Citizens of Van Zandt County, about one hour east of Dallas, are concerned about the possible impacts of a proposed energy project.
The lithium battery storage facility called Amador Energy Storage by Finnish company Taaleri Energia would collect and store power to be used later. So energy from a solar farm could be gathered during the day, stored, then re-deployed at night.
But many people in the rural area are worried about potential safety issues and negative impacts to land and water. David Dunagan, a leader of the group Save Van Zandt County, spoke to the Texas Standard about their concerns and potential solutions.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: How did you first become aware of this proposed project?
David Dunagan: Well, about six years ago, we had a proposed solar facility plan to come in and take away about a thousand acres of our pasture land that’s used for, in most cases, growing hay. And we managed to stop that.
But we just started watching ERCOT, their reports of new potential facilities and things like that, and managed to see this pop on the radar. We didn’t think much about it until our commissioners court decided to have a meeting with that battery facility so that the citizens of the county could visit and ask questions.
How close is it to where you live?
It is about five minutes from me. Some of my really close friends are literally right across the street from it.
What are the main concerns you guys have about this facility?
Well, this may sound a little ironic, but out here, we kind of almost consider ourselves true environmentalists. We’re all about, you know, clean air, clean land.
We have a lot of ranchers here that grow cattle, that they want to stay away from all the extra chemicals and things like that. And there are actually almost contests out here for the hay growers to see who has the purest hay.
So when something like this comes out here that either has the potential in some cases to catch fire or cause a fire, or you’re bringing something in that has a lot of chemicals and stuff in it, it gets people around here itchy because we’re really trying to stay away from fires and chemicals and things like that.
If there were a fire or a flood or some other kind of disaster, what do the services in Van Zandt County look like? What would happen? Is there enough to respond to an emergency like that?
They’re almost nonexistent. In the rural parts of most Texas counties, and especially Van Zandt County, the closest fire department is a volunteer fire department, as pretty much all of them are in the county. It’s only got five members. And at any point in time, not all five are going to be able to show up, so it’ll be two or three.
Their response time would be about 4.5 minutes. And as we’ve seen in the past with fires on this prairie land, when you’ve got dry grass, 4.5 minutes can be several acres. And so the surrounding counties in some cases have to come out also and help battle a blaze like this.
So you can imagine – like one gentleman has got about 100 head of cattle literally right next to this – it’s a great concern for fire to damage the surrounding houses, kill cattle and take our volunteer fire departments that just don’t have the equipment or the ability to fight something like this.
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So what sort of response have you heard, either from elected officials or representatives from the companies behind this project?
There has been, especially for the landowners directly around it – who did not know about it until the commissioners court meeting – there have been communications with the landowners, and it’s basically, hey, we can build it here. We’re going to build it here.
And as was stated in the commissioners court meeting, one of the reasons they said they were out here is because you’re a rural Texas county. You don’t have any permitting and you don’t have any regulations, so you can’t tell us what we can do.
As far as the commissioners court is concerned, our county judge has kind of taken the approach of, oh there’s nothing I can do, and throw my hands up. Some of the commissioners have been a little bit more sympathetic to the situation, and we’re trying to work with them right now on some options that we have.
What sort of options are you looking at?
One of them would be that this county could adopt the International Fire Code on the commercial side, and it would simply allow the fire marshal for our county – who, by the way, to understand just how small a county we are, our fire marshal has to also split duties with inspecting septic systems in the county; so you can imagine, he has a dual role – to make sure that facilities like this actually had fire suppression systems in them and that they maintained them and kept them up to date.
Right now, without those codes, they don’t. And this facility has stated that a fire suppression system in their facility is optional and they do not plan on installing it.
Well, are there answers that they could give you – installing this fire suppression system, for example – that would make you more comfortable with this? Or is it just a flat-out no for some of the other reasons you’ve listed?
Well, it’s not that it’s a flat-out no, but it is a concern when you have something like this, that’s potentially this combustible and and there is a history worldwide of some of these facilities being able to either explode catch on fire or require a fire response, for them to turn around and say, well, you know, fire suppression is an option and we’re just not going to do it.
It makes us very concerned about what their approach is going to be to us once this project is built.
You sort of alluded to this early on – you laughed that, you know, you guys consider yourself environmentalists – but some might be hearing this and saying, wait a minute, a solar plant, a storage facility that allows clean energy to be reused later, isn’t that part of the greater good? What would you say to a criticism like that?
Well, I actually would say that you’re right. A lot of this kind of technology can be used for the greater good, but it becomes very questionable when it is placed in places where they say, hey, we can do this because you can’t regulate it and you can’t also help protect the population.
So, no, if you go all through the county, you’re going to find solar panels here and they’re used in a micro type environment, you know, for gates and controls and things like that. And obviously, on a larger scale, that probably would not be a problem. But it needs to be placed in the right places, not put in places that can’t be regulated for the safety of the citizens around it.
