MOSS LANDING, Calif.—Around dusk on Jan. 16, Brad Beach was checking on his small herd of Texas Longhorn cattle—a majestic bull named Tex, two cows and three calves, grazing about two miles inland from California’s central coastline.

Beach saw smoke blowing from the coast, where two towers mark the distinctive silhouette of an energy plant. Shortly after leaving the herd, he noticed a massive fire had broken out at the plant and came back to get his cattle, only to be turned away by the California Highway Patrol, which had the area on lockdown as residents were evacuated.

“I showed up the following day,” Beach told The Epoch Times. “There was nothing that was going to stop me.”

By then, he recalled, the cattle were heavily distressed. “They’re saying, ‘Dad, save us.’”

The animals continued to exhibit distressed behavior. Three weeks later, one gave birth to a stillborn calf.

“She was actually very strong, the strongest of the herd—genetic-wise and all around. This would have been her third [calf],” Beach told The Epoch Times at his ranch in Chular, California, on Feb. 17.

Four stillborn goats followed.

“Every season differs,” Beach said. “But when there are major changes in reproduction all at the same time, the question is, what can do this? There are multiple herds and different species having the same issues. I’ve never seen so many stillborns ever in a season.”

As yet, Beach can’t prove pollutants emitted during one of the biggest battery storage fires in history impacted his animals. But like other residents in the region who continue to experience symptoms, even as authorities assure them there is no threat, he has questions.

The fire that exploded Jan. 16 at Vistra Energy’s Moss Landing facility, which houses 110,000 lithium ion batteries used to store solar energy for the electric grid, resulted in a 1,000-foot plume of smoke that carried a cocktail of airborne toxins as it rose and fell, zigzagging across the windy agricultural basin.

Without a protocol in place for fighting a lithium battery fire of this magnitude, firefighters said they were forced to let it burn until it ran out of fuel. Lithium batteries are pyrophoric, meaning they can ignite spontaneously with exposure to air or water, making their fires tricky to extinguish.

The smoke eventually cleared, February brought rains, and authorities continued to assure residents there was no health threat, based on data from air, soil, and water monitoring.

Unlike the fires that ravaged Los Angeles County at the same time, no homes were destroyed, there were no fatalities, and around 1,200 people were briefly evacuated.

But Moss Landing caught authorities on the back foot.

Meanwhile, government agencies and Vistra were slow to test for toxic compounds they knew could present an exposure hazard, and have remained quiet on data from other sources that at minimum complicate the picture they’ve presented to the public.

According to an investigation by The Epoch Times, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) didn’t order Vistra to sample air for heavy metals until nearly a week after the fire started, and that data was never shared with the public.

In the absence of clear information, residents continue to wonder whether their children, animals, and land are safe.

“We’re in uncharted territory,” said Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church, an outspoken critic of regulatory missteps that led to the fire and its fallout.

“This isn’t something that is like a wildfire or a flood, which we’re prepared for and we know what to look for. Developing the protocols, unfortunately, this is the test area for that,” he told The Epoch Times.

But there were signs. The facility, which came online in 2020, utilized what is now considered outdated technology, storage design, and fire safety standards. This is the fourth incident on the site since 2021, the third at the Vistra plant, which sits adjacent to one operated by PG&E.

Vistra’s plant was approved with almost no pushback and without an environmental impact report, which is unusual for a project surrounded by a protected nature preserve. Marketed as a clean alternative to the natural gas plant it replaced, it enjoyed broad support from stakeholders often at odds with one another, including industry, labor, and environmentalists.

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But when international fire safety standards changed in 2018 and when similar products were recalled across the United States—the company wasn’t obligated to retrofit, upgrade, or comply. Neither did the state force the company to file its own safety plan in compliance with state law.

And while many California lawmakers are quick to criticize the oil industry and its tactics in the aftermath of disasters, there has been no outrage coming from Sacramento or Washington over Vistra’s use of what appears to be a similar playbook.

The battery fire in Moss Landing is a sign that industry growth could be outpacing the government’s ability to regulate and respond to its potential hazards. And categorizing lithium battery projects as “green” appears to have precluded the kind of scrutiny that would normally accompany conventional energy projects.

Marina residents remembered an eerie calm that set in among the wildlife in the days following the fire. But the sea otters, birds, and seals were lively again.

The only obvious sign a major environmental disaster had occurred here was the charred carcass of the plant building, hardly visible behind a line of eucalyptus trees.

