BYE BYE BATTERIES
Thank you for the good report about the ownership change of the Seahawk BESS Project proposed for 90 Minto Road. It is shocking that the batteries the former owner had planned to install did not meet federal regulations. The California Energy Commission was willing to allow the test results to be kept secret.
We should not be comforted by Invenergy’s statement that the Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) batteries, filling nearly 300 metal storage containers, are safe. As Ms. Audino pointed out, the technology is dangerous. The suppression and monitoring systems are also vulnerable to failure. That is why there have been many LFP BESS fires in these “safer” containers, such as Warwick, NY: youtube.com/watch?v=RJ5JWFebW5w.
There are nonflammable batteries made domestically by Alsym and Invinity that have been implemented in other projects. Why should we settle for anything less safe?
Although Invenergy recognizes the draft Santa Cruz County BESS Ordinance, the company seems oblivious to the fact that county voters and Measure J have mandated that agricultural land be preserved. The Seahawk BESS Project is an industrial land use and should not be displacing ag land. Furthermore, it does not belong in a densely populated working-class neighborhood close to College Lake and the county’s emergency evacuation center at the Fairgrounds.
There are better alternative sites.
Becky Steinbruner | Aptos
NOT HAPPY WITH REVIEW
I do commend you for breaking the Good Times’ ban on critical reviews. In the past, it was hard to know why I was reading a review, knowing about the injunction against negativity. But this isn’t just a critical review—this is a weirdly ugly attack on the composer herself. Given that the composer is a member of a group being targeted by the federal government at the moment, the Tin Ear Award belongs to the Good Times, Christina Waters and you for not considering how this review would sound. Many of us, friends and colleagues and parents and siblings of trans people, are living in fear and horror at what’s being done to people we love.
I was at the performance, and as with all of the Cabrillo Festival’s Creative Lab works, the piece was definitely provocative. In her comments at the festival, Hennies talked about trying to break through her own preconceived notions of what music is. In no way did she come across as self-absorbed, as Waters accuses her: “A self-absorbed poseur trying to find herself at public expense.” Where did Waters get that idea, except from the vile stew of her own bias? Furthermore, there was no mention of Hennies’s gender at the festival, and several people I talked to didn’t even notice it. So Waters’s “In the name of radical inclusion” is simply a statement of her own discomfort with a trans composer being treated equitably as a colleague and an artist by the festival.
A reviewer doesn’t have to love every piece, but basic respect for the composer is mandatory, especially in a community—yes, I loved the emphasis on community!—like ours. I was charmed and provoked by Sarah and her piece, but of course it didn’t appeal to everyone, nor would I expect it to. But I would expect that the Good Times, in publishing a review that criticizes the work, would be more careful about publishing a review that reveals the author’s unvarnished disgust for the person who created it.
Yes, please publish critical reviews when warranted. But this review isn’t critical of the music; it’s a reveal of the writer’s poor character. You would have done her a favor by killing it.
Suki Wessling | Aptos
