Lithium Ion Battery Insanity in Brooklyn

I am Steve Silver, a resident at 315 Berry Street in Brooklyn. It's a former factory building, more than 100 years old. I've lived here since 1980.

A Mega Installation of 15 lithium ion batteries, 11 feet high, eight feet around, weighing more than 400,000 pounds is being proposed for the rooftop .

Yellow: the batteries

Green and Blue: switchgear and transformers

(ground level is adjacent to Berry Park)

A fire would be catastrophic and the amount of water needed to contain it would possibly collapse the roof,

as Simon Ressner, FDNY Battalion Chief stated: 10,000 pounds of water a minute would be used and could not possibly drain.

This is a 7 story building and the FDNY has limited experience in dealing with a fire of this nature.

The building is adjacent to Berry Park, heavily used by various groups of toddlers, plus basketball players of all sizes and shapes.

The toxic gases emitted by a fire would engulf a very heavily populated neighborhood.

A company called Micro Grid, a kind of sublet for a group of venture capitalists from California, has lobbied the city to the tune of more than 400,000 dollars. They hired former Deputy Mayor Diana Reyna as a consultant and it's anyone's guess where that money has gone to. These people want to use our building as a guinea pig project, hoping to put this kind of technology on buildings throughout the city.

The project has been undergoing hearings for the last two years at the Board of Standards and Appeals. The city has conveniently changed the chair of the Board of Standards and Appeals, Ms. Perlmutter, who was totally opposed, to Ms. Chanda, who landed a much higher paying job and is in favor.

One battery fire from an E-bike completely destroyed a building in the Bronx a couple of weeks ago.

15 lithium ion batteries on the roof is the equivalent of 30,000

(THIRTY THOUSAND) E-bikes.

The Community board voted 30 - 1 against this project,

and "begged" the city to cancel it.

I am part of a group of tenants, basically a bunch of rag tag artists,

who have collected among ourselves 11,500 dollars to retain a lawyer and a structural engineer.

We are looking to raise funds as it will cost a lot more money once we find ourselves

in court.

Note: The tenants will be living underneath a construction site

for more than six months if Micro Grid money has its way.

There has to be a better location for these systems.