By Staff Reporter
GRAND ISLAND — For most of the past year, the battery storage debate on Grand Island was about a law. Now it is about land, including land the town itself owns.
The Grand Island Town Board is weighing a land option and lease agreement that would let CleanCapital, a renewable energy company, develop a battery energy storage system on a portion of town-owned property at 1600 Whitehaven Road. Meanwhile, the town has opened its first formal review of a private battery project on Bedell Road.
Both follow the board’s Aug. 3 adoption of the town’s first stand-alone battery storage law. But residents who want to know what the town would be paid for its land, or how big the system would be, will have a hard time finding out. The lease has not appeared in the public agenda packets.
From a letter of intent to a tabled lease
The town’s talks with CleanCapital go back to June, when Councilman Daniel Kilmer was assigned to meet with the company, minutes show. On June 15, Tim Schumer of Clean Capital and Michael Heffley of NOCO Energy gave the board a “BESS Development Presentation,” the workshop minutes show.
That night, the board voted 5-0 to authorize the town’s battery storage attorney to finalize a letter of intent “for an option and lease agreement” with CleanCapital and to prepare environmental review documents for “a potential battery energy storage system on Town property,” according to the regular meeting minutes. On June 25, Supervisor Peter Marston told the board he had signed the paperwork, minutes show.
Town records name the company’s entity two ways: “CC International Development LLC” in June and “CC Internal Development LLC” in October.
On Oct. 5, after reviewing a “Lease Proposal of Town Land for Bess Systems” at its workshop, the board voted 4-0 to table the lease, with Mr. Kilmer absent, according to draft minutes included in the Oct. 19 agenda packet. The minutes do not say why.
The lease was back on the Oct. 19 agenda, listed as “CleanCapital Storage Lease – Portion of 1600 Whitehaven Road” and as an authorization for the supervisor to sign the land option and lease. The packet posted online does not include the lease, the rent, the acreage or the system’s capacity. Minutes of Monday’s meeting had not been posted by early Wednesday, so it is not yet clear whether the board approved the deal.
A town greenhouse gas inventory lists a water tank used for drinking water treatment and distribution at 1600 Whitehaven Road.
The law that set the rules
The town’s battery law, Local Law 3 of 2026, passed 5-0 on Aug. 3 after nearly 10 months of drafts and two public hearings, according to the Aug. 3 minutes. It splits systems into two tiers. Small systems of 600 kilowatt-hours or less are allowed in every zoning district with a building permit. Larger Tier 2 systems need a special use permit from the Town Board and are limited to five zoning districts, including business and industrial zones.
The setback fight shaped the final text. At a May hearing, Lauren Hall of Carson Power, which has a leasehold interest at 2408 Bedell Road, urged “reducing the side and rear yard setbacks from 150 feet to 100 feet,” Niagara Frontier Publications reported. “A 100-foot setback remains substantial, especially in this town’s industrial districts, where the standard setback is 25 feet,” she said.
The adopted law sets side and rear setbacks at 100 feet, and 200 feet from residential land, schools and parks not part of the project.
Critics won something too. Engineer and Island resident Jim Daigler had pressed for the national fire standard for battery installations, NFPA 855, to be written into the law. “I’ve had this long-running concern that the contractors that we hire in the town to protect the town don’t protect the town,” he said at the May hearing, according to NFP. The final law refers to NFPA 855 throughout. It also lets the board require bigger setbacks if a project’s hazard mitigation analysis shows they are needed.
The debate was sharp on the board, too. In February, Mr. Kilmer criticized an early draft. “So, basically the draft law we got from our attorney is garbage,” he said, according to NFP. Councilman Thomas Digati answered that the process was working. “I think we all agree that there are big holes that we need to fill,” Mr. Digati said.
Twelve Megapacks on Bedell Road
Carson Power’s project is the first test of the law. On Oct. 5, the board began review of an application from Bedell BESS A LLC and Bedell BESS B LLC for “twelve proposed Tesla Megapack 2XL battery containers” on a roughly 4.93-acre parcel at 2408 Bedell Road, next to the Thruway, according to the draft minutes. The board classified it as a Type I action, the state’s category for projects considered more likely to have significant environmental effects, and sent the application to Erie County planners and the town Planning Board.
The resolution noted that the developer had listed some “fire-safety, emergency-contact, manufacturer and construction-level materials as pending or proposed for later submission.” It said the referral “neither waives those requirements nor approves their deferral.”
A second developer, SolSource, is also circling. In September, the Conservation Advisory Board reviewed early presentations from it and Carson Power and pressed for wetlands permits, fire access roads and a noise study, Citizen Portal reported.
The town is also setting permit fees. “I would like to ask the board to consider setting a permit fee of $500 for a BESS tier 1 system and a fee of $1000 for a tier 2 system,” Code Enforcement Officer Ron Milks wrote in an Oct. 15 memo.
Questions for the town
A lease on public land deserves a public look: what CleanCapital would pay, for how long, who removes the equipment at the end, and how local firefighters would be prepared if something goes wrong.
The Buffalo Chronicle has asked Mr. Marston and the Town Board for the lease terms and for the outcome of the Oct. 19 vote. Residents can send comments to publiccomments@grand-island.ny.us.
Photo: A battery energy storage system at the Desert Sunlight solar farm in Riverside County, Calif., shown for illustration. U.S. Bureau of Land Management, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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