Oakham Board of Health Votes to Draft Search Warrant for BESS Site Soil Testing

OAKHAM — June 17, 2026 — Oakham's Board of Health voted unanimously to authorize a member to draft an administrative search warrant seeking soil-testing access to the proposed Moraga Storage battery energy storage system site, saving an estimated $5,000 in outside counsel fees. The June 17 meeting featured back-to-back presentations from Michael Hugo, director of strategy and government relations for the Massachusetts Association of Health Boards, who arrived with a slide deck prepared the same afternoon after learning the Energy Facilities Siting Board had issued a tentative siting approval for the facility. Hugo told the board it retains "continuing health jurisdiction over actual impacts, not zoning authority over siting," and urged it to begin logging resident complaints immediately, seek to be named a recipient of all EFSB-mandated testing, and coordinate with the fire and police chiefs on emergency notification planning. Board member Lucy De Leo, a licensed attorney, will draft the warrant application — which targets the site's unmediated salvage-yard contamination — and transmit it to KP Law for review. The board also voted unanimously to appoint Barbara Pucci as its primary representative to the Leicester Regional Public Health Coalition advisory board, with Liz Weeks as alternate, and to appoint Richard Green, Chris Wilson, and coalition health director Michelle Kaisapanta as LRPHC agents for the town.