In photos The Epoch Times took of the site on Feb. 17, Faint traces of smoke could be seen rising from a burned section on Feb. 17, a month after the fire. By the following evening, residents reported a fire had reignited there and officials advised people to stay inside and shut their windows. The following week, another reignition.

Tonya Rivera, a nearby resident who helped organize a group of concerned neighbors that has grown to thousands on social media, said she still had respiratory and dermatological symptoms that come and go. Like many in the semi-rural area, she owns animals and draws water from her own well, and is increasingly skeptical of assurances that the environment is safe.

“The EPA was doing the air testing right here,” she said, standing across the street from the plant. “The smoke is going up and it’s moving. What good is butt-level testing? Then they say everything is fine. The county says, ‘stay in your house.’ But it’s smoke—it doesn’t stop at a door.”

Rivera recalled a public health announcement that residents should wear a respirator, made several weeks after the fire. “They said that was what you should have done. They’re making the rules up as they go.”

A resident of the marina recalled the county telling people, “just don’t lick your fingers” when cleaning the ash off their boats. Vistra quickly came around with gift cards of $750 for each resident, as did a number of high-profile law firms.

Many hoped February storms would cleanse the air, even if they also posed a risk of toxic runoff into soil and water.

Throughout Monterey County, state agencies and Vistra say air quality has at no time posed a risk to residents.

Derek Orchard, an emergency medicine physician who lives less than five miles from the plant, evacuated with his wife and two children on Jan. 16, and returned three days later.

“The fire was already out, there was no real smoke in the air,” Orchard recalled to The Epoch Times. “When we got home, we still had some weird odor in the air that was different ... so that was the only thing that was concerning, initially.”

Everything was status quo until the first week of February, when heavy storms passed through.

“I noticed my 7-year-old son, he started getting some respiratory issues and he had this diffuse rash all over his body, constantly itching. There were no new exposures, no new food, no new laundry detergent, nothing.”

Orchard and his wife, a pharmacist, treated their son at home, but his condition persisted.

“At the end of the week we were trying to think of something that could be triggering it, other than the obvious thing, which was the fire. And we couldn’t. So we got an Airbnb for the next month in Monterey—and within 48 hours, everything cleared up.”

Orchard, who works at two hospitals, including as medical director of Memorial Hospital in Los Baños, said he has just been trying to survive in the weeks since.

“ I don’t know when I can go back home, or if I feel safe bringing my kids back home. It’s super uncertain.”

The family lives on 12 acres, their water comes from a well, and they have animals. “Do I get my well tested, and do I feel safe about that? What do we do with the land, and the animals? The uncertainty is from a lack of information,” he said.

Ed Mitchell, a resident of Prunedale, a community about seven miles east of the plant, attended an emergency meeting with the Monterey Board of Supervisors a couple days after the fire started.

“Reports showed air around the plant and down the road [Southeast] was normal. Particulates were normal, the same from wood fires or fireplaces,” Mitchell said.

“We’re looking at a huge cloud of crap burning up in the air. We know there’s going to be pollutants in that sucker. We were told it was normal. The fire was so big, so hot, it was acting like a chimney, 200 foot-high flames.”

At the county’s request, the EPA began monitoring early on for air quality, testing for hydrogen fluoride, one of the most toxic compounds emitted in battery fires, along with the particulate matter typically measured in air quality monitoring. Vistra also installed its own air monitors.

But there was no mention of heavy metals in reporting from the EPA, Vistra, state agencies, or the county—not until scientists working in the Elkhorn Slough made a stunning announcement in late January: As a result of fallout from the smoke, surface soil in the nature preserve had drastically elevated levels of these compounds, hundreds to a thousand times above background levels.

Part of the concern over heavy metals is that they don’t biodegrade and can easily accumulate in the food chain. Even at very low levels, they can have a cumulative impact over time, making the determination of a safe threshold a matter of contention.

In humans, exposure to heavy metals and other toxins such as pesticides can have longer term impacts, damaging DNA, interfering with protein and enzyme function, creating oxidative stress and stimulating cancer progression, according to multiple global studies.

In livestock, studies show exposure can cause damage to the central nervous system and reproductive failure, as well as impacting other organ systems, among other impacts.

Nickel and cobalt are especially problematic, according to Joseph Landolph, associate professor with USC’s Keck School of Medicine and an expert in chemically induced carcinogenicity who often works with the EPA.

“Nickel is a carcinogen, especially in its insoluble form, where it can cause damage to the sinuses and lungs resulting in tumors ... and occasionally to the kidneys,” Landolph said.

Normally, he said, the EPA would conduct “a complete risk assessment of the whole area,” which is expensive and time-consuming, and calculate exposure risks.

