Paul Bass Photos
English Station; Jepsen (inset)
Mayor Toni Harp has begun picturing a craft brewery or, say, a soda plant on the Mill River now that the state’s attorney general has negotiated a deal with United Illuminating to spend an estimated $30 million to clean up its former English Station power plant.
After years of resisting government efforts to address the pollution it left behind at the gateway to Fair Haven, UI signed a deal on Sept. 16 to set aside the money and pay more if needed.
The deal takes effect upon state regulatory approval of a pending $3 billion takeover of UI, the local electric company, by Spanish energy giant Iberdrola SA. The state’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) is expected to vote on that takeover by year’s end. The company would then have three years to complete the English Station clean-up.
UI had originally refused to deal with English Station when the company and Iberdola submitted the takeover plan to PURA. UI succeeded in blocking New Haven’s efforts to gain standing in the case to plead for the English Station clean-up. Mayor Harp and top aides held a press conference in May decrying being excluded from the process and appealing for the state to force UI to take action on English Station as part of the takeover. (Click here to read about that.)
Then PURA signaled that it would reject the takeover; English Station, a mere footnote to a $3 billion deal, emerged as one probable reason. That gave Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen’s staff, led by Assistant Attorney General Kimberly Massicotte, room to negotiate the clean-up deal.
“The hero of all this for us is George Jepsen,” Mayor Toni Harp, who asked Jepsen to intervene, said during an appearance Monday on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven” program. Harp, who served in the State Senate with Jepsen, said, “he understood how important it was to us and to the state, and he made this [matter] very important.”
New Haven has been waiting a decade and a half for such a deal. UI sold English Station in 2000. The station sits on a manmade 9‑acre island; UI built the plant there in 1914. It has since become contaminated with PCBs and asbestos, among other pollutants, rendering a prime piece of riverine, Fair Haven real estate unavailable for development.
UI had put $1.9 million in an escrow account for the clean-up at the time of the 2000 sale. None of the property’s subsequent owners could afford the clean-up, the price tag for which is estimated at up to $30 million.
City Corporation Counsel John Rose Jr., Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson, and Harp this May calling for a city role in hearings on UI’s sale.
The Iberdrola takeover presented a rare moment of leverage in the clean-up quest, Harp noted. “If you see that … facility — it’s huge. And it’s sitting there and would be sitting there probably for the next hundred years if we couldn’t get UI and Iberdrola to help us clean it up.”
Jepsen and Massicotte said in an interview Monday that the deal calls for the property to be brought up to environmental standards for industrial and commercial use (not residential use, a higher standard). All parties agreed that estimates showed that cost not exceeding $30 million, according to Jepsen. The deal calls for UI to set aside the $30 million, directing any leftover money to a “public use” designated by the governor, attorney general, and Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. The deal does call for UI to foot the bill if the cost exceeds $30 million.
“We think it was a good outcome for all parties involved,” said UI Vice-President of Communications Michael West. He said UI was determined to settle all “outstanding issues” involving English Station. West credited Jepsen’s office with “taking the leadership role in this process” and for “galvanizing other people who had an interest in this.”
Bringing the property up to residential use would have cost much more than $30 million, Jepsen said. Because the land is zoned for industrial use, not residential, it would have been unrealistic to demand that UI agree to the costlier clean-up, especially since it has no legal obligation to do so.
“In my strong opinion, UI was concerned for understandable reasons for signing up for unlimited liability. We were able to present the case and independently verify that the total clean-up might go above $30 million but probably would not,” Jepsen said. “There was no way to put a price tag on what it would cost to bring it up to residential. I don’t think a deal would have been possible for that very practical reason. Why UI would sign up for a liability that far, far exceeds its legal obligations doesn’t make any sense.”
Harp said she envisions luring a business that relies on water, lots of water, to the property once the clean-up concludes. She suggested a soda plant or a craft brewery, along the lines of the old New Haven Brewing Co. (producer of Elm City Connecticut Ale), which used to operate on Grand Avenue at the same spot of the Mill River.
“One of the things we do have an abundance of in the city of New Haven is good water. We really need to partner with the regional water authority and attract businesses that need water in abundance,” Harp said. She said recently attended a conference on entrepreneurism where a speaker argued that “one of the indicators that a town was doing really well was whether or not they have microbreweries.”
Click here for the story about how the discovery of 4,300 gallons of PCB-contaminated oil led to one aborted effort to demolish the plant. Click here for a story last fall about one of the state’s emergency operations to remove toxic materials from English Station. And click here for a story about fights among the plant’s current and previous owners.
Click on the above sound file to listen to Harp’s full appearance on monday’s radio show, in which she took calls from listeners and addressed school reform and homelessness in addition to English Station.