What is Happening with the Produce after the Moss Landing Battery Plant Fire?
Written by Satya
Hello everyone, I’ve been researching the produce side of things for months.
I’ll put more out shortly but here is a brief overview.
There are five parts to this page
1) Overview of testing groups
2) Overview of who I spoke with and how testing was done
3) Links to testing
4) A list of acronyms for the different departments involved with brief descriptions
5) Questions I still have…
I’ve spent the past nearly 3 months trying to understand the situation and this page is a snapshot of the main points. This is not all of the information, nor all of the conversations, only that which seems pertinent.
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1) Overview of testing groups
Per Testing – Different Group/ County Efforts
The battery plant fire happened in Monterey County, and, the local farming community is in Monterey and Santa Cruz county (and a bit other counties too but in this document I focus on these two).
Monterey and Santa Cruz counties have chosen to work mostly separately doing their own forms of limited (in my opinion) testing for surface, soil, water and Santa Cruz did one very limited test of produce (I’ve attached the link to their excel spreadsheet below). Each county and group has many organizations it’s working with and some cross over. I’ve listed a few of the most important ones for this situation at the bottom of this page with their acronyms to assist understanding.
Next group to test was our own NAML (Never Again Moss Landing) group led by Brian Roeder and team did their extensive surface (not soil, food or water) testing. (https://neveragainmosslanding.org). Their information is now available on the Monterey site listed below.
Then Dr. Aiello and team at SJSC also did testing. His team initially came up with very high numbers of heavy metals hundreds to over a thousand times higher than average and they had previous numbers to base it on as the team that has been testing the Elkhorn Slough area. I unfortunately cannot locate the original document, if you can please send it to me and I’ll put it here. I put a link to his declaration online below in the testing links. I still don’t fully understand why or how his results were discounted by the counties.
Per the farms testing, I offer a bit more before but here is the bottom line, once the counties signed off with their limited testing that all was ok that took the pressure off on testing. I’m not saying no farms are, I am saying they aren’t currently being told to by the county according to what I’ve been told.
I have heard rumblings that individual farms are testing, and, I haven’t seen any results shared.
2) Overview of who I spoke with and how testing was done
FOR MONTEREY COUNTY
I spoke with the Executive Director of the Farm Bureau of Monterey (Norm Groot). I was first told the testing was done and all was fine. When I asked for actual data of farm testing to review, I was told there was no produce in the fields during the time of the fire and to contact Santa Cruz AG commissioner’s office for that information. When I stated that there were items growing in Monterey County at that the time of the fire in January and the flareup in February, I was told they had additional samples in the lab and he wasn’t sure if/how information would be shared. This was now several weeks ago so I’m assuming they aren’t being shared. There was limited somewhat (in my opinion) randomized testing done and not for thorough panels of metals. See links below.
FOR SANTA CRUZ COUNTY
I spoke with the Agricultural Commissioner of Santa Cruz County (David Sanford). I was told rather than doing their own testing they were instructed to obtain specific samples and send them to the Monterey Bay Analytical Services lab (see below) for testing. His team had no experience prior to this with working with heavy metals or testing for them. Also, he said he wasn’t provided prior testing information for the areas his team collected samples for. Because of this, he couldn’t give me information on what the results of the testing actually meant, he was relying on other departments – specifically the Environmental Health Investigations Branch (EHIB) department of the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) – for that information. I’ve provided a link to their letter below as well as all of the testing information.
FARMS
In late January I started by calling farms. I called several and got no response and then I called Lakeside Organics after reaching out to them on FB.
LAKESIDE ORGANICS – Lakeside sells at New Leaf and Staff of Life in Santa Cruz among other places. At that time in late January, I was informed that Lakeside Organics farm produce was from Southern California other than chard that was about 6 miles from the site. (You may have seen my post about this.). They told me at that time that they would switch to the produce in this area at the end of March and early April. I was instructed to call back in early March and get more information because by then they should have tested the soil and have the data I was looking for. I was very encouraged by this conversation.
The first week of March I called back and was told they didn’t have the data yet but they should by the end of the week and they would call me back. That week I also spoke with the Executive Director of the Farm Bureau of Monterey and the AG at Santa Cruz. By the end of the week, I had heard nothing back and so I left another message. The following Monday I received a message telling me they would no longer be speaking with me and from now on I was encouraged to contact the Santa Cruz AG for further questions. He said they were ‘deferring to the Santa Cruz AG’ who told them all was fine so they were moving forward with selling as usual.
During this time, I was also reaching out to local smaller farms and talking to farms at Santa Cruz farmers markets on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. What I’ve been told consistently is that the smaller farms haven’t been asked to test by any authority and if they are testing, they’re doing it on their own dollar
I’ve been informed of other soil testing (I was told this by Monterey Farm Bureau a few weeks ago and confirmed by a second source) that is being or has been done though I’m not sure of plans to share it nor of what exactly the testing was for.