Michael Polkalba, an industrial hygienist and area resident, said reporting from the government and Vistra has been misleading.

“From a technical standpoint, I was a bit shocked that EPA was only monitoring for two airborne hazards. Monterey County is just taking a back seat, and no one is asking the obvious question, ‘What’s in the plume?’” Polkalba said.

Giving the “all clear” sign to move back in the next day was based on just 2.5 particulate matter and hydrogen fluoride, he said, referring to particles measuring 2.5 micrometers in diameter or less (PM 2.5), used to monitor air quality. “They didn’t even consider the other contaminants involved.”

He said they should have immediately looked for heavy metals, PCBs, chlorinated compounds, dioxins and polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

“Because remember, when the battery [burns] it’s not just the lithium that is exploding and combusting, it’s the buffer solutions, the electrolytes, the cathodes, the anodes. It’s the cases that the batteries are stored in. Any polyvinyl chloride [PVC] is going to create vinyl chloride—that’s a very, very toxic gas,” Polkalba said.

“Fire people all know this, it’s recognized these are hazardous chemicals, and there are many, many compounds they should have sampled for. Just sampling for those two was not the total picture.”

While the EPA and other agencies routinely monitor for particulate matter to determine air quality, testing for heavy metals and other toxins requires air sampling, in which samples are collected and sent for lab analysis.

The EPA told The Epoch Times it instructed Vistra to conduct air sampling for heavy metals beginning Jan. 21, nearly a week after the fire began, and that the company maintains that data and should have shared the information with state toxicologists.

However, it appears the data were never shared with the public. On Vistra’s incident response website, public statements refer to “air sampling” at more than 100 sites for seven compounds associated with such fires, conducted by an outside contractor. But there is no reporting of sampling for heavy metals, only air quality monitoring that finds no threat from hazardous compounds.

Vistra did not respond to multiple inquiries requesting clarification on this matter and others, nor did the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

The problem with only monitoring for air quality, explained Jane Williams, executive director of California Communities Against Toxics, is that heavy metals tend to stick to particulate matter smaller than PM 2.5 in a process called “adsorption”—so testing only for PM 2.5 does not catch heavy metals.

“The finer the particulate matter, the higher the metals,” said Williams. “Concentrations of metals adsorb to the ultrafines like Velcro.”

While manganese, nickel, and cobalt are present in background levels in the environment, elevated levels can pose risks for both acute and long-term exposure.

“If the levels are elevated, it’s going to have significant impacts to the environment, to our agriculture—the salad bowl of America is right here—that’s us,” Polkalba said. “Do we want this in our spinach?”

Church, the Monterey County supervisor, acknowledged communication challenges but said small counties lean on the state when it comes to managing public health in a disaster.

“I feel the state has not been as responsive as it should be, as I’ve seen in some other instances, it seems to be a bit slow on analysis, on the results, and getting back to the public,” he said. “I think they could be doing a better job.”

Heavy metals occur naturally in soil, and he hasn’t been focused on them. But when officials announced soon after the fire that the air was safe, he was curious.

“I went back to my field sites and I start seeing chunks of burned stuff all over the place. So I thought, maybe there’s something in the soil,” he told The Epoch Times. “I start measuring some of my previously measured sites, I do both field work and analytical work in the lab, and then I start plotting data. And it was clear that some of the elements, some heavy metals, were orders of magnitude higher than before.”

He began investigating eight days after the fire, at which point he had not heard any mention of heavy metals from authorities or Vistra.

At first he didn’t know what he was looking for. When he put the samples in his “super fancy” scanning electron microscope, it was clear: hundreds to a thousand-fold increases in nickel, cobalt, and manganese. It wasn’t just the concentration, Aiello said, but the ratio, which was very consistent, meaning it was coming from the same source.

“And then I saw those tiny metal balls, a few microns [in diameter] and I Googled it. Those are heavy metals used for battery material.”

These nanoparticles were sometimes clustered like grapes, melted together.

“The heat of the fire was so high, and they are everywhere. I mean, wherever I look for them, I found them, especially high concentrations. So it’s one plus one equals two,” he said. “Since then I haven’t slept much.”

Aiello declined to share his data until it is published in a peer-reviewed journal; he is currently focused on how these metals are changing and moving through the ecosystem.

Monterey County acknowledged Aiello’s announcement but has not elaborated on how or if the findings have informed safety assessments. The Department of Public Health did not respond to questions.

While the DTSC did not respond to questions about its data or how it may correspond to the Marine Lab’s findings, Aiello said the contradiction may be explained by method.

