A Greene County town with no battery proposal of its own enacted a moratorium covering all battery storage, regardless of size, while a larger project advanced in neighboring Catskill.
Town of Athens · Greene County · Energy storage · Status: never-proposed (precautionary moratorium)
Athens has no battery application of its own. On March 4, 2024 the Town Board adopted Local Law 1 of 2024, a six-month moratorium on battery storage that it directs be "broadly construed" to cover any BESS — with no size threshold, excluding only batteries in consumer products and combustion-engine vehicles. The stated aim was to "maintain the status quo" because the town's zoning did not adequately address this use. (Local Law 1 of 2024)
This all-sizes scope is broader than the large-scale-only pauses in towns like Chester, and matches the statewide tracker's ALL-BESS flag for Athens.
maintain the status quo
Athens is a precautionary, preemptive moratorium — adopted while a much larger BESS was advancing one town over, in Catskill, rather than in Athens itself. The case documents the breadth of New York's local-restriction wave: even towns with no project on the table moved to bar storage outright while they studied it. The open questions are about durability (was the six-month pause renewed or made permanent?) and the precise tie to the neighboring Catskill proposal — both flagged for verification rather than asserted here.