Santa Cruz AG told me right now they aren’t doing more testing for Santa Cruz county as CDHP signed off on it, that was a couple of weeks ago. I was told by Lakeside Organics they are deferring to the Santa Cruz AG so I’m assuming other Santa Cruz farms may be as well.
***I’ve had many other conversations but none of them amounted to more information that was useful so I’m not including them here.
OTHER ORGANIZATIONS
(Explanations of acronyms are below.)
I then called CCOF after calling CDFA and being told everything was fine according to their people but not being given any data. I learned that the CCOF is not requiring any testing of their organic farms right now and instead deferring to CDFA who is deferring to DTSC’s decisions.
I’ve also called CDHP, CDFA’s inspections services and several other departments and farms and haven’t heard back. It just seems to me no one wants to discuss this now that CDHP has signed off.
3) Links to testing
(these links keep going invalid, please let me know if any of them do)
From Monterey County
I spoke with the Executive Director of the Farm Bureau of Monterey. Our last conversation he mentioned soil tests being in the lab but I haven’t seen any new testing data posted as of yet. CCOF confirmed that the CEHP was working with DTSC on soil sampling but I don’t know if that is current or what that means because no one is being forthright with clarity.
This is the main site for information, the testing page (second link) has the testing from NAML(Never Again Moss Landing with our own Brian Roeder) too now:
https://www.readymontereycounty.org/emergency/2025-moss-landing-vistra-power-plant-fire
This is the testing page they have added all of the Monterey testing:
https://www.readymontereycounty.org/emergency/2025-moss-landing-vistra-power-plant-fire/testing
Additional testing information for Monterey
***Note DTSC is stating that all is fine in Monterey County. https://www.readymontereycounty.org/home/showpublisheddocument/138609/638751429616230000
From Santa Cruz County
I spoke with the Santa Cruz AG, Santa Cruz County AG office was not the testing body. They keep being misrepresented. They were told to sample soil in certain ways and certain areas and send the samples to MBAS (Monterey Bay Analytical Services lab). They didn’t do the assessments themselves. Then CDHP concluded all was fine.
This is the only testing I’ve seen on the actual produce that was in the fields. I do have the backup documents for this but I’m having a hard time posting them.
It was done in Santa Cruz County. Here is the spreadsheet with the data – this will pop open a server download of the xls spreadsheet. This is not to a web-page as this is housed on their server just FYI.
This is the CDPH letter about Santa Cruz County Testing that states ‘everything is fine’:
This is a map of the sites testing that is for some odd reason on the monterey site but not the santa cruz site:
https://www.readymontereycounty.org/home/showpublisheddocument/139591/638798083001270000
This is the document from Dr. Aiello:
https://www.countyofmonterey.gov/home/showdocument?id=138175
4) A list of acronyms for the different departments involved with brief descriptions
CalEPA is the California Environmental Protection Agency. CalEPA is a state agency that oversees environmental programs and policies in California.
CDFA is the California Department of Food and Agriculture – they are under the advisement of the CalEPA
DTSC is the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, this is part of the CDFA and the department dealing with the testing for Monterey.
CCOF is the California Certified Organic Farmers Organizations – they are not doing any testing; they are deferring to the advice of the DTSC that all is well. They also told me more testing is being done and they don’t know if it will be shared but if it shows anything they will be communicated with and deal with it as advised.
CDPH is the California Department of Public Health – Santa Cruz has a letter from them confirming their testing.
CTEH is the third-party contractor hired by Vistra to conduct environmental monitoring.
5) Questions I still have…
Note, I have more questions, these are the top ones. Love to know if the community has others.
1 – Why is the only actual produce testing so minimal, only in Santa Cruz, and not repeated when we know heavy metals are taken up more by certain vegetables, especially leafy greens, and testing OVER TIME could give us more indication of actual toxicity than just testing soil which varies by location, impact of rain, etc.
2 – Why aren’t we doing more overall heavy metals testing for the soil testing? While I understand that cobalt, nickel, manganese and lithium are dominant in these fires, other metals were present too and the testing was not demonstrative of a wider perspective on this for soil. The only testing I see that did a full heavy metals overview was the Santa Cruz produce testing.
3 – Can we get a full overview including all of the data that clearly shows that the actual food supply is safe with agricultural specialists and lab specialists confirming this showing what levels we are going off of that are safe, discussing which vegetables may have higher levels for a while while they clear the soil, etc. and an overview of what the farms are doing to ensure safety instead of an ‘everything is fine, trust us’ approach?