Moss Landing Battery Fire

In January 2025, a major fire engulfed one of the world’s largest lithium-ion battery energy storage facilities in Moss Landing. We have been documenting the aftermath of this event in Elkhorn Slough, a large coastal estuary directly adjacent to the facility, to investigate the transport and cycling of battery-associated metals following the fire.

Since February 2025, the Chemical Oceanography Lab has been investigating the aftermath of the fire through repeated analyses of dissolved and particulate metals in the water column, studies of the sediment geochemical response, and laboratory incubations of burned battery residues. Together, these approaches are used to examine the transport, fate, and cycling of battery-associated metals within Elkhorn Slough and their potential export to Monterey Bay.

This work is conducted in collaboration with the EMBER (Environmental Monitoring for Battery Energy-storage Response) research group, an interdisciplinary effort that has assembled one of the most comprehensive environmental studies of a large-scale lithium-ion battery facility fire. Our goal is both to document the environmental aftermath of the Moss Landing fire and to provide information that can help guide monitoring and response efforts following similar events in the future. The study also provides a unique opportunity to examine trace metal dynamics in Elkhorn Slough, where limited freshwater input, strong tidal exchange, and sediment resuspension create a setting very different from well-studied river-dominated estuaries.