“The heavy metals came obviously as an airborne particulate. They fell out of the ash plume. And so we know they are a very, very thin layer.”

He said if you sample the top layer, you’re going to find those elevated concentrations—a thousand fold higher than they were before. But if you sample the soil by removing jars full of it, as DTSC did, those concentrations get diluted.

Meanwhile Polkalba, the industrial hygienist, helped oversee a community surface sampling effort in which 124 kits were collected, covering a larger radius than either DTSC or the Moss Landing Marine Lab.

“From a scientific standpoint, I have issues. That is a pitifully low number of samples to collect,” he said of the eight areas DTSC sampled. “We collected 124 samples and when you get those data points, you’re able to average and statistically have confidence in the data.”

The community data and Aiello’s reporting show an “irrefutable” spike in the plume area, he said. “It could be argued that these levels are either harmful or not harmful. That’s not really what we’re doing here. We’re quantifying that there was this increase, above normal background level.”

To get those background levels, kits were sent as far as 40 miles away. “Those areas were a low, low concentration, and as you get closer to the site, particularly within five miles, it increases, which is exactly where you’d anticipate the plume to fall.”

Peter Weiss, a researcher with UC Santa Cruz’s environmental studies department, created weather models to help scientists figure out where the plume was going and track pollutants, which Aiello’s lab used to corroborate their measurements on the ground.

“Is it a little, a lot dangerous? It’s not good, no one is happy about it,” Weiss said of the fallout. “But the more important thing is to prepare ourselves for this thing happening. We have the tools, we have sensors, we have computers.”

He said a rapid response that includes air and soil samples would be expensive but should be baked into budget and response plans.

“You get the sense that they’re trying to sweep it under the rug,” said Beach, the rancher.

He took his stillborn calf to a state veterinary laboratory at UC Davis for a necropsy, which noted extensive rupture and necrosis of the adrenal glands but did not determine a cause of death. A metals screening did not show elevated concentrations of manganese, nickel, or cobalt.

Residents are waiting for toxicologists—either from the government or private sector—to give them a more complete picture of potential long-term risks.

In the meantime, Beach said, “If you want to know about the environment, talk to farmers and ranchers.”

“It was presented as, ‘Hey, this is clean, green, so it must be good,” said Church, who was elected after the project was approved.

The county’s planning commission approved three permits for the site in 2019 and 2020, two for the Vistra Plant and one for PG&E’s facility, Church explained, noting an environmental attorney representing residents along the Elkhorn Slough appealed one of the permits to the Board of Supervisors, but reached an agreement before it went to the board.

“So the Board of Supervisors never voted on this, ever,” he said.

In 2025, the consensus among industry experts is that the design, in which thousands of batteries were warehoused together in a giant facility, is faulty and outdated and would never be permitted today. Mitchell, the Prunedale resident, highlighted this with a parallel: Over hundreds of years and for obvious reasons, humans have learned to not store their ammunition all in the same place.

The problem with lithium batteries is that if they overheat they can trigger a chain reaction called “thermal runaway,” which is exactly what happened at Moss Landing.

Meanwhile, other battery storage fires across the country raised concerns about fire suppression issues, and in 2020, LG Energy, which manufactures Vistra’s batteries, recalled similar battery products. In 2021, GM recalled $2 billion worth of LG batteries for its Volt cars—all related to fire safety issues.

The California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates battery storage facilities, did not respond to questions about existing safety concerns, the enforcement of IFC standards, and other issues.

Church said this false certainty just underscores the point that “nobody really knows.”

He doesn’t believe Vistra was trying to deceive the public or cut corners. “They got a billion dollar investment there and I just think they didn’t know the dangers of what they’re handling.”

But he is also skeptical of claims that those problems have been corrected as the industry evolved over the past five years.

Critics like David Michaels, a public health expert and former head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, have accused companies such as CTEH of using tactics like underreporting risk and manufacturing doubt about scientific evidence to stall public health protections and fend off lawsuits.

In several cases where CTEH has reported no public health hazards after a disaster, subsequent investigations find otherwise.

“CTEH has a history of being hired by companies accused of harming public health and releasing findings defending the corporate interests that employ,” the representatives wrote. “Enlisting CTEH—a company with a long history of questionable practices—is just another indication that BP is more concerned about their own bottom line than the public’s health.”

There has been no similar outrage from California lawmakers after Vistra contracted the company.

