Two Long Island batteries are switched off over a 2023 fire - New York regulators point at the fire suppressant, not the batteries
NextEra has suspended two battery sites on Long Island's East End and agreed to pull the Novec 1230 fire suppressant out of both by about 9 October. New York's environment regulator says the gas, mixed with more than a million gallons of firefighting water in 2023, likely broke down into a 'forever chemical' now found in local drinking-water wells.
A battery caught fire on Long Island in May 2023. Three years later, two battery sites are switched off. The batteries are not the main suspect. The fire suppressant is.
On 5 October, Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine announced that NextEra Energy had agreed to suspend operations at two battery storage sites on the East End of Long Island, New York: one on Cove Hollow Road in East Hampton and one in Montauk near Fort Pond. NextEra and National Grid own both. NextEra will also remove the Novec 1230 fire suppression agent from both sites by about 9 October, the county says. Energy-Storage.news reports both sites had stopped running by 3 October.
What happened. During the 2023 fire at the East Hampton site, crews used more than one million gallons of water, and about 4,900 pounds of "waterless" fire suppression chemical were released, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). The DEC's preliminary view: the Novec 1230 gas and the firefighting water combined, broke down into PFPrA - an ultra-short-chain PFAS, the family people call "forever chemicals" - and the runoff soaked into the ground and drifted south toward the Suffolk County Water Authority's wells over three years.
The DEC's own words matter here: "The investigation points to the fire suppression system, not battery storage, as a PFPrA source." It also found no battery-related metals in soil samples.
Analogy: a small fire in a restaurant kitchen. The fire is out in minutes. But the extinguisher chemical and the hose water go down the floor drain, into the creek, and the town's water tank downstream picks it up years later. Nobody asked where the drain went.
Workplace meaning. If you are putting a battery on a factory, warehouse or shopping-centre site, the fire plan is part of the purchase, not an afterthought. Three plain questions for any supplier: what fire suppression agent does this system use, does it contain PFAS, and where does firefighting water go if the fire brigade turns up with hoses. Those answers sit in the product sheet and the site's emergency plan, not the brochure.
Good: The regulator separated the battery from the suppressant, with soil data behind it. The owner agreed to stop and pull the chemical. The Montauk site was switched off as a precaution because it uses the same agent, not because contamination was found there.
Bad: Two Water Authority wells were taken offline, and Energy-Storage.news reports three of the four wells at the Buckskill Road field are now out of service, with one left for emergencies. There is no enforceable federal or New York drinking-water standard for PFPrA; the state Health Department set an interim screening level of 3 parts per billion for this site only. The DEC's findings are preliminary, with a final report expected this autumn (US time).
Ugly: The community did not know for years. The Water Authority filed a federal lawsuit on 29 May, East Hampton's town board approved up to US$50,000 for environmental lawyers on 1 October, and the DEC has listed the property as a potential hazardous waste disposal site. NextEra did not respond to Energy-Storage.news before publication. Novec 1230 maker 3M said in December 2022 it would stop making PFAS by the end of 2025, so older systems may carry a chemical that is no longer made.
Source: Suffolk County Government - County Executive Romaine Announces NextEra Energy Has Suspended Operations at Two East End Battery Storage Facilities. Also NYSDEC - Bridgehampton Wellfield PFAS Source Investigation, September 2026 Community Update, April Bonner, Energy-Storage.news, 7 Oct 2026 - NextEra halts Long Island BESS operations over drinking water contamination concerns and 27east - BESS Plants Shut Down in East Hampton, Montauk. Dates, water and chemical volumes, well counts, 3 ppb, US$50,000 and the DEC quote as published. The supplier questions are ours. No finding yet on Australian products.