Save Uriarra Valley — Stop the BESS Battery

The Threat

Five Ways This Development Changes the Valley Forever

The proposal is framed as clean, green infrastructure. The reality for those who live here — and for the heritage values the valley is protected for — is very different. Learn about the Flat Rock proposal

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Constant Industrial Noise

A 520MW BESS runs its cooling and power systems around the clock. The valley's defining silence — the reason people and wildlife treasure it — never comes back.

Rural ambient noise is around 25–30 dB at night. Industrial HVAC can far exceed this, carrying for kilometres across open country.

Example of BESS Noise Pollution

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Light Pollution

Security lighting, perimeter floodlights and switching stations would wash out the night sky over a valley that currently enjoys true darkness.

The valley's dark skies are part of its rural character — and a resource for the stargazers and nocturnal wildlife that depend on them.

Example of Light Pollution

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Visual & Heritage Destruction

Shipping-container-scale batteries, substations and transmission hardware stacked across paddocks that have been grazed since the 1830s.

Once the rural landscape character is lost, it is lost for good. There is no un-building an industrial estate.

Example of Visual Impact

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Fire & Contamination Risk

Lithium batteries in a designated bushfire-prone area. If one fails, toxic smoke and contaminated runoff threaten the Murrumbidgee catchment.

BESS fires burn ferociously, can reignite for days, and release hydrogen fluoride and heavy metals into air, soil and water.

Example of Fire & Contamination

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36 Months of Construction

Three years of trucks, cranes, dust and detours on Uriarra Road — disrupting cycling, riding, swimming, fishing and camping across the valley.

Uriarra Road is the only route in — every truck serving the site shares it with cyclists, riders, river-goers and campers.

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Noise Pollution — The End of Rural Quiet

Uriarra Valley's soundscape today is wind in the gums, birdsong and distant stock. A BESS facility of this scale brings something entirely different: hundreds of industrial cooling fans, transformers and inverters running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Cooling systems for 520MW of batteries do not switch off at night — the hum is permanent.
Low-frequency noise travels much further than ordinary sound across open valleys, and penetrates walls.
Chronic night-time noise exposure is linked to disrupted sleep, elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular harm.
Residents moved here for the quiet. Their homes' values and their health both depend on it.

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Light Pollution — Losing the Dark Sky

Industrial facilities demand industrial lighting: perimeter floodlights, security lighting on masts, switching-station lighting, all night, every night. The valley currently sits under some of the darkest skies in the ACT region.

Skyglow from floodlighting would be visible across the valley and from the Brindabellas.
Nocturnal wildlife — owls, bats, native marsupials — navigate and hunt by darkness; artificial light disrupts feeding and breeding.
Light spill is effectively irreversible while the facility operates: there is no curtain for the sky.
The loss erases a rural amenity that cannot be offset or "mitigated" once installed.

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Visual & Heritage Impact — Industrialising a Heritage Landscape

The Uriarra Valley is a working rural landscape with continuity back to the 1830s — stone homesteads, grazing paddocks, tree-lined roads. The BESS would insert an industrial scale and character that is fundamentally incompatible with those values.

Containers, switchgear, substations and hardstand would dominate views from heritage homesteads and public roads.
The development sets a precedent: approving one industrial facility in a rural valley opens the door to the next, and the next.
Heritage landscape values — openness, scale, rural character — are exactly what an industrial battery estate destroys.
Tourism and the valley's identity as a rural escape depend on the view staying rural.

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Fire & Environmental Contamination — A Bushfire Zone Is No Place for a Gigafactory-Scale Battery

The site sits in a high bushfire-risk area — the valley was at the epicentre of the 2003 Canberra firestorm. Lithium-ion battery installations add a new and unforgiving hazard to that landscape.

Thermal runaway events burn at extreme temperatures, cannot be extinguished with water in the conventional sense, and can reignite days later.
Combustion releases toxic gases including hydrogen fluoride, plus heavy metals and contaminated runoff.
The site drains toward the Murrumbidgee catchment — contamination events threaten river ecology and downstream water quality.
Firefighting a BESS in a bushfire zone demands resources and evacuation planning the valley has never had to contemplate.

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36 Months of Construction — The Developer Changes the Valley Forever

Before a single battery stores a single watt, the valley faces three full years of heavy construction: hundreds of trucks a day on Uriarra Road, cranes, graders, dust and noise — right through the heart of a quiet rural community and the recreation country that surrounds it.

