, local community buildings, and religious centers without any input or agreement from the residents who have chosen to move and/or stay here. This poses a grave threat not just to us but to the environment around us which we cherish. Upon this facility's construction, a new precedent to invasively install these among other communities will be forced throughout the Town of Brookhaven. This will occur if local officials are permitted to place these battery facilities wherever they like without tax payers' say. WE MUST HAVE A SAY.

This crisis is personal for us, and we hope the commonality of what brings us together in Patchogue and the Town of Brookhaven can be seen within one simple idea: protecting our neighbors, homes, and immediate environment.

Lithium-ion battery storage facilities can cause significant long-term environmental damage near their sites, as they have already caused significant damage in other communities throughout the country. In emergency situations (especially fire, overheating, or explosive), excessive water required to control immediate hazards can produce dangerous runoff which will infiltrate our local water system. Specifically, this runoff will contain hydrochloric gases. When hydrochloric gases are vaporized, they cause immediate harm to anyone close enough to breathe them in. When they are then cooled and liquefied, they immediately begin to deteriorate natural resources and life along waterways.

In our case, this runoff will pollute our local Patchogue River. This river feeds Canaan Lake, Patchogue Lake, and ultimately the Great South Bay, which is a critical source of water and an essential ecosystem for many species. The spread of potential cancer-causing substances through these waters would not just impact our community, but all residents along Long Island's south shore.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) directly explains that exposure to lithium-ion batteries alone can have an adverse impact on public health and the environment. With this in mind, we demand a halt to the construction of these potentially devastating battery storage facilities near our homes.

We urgently need your support to protect our community, our environment and our loved ones from potential catastrophic damage. May we stress that YOU also need this support to ensure that this precedent is not set, and that this also doesn't become an easier way to place these facilities in YOUR communities either. Please sign this petition, and help us urge our lawmakers to reconsider this destructive decision. Please show that we do have a say of what specifically happens within our own communities.

Thank you and with you, 

Your local Canaan Lake