Last week, we thanked La Plata County commissioners for deciding to let the seven-month moratorium on utility-scale battery energy storage systems expire. (Herald, Jan. 23). That gratitude still stands. Ending the moratorium matters. It allows projects to move forward and signals that the county recognizes battery storage as part of its energy future.
But as we’ve continued researching, listening, and – yes – doing more homework, it’s also clear we didn’t fully examine the practical impact of the rules that replaced it. This is one of those moments when taking a second look serves readers – and the community – better than declaring the conversation closed.
In our first editorial on this issue (Herald, Dec. 12), we raised a core concern that still applies: battery storage systems are electrical infrastructure, not oil and gas facilities. Property-line setbacks make sense for pressurized, combustible fuels. They are blunt tools for modern electrical equipment, designed to prevent the spread of fire and thermal escalation.
Negotiation experts describe the anchoring effect: the first number put on the table often shapes what follows. Here, the planning process began by aligning battery storage with oil and gas facilities and floating setbacks of up to 400 feet. Batteries are not oil and gas. But once that comparison became the anchor, the debate drifted toward compromise rather than fundamentals.
That path led to a 200-foot property-line setback – smaller than initially proposed, but still not clearly grounded in national fire codes or the evolving science of battery safety. The National Fire Protection Association’s NFPA 855 code, written and updated by fire professionals, requires a project-specific hazard mitigation analysis evaluating battery chemistry, layout, surrounding uses, and emergency response capabilities.
Here’s the key distinction: La Plata County automatically adopts the most current version of NFPA 855 as part of its fire code. In other words, a rigorous, science-based safety analysis is already required. Yet throughout this debate, fixed distance has been treated as synonymous with safety, even though it is the analysis – not the setback – that evaluates real risk and mitigation.
Under the newly adopted land-use rules, fixed property-line setbacks apply first. In practice, those setbacks make all but one of LPEA’s 28 substation sites – where battery storage most logically belongs – ineligible without a variance. The required hazard analysis still occurs, but only within the variance process rather than informing the base code itself.
That approach doesn’t add safety. It adds delay, cost, and uncertainty. For a member-owned electric cooperative, those delays translate directly into higher costs borne by ratepayers. It also runs counter to the county’s stated goal – echoed recently by county leaders – of streamlining and modernizing the land-use code. Routing projects straight into a variance process does the opposite, layering exceptions on top of code and increasing complexity.
Fear of the unknown is real, and it deserves respect. La Plata County is fire-prone, and residents raised serious questions about safety and emergency response. Letting the moratorium expire was the right instinct. The missed opportunity was failing to let the hazard analyses required by national fire codes do the real work, instead of relying on fixed, one-size-fits-all setbacks – analyses designed to allow battery storage to move forward safely, store excess solar power when it is available, deliver electricity when the sun isn’t shining, and reduce reliance on fossil-fuel generation.
The consequences are already playing out. La Plata Electric Association is now forced to pivot and abandon the planning work done for the long-discussed Shenandoah site to now analyze the viability of the Sunnyside site, where the community solar garden is located, and the only site that meets the new setbacks without a variance. If viable, Sunnyside may become both a battery project and an educational site. But this additional detour wasn’t necessary.
Battery storage is more akin to substations than oil and gas wells. Durango residents already live next to substations on Cemetery Road, East Fourth Avenue, East Everett Street, Feather Reed Way, Rim Drive, and Aspen Drive – facilities regulated by performance and professional standards, not blanket distances.
We still thank the commissioners for letting the moratorium expire. That step mattered. But good governance also means revisiting decisions when unintended consequences become clear – especially when safety, cost, and certainty are all at stake.