Some Democratic lawmakers who supported the project accepted contributions from a Vistra super PAC during the last election cycle, including $10,000 to Rep. Jimmy Panetta, and $5,000 each to state Sen. Laird and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas.

Panetta, Laird, and Rivas have issued statements urging transparency and rapid response, although none have called for temporary moratoriums on utility-scale plants.

“My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are introducing legislation to put these facilities in low socioeconomic, disadvantaged communities, which is completely crazy,” she said, referring to a bill authored by Democratic Assemblyman Corey Jackson, since vetoed by the governor, that would have created a state-mandated Electric Vehicle Economic Opportunity zone in Riverside County.

“They need to be out away from population bases,” Grove said. “All their rush to green technology to approve these projects, and without the same clearances?”

In California, Grove suggests, a dedication to the ethical superiority of lithium batteries seems to have ignored the fact that storing them at scale is dangerous.

“There is nothing [inherently] good or ethical or green about lithium battery storage,” Grove said. “The cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and they use child labor.”

Days after the Moss Landing fire, Democratic Assemblywoman Dawn Addis called on Vistra to end its plans for a similar facility in Morro Bay and for state permitting agencies to reject its application.

“While we urgently need climate solutions, they must be safe for our communities and environment,” Addis said in a statement. “We can never have a disaster like this again.”

That doesn’t sit well with some residents.

“I don’t believe that’s a good idea,” said Mitchell, the Prunedale resident, of the regulatory agency investigating itself.

In order to meet its ambitious goals, the report states, California “must deploy new electricity infrastructure at a scale and speed never before seen”—with solar and wind at three times the historical rate, and battery storage facilities increasing eightfold.

The report mentions Moss Landing in passing, but suggests that in order to quell concerns in local communities, it will use a model ordinance created by a private industry association—that lobbies on behalf of renewable energy companies—to streamline permitting and bypass discretionary review by local authorities.

Already, Church said, counties don’t have a lot of power to approve or shut down state-regulated utilities. “We don’t have control of operations. … The state and the federal government are imposing restrictions and mandates and not giving people an opportunity to decide how they want to live their lives in their neighborhoods.”

But other communities are also pushing back.

Faced with a stream of proposed battery storage projects, Escondido Mayor Dane White last year proposed a moratorium on the developments and updated zoning code to ensure they weren’t placed in heavily populated areas. While the city was working through those changes, a fire broke out at a plant that had been there for nearly a decade.

“What I’ve learned through this process is that Escondido has more [in the works] that are done ‘by right’ through the state. So the City Council doesn’t have an opportunity to give any input at all,” he said.

Meant to streamline local approvals, “by right” developments that comply with existing zoning and building codes can skip discretionary review by local bodies such as planning commissions

“I remember when I brought that resolution to City Council, and a developer of another [project] we didn’t even know about spoke at the meeting and said that he’s doing this by right, and we don’t have a say,” White said.

That project in particular, he said, is in an area surrounded by other businesses and not far from a residential community—exactly where they don’t want it.

The May 2024 fire at a PG&E plant on Otay Mesa in Escondido burned for 17 days, and evacuation orders were lifted after nearly two weeks. It shut down schools for the day and closed businesses and roads.

White recalled a state agency releasing a statement while the fire was still burning acknowledging complaints of a smell in the air, but assuring residents it was not due to the battery fire.

“It was the strangest statement I had ever read. And then it took 10 days or two weeks to get the report on the pollution.”

In this case, the samples were taken after the fire was extinguished, he said.

“We smelled it and we had ash on our cars. And I know they didn’t do any testing over here,” he said of his own neighborhood, which is around three miles from the plant.

The bigger issue is sustainability, White said.

“The massive project they wanted to put in Escondido, it’s going to be one of the biggest in the country and it will power tens of thousands of homes for four hours. So in order to fulfill the county’s needs, you would have to have a hundred of these things,” he said.

“We’re going down an energy path that’s just going to lead to crisis and chaos all the time. It’s totally unreliable and unsustainable,” he said. “I’d rather them drill for oil in my city than put one of these in here.”

Church has also called for a pause, even if that slows California’s goals by a few years.

“I believe there are solutions in technology, but let’s not rush it. Let’s make sure we’re going into this new world of sustainable energy and let’s just do it right.”

He points to the introduction of pesticides, herbicides, and pharmaceuticals.

“There used to be a time when DDT was sprayed everywhere, and they said, ‘Hey this is going to be great.’ And then you find out the environmental impact it has,” Church said.

“When you have a technology this volatile, this critical, and this new in terms of the applications, well, we just might be going too fast and we need to tap the brakes a little bit.”