The Suffolk County Water Authority has hauled LG Chem, LG Energy Solution and the East Hampton Energy Storage Center into federal court, claiming a 2023 battery fire and the massive wave of water used to fight it tainted local groundwater and knocked public wells offline across the South Fork. The complaint says firefighting runoff from the site seeped into nearby drinking sources and forced the authority to curtail or shut down wells, and it seeks compensation for cleanup, treatment and replacement costs, along with punitive and other damages from a jury.
Filed on May 29, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, the lawsuit names East Hampton Energy Storage Center LLC, LG Chem Ltd. and LG Energy Solution Ltd. as defendants and demands a jury trial and punitive damages, according to Justia.
What the Complaint Says About the Fire
The case traces everything back to a May 31, 2023 thermal-runaway event at the East Hampton battery facility. According to the complaint, emergency sprinklers and extended suppression efforts unleashed large volumes of water that flowed off the property and into nearby soil and drainage areas. State site summaries and post-incident sampling identify the facility footprint at 3 Cove Hollow Road and document runoff pathways and soil sampling in the days that followed. Those state materials, cited in the lawsuit, are offered as evidence that suppression water carried battery-related contaminants toward local groundwater. NYS Data Collection Report
Local Water Hit
In its filing, the Suffolk County Water Authority alleges that more than 2.2 million gallons of firefighting and sprinkler water escaped the site and contaminated groundwater, and that testing detected PFPrA, described in the complaint as an ultra-short-chain perfluoroalkyl substance, in nearby drinking sources. The suit further claims that two Bridgehampton wells exceeded a New York threshold cited in the filing as 50 and had to be taken out of service, a move the authority says chopped roughly 7 percent off its available supply. Suffolk County Water Authority says it provides water service to about 1.2 million residents across the county. Suffolk County Water Authority
Legal Claims
The complaint lays out several causes of action, including negligence, public nuisance, trespass and strict product liability tied to alleged design and manufacturing defects. All of those claims are linked to the May 2023 thermal-runaway incident and the runoff that followed. The filing accuses certain lithium-ion cell arrays of structural vulnerabilities that encouraged abnormal lithium deposition or dendritic growth, which in turn allegedly led to internal short circuits and triggered the thermal event the authority blames for the contamination. The complaint is now part of the federal court record. Justia
Why This Matters Beyond the Hamptons
The lawsuit lands at a tense moment for utility-scale battery storage projects, as a series of battery energy storage system fires in New York and beyond has sharpened questions about how to handle suppression runoff and emerging PFAS-related risks. In response, some local officials have moved to tighten siting and safety rules for battery facilities. 27East
At the same time, state lawmakers have been publicly flagging safety and contamination concerns linked to these incidents, signaling that the policy debate around large-scale batteries is not fading anytime soon. New York State Senate
What’s Next for Customers and the Case
The case is newly filed and will now work its way through the federal docket. The complaint estimates that millions of dollars will be required to operate treatment systems, secure alternative supplies and continue monitoring. If the claims clear the initial rounds of motions, discovery could force the companies to turn over design, testing and incident response records. Suffolk officials and the filing frame the suit as both a bid for damages and an attempt to secure resources to restore and protect safe service. Company statements were not immediately available when the case was filed. BusinessKorea
