nothin “Grey” Plan Advances | New Haven Independent

Grey” Plan Advances

Allan Appel Photo

The land swap site and location of future upgrades between the Annex Club and the plant, with its incinerator in background.

The Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA) won enough approvals Wednesday night to match its mouthful of a name: City Plan Commissioners gave the go-ahead to a site plan for first $50 million phase of building upgrades of the East Shore water treatment plant. Wetlands management and coastal site plans also were approved.

A land swap with the city to make the upgrades possible was also approved, all by unanimous vote of the commissioners.

The land swap, which had delayed the site plan review last month, now goes before the Board of Aldermen for final approval.

The $50 million upgrade is part of a larger $450 million long-term plan to prepare for super storms and to send less sewage into the Quninipiac, Mill, and West rivers and Long Island Sound.

Local environmental activists like Lynne Bonnett from the New Haven Environmental Justice Network support the project’s general goals but continue to call for a lot less of that public money to be spent on new buildings and upgrades at the WPCA East Shore plant.

Click here for a story with details on their argument for having more of those millions spent on trees, wells, holding tanks, new infiltration techniques, and other green infrastructure” to get water to go back into the ground and not into pipes and sewer overflows —and the GNHWPCA’s rebuttals from last month’s meeting.

Between that previous meeting and Wednesday night’s site plan review by the City Plan Commission, which did not includepublic participation, Bonnett and her colleagues had submitted a series of further questions to the City Plan staff. They passed them on to the WPCA for comment and answers. The answers were provided to the commissioners in a document prepared by the WPCA’s attorney, Marjorie Shansky.

Even though the commissioners seemed satisfied with the answers, the debate was reprised in miniature interchanges mainly between the WPCA engineering director Tom Sgroi and City Plan Commissioner Adam Marchand, who’s also a Westville alderman.

Why do we need concrete and steel” and not more green infrastructure? Marchand asked.

Green is good, and the authority is doing it. [But] we need pipes. We can never eliminate pipes. Green infrastructure is important, but it has to be done over time,” Sgroi replied.

Recouped land beyond and between nearby 542 and 546 Woodward Ave. will be the scene of WPCAupgrades.

He said trees simply cannot handle the plant’s millions of gallons of overflow. Even to begin to address it, you’d have to come up with a half-million new 40-year old trees to suck up all that water, he said.

Marchand turned to one of the thorniest issues and one at the heart of Bonnett’s critique: If the city and individual property owners, not the just the WPCA, are responsible for taking more environmental-protection measures, no one seems to be working hard enough to bring all the partners together to the dance.

If we could figure out how to choreograph the dance, would you participate with the other entities? Would you green’ it up?” Marchand asked.

Absolutely,” replied Sgroi. Then he cautioned that the WPCA’s hands are tied to a serious extent because green infrastructure doens’t always qualify for state dollars. Grey” — working on the pipes and plant — is what’s cost-effective, he said. Green is based on grey. The grey does the cleaning of the environment.”

At the end of the meeting, Bonnett said she felt better about the WPCAs stance than she had expected to: They have publicly committed to working with the community to solve this with green infrastructure. We expect them to participate fully.”

Responding to that comment, