nothin English Station’s New Emissions: Anxieties | New Haven Independent

English Station’s New Emissions: Anxieties

Allan Appel Photo

Grass expanse planned for end of power plant remediation.

United Illuminating brass came to reassure Fair Haveners about its ongoing plans for cleaning up English Station — but instead left them with a new set of worries.

Tuesday night 35 people came to the cafeteria of the John Martinez School on James Street and within the shadow of English Station’s iconic towers. Their purpose was to hear the first update in eight months from UI about its massive ongoing remediation of the decommissioned power plant’s 8.9‑acre site, which is also the western gateway to and symbol of the Fair Haven neighborhood.

Neighbors were disappointed at the meeting to receive no detailed maps of PCB hot spots, and learn of no testing of the waters beyond the immediate site to inform those who fish and crab in the Mill River.

Chris Ozyck.

Perhaps most concerning of all, they were distressed to hear not a peep from or about the owners’ future plans for the site.

United Illuminating no longer owns the site. The site has had a tangled chain of ownership, including many recent questionable transfers. But UI is on the hook to clean up the pollution left over from the decades the company ran the power plant there..

The company has committed a minimum of $30 million dedicated to remediation of the PCB-tainted site— thanks to a deal, known as a partial consent order or PCO, brokered by the state’s attorney general office as part of approval for the utility’s sale to the Spanish energy giant Iberdrola.

UI has a website devoted to English Station remediation. Yet it had not held an in-person public info session for a year and a half until a gathering in March of this year.

Tuesday’s update, the second, was not required by the PCO, said UI spokesperson Ed Crowder. The company wants to give periodic progress reports both as an opportunity to connect to the community,” he said, and also because UI knows the community is watching.

Indeed it is.

The main news reported Tuesday night was the visible razing/demolition and carting away of debris from the1920s-era boiler building on Grand Avenue, confusingly known as Station B on Parcel A.

Officials reported that from that Grand Avenue location 69 truckloads of demo debris were removed, including thousands of bags of asbestos waste. Nineteen trailers-full of steel were sent to an upstate New York facility for recycling.

The grounds are scheduled to be remediated to the industrial PCB standard of ten parts per million — meaning an industrial or commercial building could go up on the site, but not residential — with up to four feet of clean fill covering it.

The plan includes an expanse of grass to be laid over the expanse from Grand to the English Station building itself. The picture offered makes it appear as if the site might be a good place to practice putting golf balls.

There have also been thousands of soil, concrete, and other building materials samples taken for investigation. PCB-tainted soils were found up to 11 feet deep.

And all this was accomplished without a single safety incident, reported UI Project Manager Shawn Crosbie. So far the work has been only the Grand Avenue building site. UI’s remediation plan for Ball Island’s English Station building itself remains to be approved by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP).

Show Us The Data

Neighbors present Tuesday night, led in part by Fair Haven environmental watchdog Chris Ozyck, began by asking about the air and dust monitoring during the demolition and where the data could be reviewed. Ozyck said he had not seen any evidence of monitoring.

Ozyck was not correct in his observations, replied Carl Stopper, an engineer with TRC consulting, the firm hired by UI to oversee the remediation. Stopper and his colleagues on the panel said not only dust but air-sampling devices had been set up throughout the demolition of the Grand Avenue building.

So where’s the data?” asked Ozyck

It’s not posted,” replied Crosbie.

Can we get it? That’s one of my main concerns,” said Ozyck.

Ozyck said he was disappointed there are no maps indicating the PCB hot spots, especially as the testing indicates there are places with PCBs discovered down to 12 feet. And there is a lot of pollution in the island and in the river.”

The volume of data is immense, responded Stopper and Crosbie.

Just a simple map, and I feel you’re failing to do that,” Ozyck said.

Shifting to the Grand Avenue building and ground testing results, Crosbie noted that the pollutants found are expected on an old industrial site: PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), asbestos, lead, arsenic, hydrocarbons.

What’s in the ground water samples and how is the ground water hydrologically connected to the Mill River?” asked neighbor Martha Smith.

It is hydrologically connected,” replied Marya Mahoney, an independent consultant who works with UI and TRC on the project. There is a small effect around the edges of the bulkhead, which surrounds the entire island, but not on the interior of the island, she said.

Ozyck and others asked to see those results as well. Crosbie said the process of posting the documents with the resuls on the website includes their being reviewed first by DEEP. When that is done, the documents will be on the site, he promised.

What’s Happening In The Mill River Beyond The Island?

Crosbie was at pains to mention throughout the evening that by the terms of the PCO, UI is responsible only with dealing with the site within the bulkhead, Ball Island itself, not the waters of the surrounding Mill River.

That distinction remained a major point of concern throughout the two-hour-plus discussion.

Congrats on the zero safety incidents,” began Aaron Goode, a New Havener active in the local Environmental Justice Network and the Environmental Advisory Council, whose respective members filled up many of the seats in the cafeteria.

