To the editor:

National Grid, along with irresponsible state administrators seeking to ban diesel power generation, are trying to force us to accept the installation of a lithium battery installation in our small community of Raquette Lake. Anyone wanting this can put it in their own backyard! This warrants an industrial location only, not in the middle of a wooded area near one of our pristine Adirondack lakes and watersheds in the Adirondack Park, where we are supposed to have safeguards from our Adirondack Park Agency!

Presently, New York state is experiencing widespread air pollution, haze and smoke from fires in Canada. This is a very dry spring and just imagine the park on fire! New York state uses burn bans during these times to help prevent such occurrences. There are well documented risks associated with any installation of this kind. We do not want and should not be required to have this risk here, no matter how small those companies that have self-serving interest of profit, minimize the dangers!

I believe the majority of residents are against this project and now we have to spend our time and efforts and a good deal of frustration to stop it from happening. This is just a pilot project for many more of its kind. Lithium batteries are not “green” by any measure, and certainly not appropriate in a small, wooded community in the Adirondack Park.

Again … no matter how much supporters minimize the risk, it is simply not worth it here. This ill-conceived project should not have gotten this far without a proper outreach to the residents, long before this. Primarily represented as backup power, but actually a profit maker, the cost of which ultimately will likely be borne by the consumers. It should not be forced on a community that does not want it.

Jim Blanchard

Raquette Lake