Uriarra Road is the single access route for cyclists on the Brindabella loop, motorbike riders, river-goers heading to Uriarra Crossing and campers bound for Brindabella National Park — all sharing narrow country lanes with B-doubles and construction traffic.
36 months of truck movements, road wear, dust and detours would disrupt the cycling, riding and touring the valley is famous for.
Access to swimming, fishing and picnicking at Uriarra East, Uriarra West and Swamp Creek would be affected during works.
Campgrounds and trailheads deeper in the valley and Brindabella National Park sit at the end of the same road corridor.
And when construction ends, the industrial facility stays — the valley's quiet rural character is not coming back.

The Track Record

Battery Disasters Around the World

The battery industry says "it won't happen here." It has happened everywhere else — from Korea to Germany to Arizona to Australia. This is the global track record the developer doesn't put in its brochures.

2017–19

South Korea · 23+ fires

The Korean ESS Fire Wave

A national cluster of more than two dozen battery-storage fires forced the government to suspend much of its ESS fleet. Investigators blamed a system-wide failure: faulty surge protection, dust and humidity in cheap enclosures, and batteries pushed hard without safety margins.

Apr 2019

Arizona, USA · 8 injured

McMicken Battery Explosion

A single failed cell at an Arizona Public Service facility went into thermal runaway. Hours later, flammable off-gas built up inside the sealed container — and exploded when firefighters opened the door, injuring eight, several critically.

Apr 2021

Beijing, China · 2 dead

Dahongmen Battery Explosion

A solar-storage battery station in southern Beijing exploded during charging, killing two firefighters and hospitalising a third. The blast tore through a rooftop installation in a dense urban area.

Jul 2021

Geelong, Australia

Victorian Big Battery Fire

Australia's own 300MW "Big Battery" at Geelong caught fire during commissioning — before it had even delivered a watt to the grid. A Tesla Megapack was consumed and the fire spread to a neighbouring unit, burning for days.

Sep 2021

California, USA

Moss Landing — First Fire

Overheating at the world's most powerful grid battery damaged racks and melted wiring in the repurposed turbine hall. An early warning of what the same building would do three years later.

Apr 2022

Chandler, Arizona

AES Dorman Battery Fire

A short circuit in the power conversion system — not the cells themselves — started a battery fire in a US state-of-the-art facility. Even "balance of plant" equipment can be the ignition source.

Sep 2022

Monterey County, California

PG&E Elkhorn Battery Fire

A Tesla Megapack at PG&E's Elkhorn battery plant next door to Moss Landing caught fire, sending smoke over a coastal community and highways. The same site was ordered to stay offline until 2027 after the 2025 disaster next door.

May 2023

East Hampton, New York

East Hampton BESS Fire

A battery storage facility on Long Island burned in a residential-adjacent area, triggering a multi-day emergency response and renewed calls for setbacks from homes.

May 2024

Neermoor, Germany

Neermoor BESS Explosion

A home battery storage system in northern Germany exploded with the force reported as heard kilometres away, destroying the building it sat in. Germany has since accelerated international standards for first-responder safety.

May 2024

Otay Mesa, California

Gateway Energy Storage Fire

One of the world's largest standalone battery plants caught fire, burning batteries for days and requiring extended multi-agency response just to keep it contained.

Jun 2024

Hwaseong, South Korea · 20+ dead

Lithium Battery Factory Fire

A lithium battery manufacturing plant in Hwaseong exploded and burned, killing more than 20 workers — most of them trapped by the speed of the fire. A brutal demonstration of how fast lithium fires move.

Jan 2025

Moss Landing, California · 1,200 evacuated

Moss Landing — The Big One

The defining BESS disaster. A fire tore through the 300MW Vistra facility holding ~100,000 lithium-ion modules, burned roughly 80% of the affected capacity, and forced the evacuation of 1,200 residents. Toxic smoke drifted for days; the sprinkler system failed so badly it had to be switched off mid-fire. EPA-led cleanup is still ongoing.

Sep 2026

Moss Landing, California · Again

Moss Landing Burns Again

Twenty months after the big fire, roughly 1,200 still-charged battery modules waiting for demolition ignited on their own, triggering another shelter-in-place order for the same community. Damaged lithium batteries keep burning — even after the "fire is out."

What a 520MW Industrial Battery Complex Really Means for Our Valley