Enumclaw's pause on battery storage is set to run two years. The project proposed near town was outside the city, and King County cancelled its file.

King County's permitting office logged a new file on January 29, 2025: PREA25-0024. It described the Nook Energy Center, "a utility-scale containerized battery energy storage system" on two parcels of unincorporated land, to be wired to the Krain Corner substation about 0.15 miles away. The trade calls such a thing a BESS: rows of batteries in boxes the size of shipping containers, which charge from the grid when power is plentiful and hand it back when demand peaks.

Two days later the Enumclaw City Council met in retreat at St. Elizabeth Hospital. Item 9 on a long agenda asked whether to declare a moratorium, a freeze on accepting applications, until the city's code could be reviewed. The minutes record a worry about fire and a result: "Council consensus to do a moratorium until code review can be completed." On February 24 the council passed one, 7 to 0.

The council's minutes, agenda bills and ordinances read for this piece never mention the county file, and nothing found says whether the council knew of it. What the records do show is that the moratorium and the county file never met. The moratorium applies only inside the city. The Nook site lay outside it, under county rules, and King County cancelled the file on July 29, 2025, for non-payment.

The city's pause, extended this February, is set to run to February 24, 2027, two years to the day. As of December 2025, by the Courier-Herald's reporting, nobody had asked the city for a permit of the kind it blocks. The citizens drafting the permanent rules meet next on October 7 and October 21.

The file at the county

A pre-application asks county reviewers for a meeting before any formal permit is sought, and it commits nobody to anything. The developer was Mission Clean Energy, the Courier-Herald reported in December 2025. The county told the paper the two parcels total almost 15 acres and sit on State Route 169, across the street from the Krain Corner restaurant, the subject of this site's Krain Corner piece. The county record gives no megawatts.

The record's log shows a reviewer noting wetlands on the site plan in February 2025, the screening finished in May, and two statements issued on June 2 and July 3, each for $6,355. "They were invoiced for payment of fees and never paid," county spokesman Brent Champaco told the paper. Mission's Ethan Frazier told it the project "has been discontinued." The paper's story puts the filing both in 2025 and in early 2024; the county's record number and intake date say January 2025.

County code would have governed it, as county code governs the gravel mine proposed north of Cumberland, the subject of this site's Segale explainer. The King County Council adopted its battery rules, Ordinance 19824, on September 24, 2024, by 8 to 1; the no was Reagan Dunn, whose district takes in Enumclaw.

The pause, vote by vote

Brett Vinson, then the city attorney, added Ordinance 2806 to the agenda on the night of February 24, 2025. The council suspended its rules, adopted it on first reading and set a hearing for April 14. Four people spoke at that hearing, all in favor, three of them from outside the city. With three members absent, the council confirmed the moratorium as Ordinance 2809, 4 to 0.

It bars the city from accepting, processing or approving any application for a battery storage facility: land use approvals, building and electrical permits, business licenses. Its findings say such facilities "pose significant fire and explosion risks, as evidenced by incidents in California, Arizona, and other states," that toxic emissions from thermal runaway, in which a failing cell overheats and sets off its neighbors, threaten air quality, and that the city's zoning does not adequately address the risks. They name no project.

On February 9, 2026, with fifteen days left, the council held a second hearing. Two people spoke, both in favor. On February 23 it passed Ordinance 2833, 7 to 0, adding twelve months.

How long a pause may last

Two state statutes, RCW 35A.63.220 and RCW 36.70A.390, let a city adopt a moratorium first and hear from the public afterward, provided the hearing comes within sixty days. Enumclaw's came on day 49. A moratorium may last six months, or up to a year if the city develops a work plan for the studies. After that it "may be renewed for one or more six-month periods if a subsequent public hearing is held and findings of fact are made prior to each renewal."

If the pause lapsed with no code in place, a company could conceivably apply, according to Community Development Director Chris Pasinetti, as the Courier-Herald reported in February. State law holds a complete building permit application to the zoning in effect on the day it is filed.

