[By Holly Cowan, Director of Communications, Snoqualmie Valley for Responsible Energy. Views expressed are those of the author, not the Living Snoqualmie website. You may submit letters to info@livingsnoqualmie.com.]
Questions swirl on the Cascadia Ridge BESS Project…and we’ve got answers!
Oh hi! Hey! How are you? Some of you may already know us, but please allow us to reintroduce ourselves. We are Snoqualmie Valley for Responsible Energy. We’ve been out knocking on doors, meeting many of you, and sharing our perspective that a massive, industrial-scale battery facility (a.k.a. a BESS) does not belong smack in the middle of our residential community.
Unsurprisingly, this proposed project has garnered a ton of interest and discussion, in real life as well as online. We’re seeing so many questions, and we’ve got so many answers. Without further ado…
Wait—what are we even talking about?
Jupiter Power, a Texas-based energy company and our developer of the week, wants to clear 45 acres of forest and beloved neighborhood trails to build an industrial-scale battery energy storage facility in the heart of the Snoqualmie Valley. We’re talking more than 30 football fields of lithium-ion batteries, storing over 100 megawatts of electricity—equivalent to more than 7,000 Teslas—right next to homes, schools, businesses, forests, and wetlands.
Lithium-ion batteries? The ones in Electric Vehicles? Don’t those things catch on fire?
Um. Yes.
Oh, come on. Aren’t we being a little dramatic about the risks?
We wish. At their “Community Event,” a Jupiter Power rep said that when it comes to fires at their facilities, “It’s a question of when, not if.” What a… sales pitch?
Lithium-ion battery fires are not like house fires. They can’t be easily extinguished. Firefighters are advised not to get within 150 feet of a lithium-ion fire and to let them burn themselves out rather than attempting to fight the fire directly. These fires can reignite days or even weeks later. And when they do burn, they release a toxic cocktail of gases and chemicals, including hydrogen fluoride, carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, and heavy metals.
In January 2025, a battery storage facility in Moss Landing, California, caught fire and burned for three days. About 1,500 residents were evacuated from the eight square miles surrounding the facility. Schools closed. Highway 1 was shut down. Then the fire reignited a full month later.
Battery removal and cleanup by the EPA didn’t begin until September 2025, eight months after the fire. As of early 2026, cleanup is still ongoing, roughly 1,000 residents have filed a lawsuit against the facility’s operators, and testing at nearby Elkhorn Slough found toxic metal concentrations more than 100 times above normal background levels. We’re not dramatic… but that story is. And we don’t want a repeat here or anywhere.
Okay but isn’t this green energy? Shouldn’t we support that?
We do support green energy, and battery storage can play a real role in the energy transition. What we’re saying is that location matters. A lot.
Putting an industrial facility next to a residential neighborhood isn’t made virtuous by what’s inside it. The right answer for green energy isn’t “anywhere, as fast as possible”—it’s “in the right place, done responsibly.”
Supporting green energy and opposing this specific site are not in conflict. We do both, simultaneously—and you can, too.
Aren’t these popping up in neighborhoods all over the US?
Actually, there’s currently zero precedent for a BESS of this scale, this close to a dense residential population, on complex terrain like ours, anywhere else in the US. And there’s a good reason for that. These facilities pose significant risk to people and the environment.
In a PSE-commissioned BESS location study, sites were expected to pass a “Good Neighbor” test that called out heavy residential presence, schools, hospitals, and similar nearby uses as signs that a site was not right for energy storage. It’s bizarre that this site is even in the mix.
Oh no! Are we… NIMBYs?!
Ok, come on now. Do we need to say it louder for the people in the back? NOT. IN. ANYONE’S BACKYARD.
We’re actively partnering with other King County cities on this issue. We need to make sure that legislation governing BESS facilities contains protections for all of our communities that are clear to developers. We don’t think it’s fair to ask any residential community to take on this level of risk.
Won’t this help with our power outages?
This one has been making the rounds. (We’ve even heard claims that the BESS will help with our “brownouts.” Ah, yes, the famed Snoqualmie brownouts! Hm…never heard of those? Neither have we.)
A grid-scale battery storage facility is not a community backup generator. It stores energy which is sold back to PSE, to be used by their 1.1 million customers across the regional grid. There is no requirement, and no mechanism, to ensure that a single kilowatt of that stored energy ever flows directly to a Snoqualmie, North Bend, or Fall City home.
Our power outages happen during the Valley’s notorious windstorms. When a tree takes a power line down, power’s not getting to your house until the line’s repaired. A BESS doesn’t magically solve that problem.
What about the jobs and economic benefits?
There’ll be some jobs during construction, sure. Once the facility is built, though, it will only be monitored remotely. Yep, you heard that right. Nobody will work there in person! There will be zero long-term local jobs generated.
Meanwhile, property values near industrial facilities like this one tend to decline. Insurance costs in affected areas can rise. And if something goes wrong—a fire, an evacuation, toxins leaching into our watershed—the economic consequences for local businesses, tourism, and the broader community would be severe and lasting.
I never wanted the Ridge built. This is their problem! Joke’s on them!
Well, listen. Whether you live on the Ridge, love the Ridge, or love to hate the Ridge is kind of immaterial here. In the event of even a moderate fire, Snoqualmie (including downtown), North Bend, and Fall City are all in the impact zone. And that is why we are all in this together.
Are we a community divided? Are we sowing division? Are we…in a fight?!
We’ve certainly heard that concern expressed by the Mayor, but the big cheese seems to stand alone on this one. We’re a group of residents ranging from long-timers to newbies, and none of us has ever seen the community this united. We have knocked on over 4,000 doors, spoken with over 1,000 residents, gotten thousands of signatures on an anti-BESS petition—and opposition to the BESS is nearly unanimous. It’s actually really heartwarming to see everyone, from all walks of life, joining hands and joining forces to ensure our beautiful community is protected. Keep the good vibes coming!
What do we want?
We want a more appropriate site for a BESS—one that keeps the high risks of a facility like this one away from our children, our homes, and our delicate ecosystem.
We want King County Councilmember Sarah Perry to bolster her BESS siting ordinance so that our communities have real protection from developers who want to build BESS—not just on paper, but in practice.
We want Mayor Mayhew and the Snoqualmie City Council to use every tool available to them—including their control over the land and rights-of-way this project needs to connect to the grid—to send a clear message that this site is wholly inappropriate for a project like this one.
And we want PSE to adhere to their own guidelines and put community safety first.
So what do we do?
Join us on Sunday, April 26th, as we MARCH TO THE PARK. We’ll meet at 1 pm at Cascade View Elementary School and march together to Fisher Creek Park, steps away from the proposed BESS site. Let’s show Puget Sound Energy, the King County Council, and Snoqualmie City Government what a community united really looks like.
Snoqualmie Valley for Responsible Energy (SVRE) is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit civic advocacy organization representing residents of the Snoqualmie Valley. Learn more and get involved at snovalleyenergy.org.
