City To State: Hear Us Out On UI’s Mess

Matthew Nemerson can picture ballfields replacing the empty English Station power plant. Or a solar energy facility. Or new homes or offices. But first New Haven has to find a way to get the global energy giant buying United Illuminating to clean up all the deadly chemicals that lurk there.

Nemerson and other city officials called Thursday for state regulators to ensure that commitment to such a clean-up — which will cost ​“tens of million dollars” — be made a condition of a pending $3 billion purchase of UI’s holding company by Spain-based Iberdrola SA, Europe’s third-largest power company,

Officials sought to make that case directly to the state Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) in hearings PURA is currently holding on whether to approve the sale. But twice PURA has turned down the city’s efforts to obtain ​“party” or ​“intervenor” status in order to participate and have a stake in the proceedings, including the ability to question witnesses.

“Give us a seat at the table,” Mayor Toni Harp urged at a press conference at John Martinez School, with English Station as a backdrop.

UI sold the English Station power plant (pictured), which it began operating on a 9‑acre island in 1914, in 2000 to an owner which then resold it. Contaminated with PCBs and asbestos, the plant has sat idle amid bickering and dashed plans. Meanwhile city and state officials have sought to get UI to clean up the site, for two reasons: To eliminate a public health and environmental hazard. And to make available for development a prime piece of riverine Fair Haven real estate.

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.

At the time of the 2000 sale, UI put $1.9 million into an escrow account to help fund a cleanup, a fraction of the current estimated cost. That money’s gone, and the pollution remains unaddressed, New Haven Acting Corporation Counsel John Rose Jr. argued in an April 20 filing with PURA. In the filing the city argued that UI’s holding company ​“knew, or should have known, at the time of the sale … that the Escrowed Funds would not be sufficient to cover the costs of the Clean Up.”

Harp noted that PURA’s forerunner agency, the Department of Public Utility Control, ordered UI 15 years ago to clean up the property; that state environmental officials issued a similar order in 2013; and that UI has acknowledged in financial filings that it will be liable for at least part of the cost of the clean-up. The current regulatory hearings on whether to approve UI’s sale to Iberdrola presents an opportunity to exert leverage to make that happen.

(The property’s current owner did appear at the hearings to urge regulators to require UI to pay $60 million to clean up English Station, according to this report by the Register’s Luther Turmelle.)

Nemerson, Harp’s economic development administrator, noted that the property remains ​“a ruin.”

“We are running out of land [to develop] here in New Haven,” said Nemerson (pictured at right above, conferring with U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro aide Lou Mangini). ​“So every acre is precious. This neighborhood needs to be treated the same as any other neighborhood” or part of the state.

The city’s April 20 PURA filing identified the three main sources of pollution at English Station as ​“petroleum contamination related to historic filling of the Property (from coal tar dredges used to build the island); non-fill related petroleum contamination and extensive polychlorinated biphenyls (“PCB”) related contamination from releases at the Property by UI … during its operations and ownership of the Property.”

“We have always been open to a constructive dialogue about the property and that disposition,” UI Vice-President for Corporation Communications Michael West said Thursday when asked for a response. ​“We have always been open to a constructive dialogue about the property and that disposition. That dialogue started with Mayor [John] DeStefano. And I don’t see why it wouldn’t continue with Mayor Harp.”

West noted the UI hasn’t owned the plant for 15 years, during which time ​“a lot of unknown activity has occurred at that site. We have no knowledge of what conditions have formed there are as a result of that activity.”

As for New Haven’s efforts to participate in the sale-approval process, he remarked, ​“I’ll let PURA opine on what PURA should do.”

A PURA spokesman said he would let the record speak for itself.

That record shows that on April 21 PURA denied the city’s request for intervenor status (meaning it could become a party to the proceeding, and testify) because, the agency argued, it lacks ​“jurisdiction or regulatory authority” to judge the city’s claims about UI’s liability for environmental problems at the site.

New Haven filed a motion to reconsider that denial. UI filed an objection. On may 8 PURA again shot down the city’s request. In that denial, PURA Executive Secretary Jeffrey R. Gaudiosi argued that PURA agrees with UI’s analysis that ​“New Haven has no legal rights, duties or privileges at issue in this proceeding. The proceeding is about a change of control of” UI. And that “[t]his proceeding is not the appropriate forum for the City to address its views on the issues of responsibility for environmental damage, liability, and clean-up related to the English Station property.”

Gaudiosi approvingly cited this promise by UI: “[I]f UI is fully and finally determined by a state or federal environmental agency or reviewing courts to be liable in any way with respect to English Station, that liability will continue to exist — and will be honored by UI — both pre and post-transaction.”