The concerns and the case

People from the city and from the plateau outside it brought their concerns to the Planning Commission on November 20, 2025: lithium fires, the water needed to fight one, pollutants carried on the plateau's winds, harm to livestock, noise. One speaker who lives near Krain Corner is recorded as having heard of a possible project and failed to find an address for it, the nearest any city record read for this piece comes to the county file, nearly nine months after the vote. The fire marshal, asked to comment, said a battery fire would affect Enumclaw very differently from a house fire, and that water, equipment and manpower would all be at issue, by the minutes' summary. The city keeps 540,000 gallons in its reservoirs for fire, enough for 3,000 gallons a minute for three hours, the assistant public works director wrote in an email in the subcommittee's packet. Anthony Wright, then a council member and mayor-elect and now mayor, also spoke. The commission's minutes of that night, which are the clerk's summary and not a transcript, give his remarks this way: "We don't need it; and we don't want it."

Puget Sound Energy made the other case in a letter to the council on April 11, 2025, and in person before the commission that November. "BESS are an important part of PSE's plans to provide the reliable power our customers expect while delivering more of the clean energy required by Washington's aggressive clean energy requirements," wrote Julien Loh, its local government affairs and public policy manager. State law requires utilities' retail electricity to be greenhouse gas neutral by January 1, 2030, and to come wholly from renewable or non-emitting sources by January 1, 2045. PSE projects a need for nearly 1,500 megawatts of storage by 2030. On safety, an Electric Power Research Institute paper in the subcommittee's own folder says, "Between 2018 and 2023, the global grid-scale BESS failure rate has dropped 97%." The subcommittee's draft notes that the institute's database depends on public notice and voluntary disclosure. Asked that November, PSE was unaware of any proposals in Enumclaw, the minutes say.

The draft on the table

In December 2025 staff brought the commission two versions of a code, one barring large systems and one allowing them in three zones. The commission chose neither and created a subcommittee: three citizen members, one of whom the commission's minutes record as living outside the city limits, an alternate, and two commissioners, one of whom was later excused. David Grampa, a city resident, chairs it. By staff's log it has met at least thirteen times since February 4, and staff has told it the commission should make a recommendation by November 2026 at the latest.

The working draft in the September 16 packet is in tracked changes, and its summary and conclusion are still marked "TODO." So far it recommends considering small systems, the kind that back up a house, in every zoning district; asks for commissioning and decommissioning plans, and possibly insurance minimums and bonds, for large ones; and says, "Disallow front-of-meter energy shifting and energy arbitrage." Front of the meter means the utility's side of it. Energy shifting is buying power when it is cheap to sell when it is dear, which is close to what the county file said the Nook project would do: pull power from the grid when demand is low and give it back when demand is higher. The draft's largest class tops out at 20 megawatt-hours, a measure of energy held, and a margin note leaves open whether that class will be allowed at all. The one stand-alone battery project now before the state's energy siting council, in Skagit County, is 800 megawatt-hours.

Staff's reports to the subcommittee also relay a message from the council's Community and Economic Development Committee, three council members who were briefed on its work in March: that committee "and likely the council is not seeing a benefit to allowing stand alone, large BESS facilities within the city," though the same sentence adds that they are interested in allowing small battery backup systems for individual homes.

The road around city hall

Whatever Enumclaw adopts binds only developers who apply to Enumclaw. The state's Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council puts it plainly: "Stand-alone BESS facilities don't need our approval. However, these facilities may choose to come to us for certification through our siting process." For a facility that takes that route, state law preempts, which is to say overrides, local regulation of where and how it is built. The state council recommends and the governor decides. It must notify the city and work with it, and its conditions are supposed to recognize the purpose of the local rules it overrides.

In August 2026 Jupiter Power announced it would take its battery project near Snoqualmie to the state instead of King County, the Snoqualmie Valley Record reported. Black Diamond has prohibited utility-scale and industrial-scale batteries in every zone by interim ordinance, extended on September 1, with a public hearing set for October 6.

If you go

The subcommittee meets Wednesday, October 7, and Wednesday, October 21, 2026, from 6 to 7 p.m. at the Stevenson-Yerxa building, 1309 Myrtle Avenue, free of charge. The city calendar entry for each date carries a Microsoft Teams link and a dial-in number. None of the fifteen agendas posted so far lists a public comment period, so do not count on speaking. The Planning Commission does take comments from the audience; it next meets Thursday, October 22, at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 1339 Griffin Avenue. Community Development answers at 360-825-3593.

Packets are in the city's Document Center under Community Development, Planning, BESS Subcommittee. The October 7 packet was not there on October 1; September's last one went up five days ahead.

A city must give the state sixty days' notice before adopting a development regulation, unless the state grants expedited review, and sixty days before February 24 is December 26. After October 22, the city calendar's next two commission dates are Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Eve. Last year the commission moved both a week earlier.