But,” he continued, is UI going to be testing parts of the Mill River?”

DEEP’s Lori Saliby

No,” replied Crosbie, our focus is within the bulkhead only.”

What about the unilateral order” to test and potentially clean up the surrounding Mill River? Goode pressed Crosbie.

Goode was referring to an order issued by DEEP back in 2013 requiring all the players, including UI and the subsequent tangle of owners up to then, to examine and clean up any leaching from the island into the river.

They all appealed” the order, said Lori Saliby. She is the DEEP’s supervisor of storage tanks and PCB enforcement; she attended the meeting, as a listener, not a panelist.

The appeal, she reported, is making its way through DEEP’s adjudication system, with no date yet set for a hearing. Ozyck asked if the community could petition to attend and participate. Saliby said he is free to be in touch with the adjudication court.

It’s on the adjudication order, without a date set,” said Saliby. UI has agreed to the onsite stuff.” She said DEEP is waiting for that onsite stuff” to be concluded before it proceeds with the matter of the river.

To be clear,” Ozyck pressed, UI refuses to clean up the river. UI agrees to the Partial Consent Order. Also DEEP doesn’t test it rivers. The only way we can change that is through public pressure, to have an outcry against UI and to get legislation.”

In a wide-ranging and often technical back-and-forth that followed, audience members questioned whether contamination on the island site itself really would be contained by the bulkhead.

Stopper emphasized that the steel sheets of the bulkhead go down 20 feet below the river bed.

And what about the next significant storm that is surely to come? asked Anthony Allen. He’s a staffer with the advocacy group Save the Sound and a neighbor.

Given this is an island in a tidal river, couldn’t a significant storm overrun the site?” he asked. Was that built into the remediation?”

We do know the site is below the hundred-year flood plain. There is a potential it can be inundated,” Stopper replied. But that doesn’t mean what we’re doing would be subject to a wave attack that would cause erosion or damage our overlying materials.” He said it was up to the City Plan department to explore if further protections might be needed.

Save The Towering English Station Building

Anthony Allen and Steve Fontana before the meeting

Since the English Station/Ball Island phase of remediation has not even begun — except for the removal of five transformers from the building to permit testing of the concrete below them — might this be the time to consider saving the iconic main power plant building itself?

That question came from Yale School of Architecture Professor Elihu Rubin.

For those of us who would like to preserve English Station, is this the time to intervene?” he asked. To remediate English Station, do we need to tear it down?”

No,” replied Crosbie.

So that’s still in the future?”

Only the transformers have been removed,” said Crosbie. And asbestos.”

Would any run-up to phase two threaten the integrity of the building?” Rubin pressed the UI panelists.

Crosbie and Stopper both reiterated the only work on the English Station plant itself has been testing and removal of transformers, and the full plan for the remediation is pending with DEEP. They reassured New Haven Urban Design League President Anstress Farwell, another longtime advocate for preservation and repurposing of buildings, that the borings and testings planned would not weaken building foundations and propel an unwanted and unanticipated structural crisis that might lead to emergency demolition.

Who’s Paying For the Cookies?

Aaron Goode poses a question.

The UI panelists were repeatedly asked about plans for the site. They said they could reveal nothing because they apparently have not heard from the new owners, or would not pass along any communications if they had occurred.

Nor have the mysterious owners been in touch with the city, reported the Deputy Director of Economic Development Steve Fontana, who was also attending the meeting.

After a long thread of problematical sales and transfers of the property (detailed in this story), the new owners of the Grand Avenue parcel as of December 2018 are Haven River Properties, LLC, a company based in Kew Gardens, N.Y. The power plant itself is owned by Paramount View Millennium, LLC, a company for a trust in Forest Hills, N.Y., in an office that also services three travel agencies, a gate-repair service and a surveillance technology company.

David Tropper, the point-person listed on corporate filings for Haven River and technically the new owner of English Station, declined to comment to the Independent, saying he was too busy to comment and then on vacation, when the Independent previously sought to speak with him.

Farwell urged UI to bring the owners to the next update. UI’s Ed Crowder noted the request.

Typically investors communicate with the city their plans and a demonstration of financial viability,” said Deputy Director of Economic Development Steve Fontana. The owners and their representatives have only sporadically been in touch with the city to provide any details on what they would like to do,” he added.

As it did to the attendees of the update gathering.

I found the presentation purposely vague,” said Martha Smith. I did get a few answers, but they could have done better.”

The focus should be on how UI and DEEP can make the site as safe as possible,” added Fontana.

Christopher Peak Photo

The Grand Avenue building during demolition (above) and then gone (below).

Allan Appel Photo

It was a good conversation,” concluded Crowder, as the attendees grabbed what remained of the cookies that UI had provided, The meeting had even featured an exchange as to whether the cookies, along with the snazzy brochures passed out, had been paid for by some of the $30 million. They were not, the officials said.

We are listening,” Crowder said.

Rob Narracci Photo

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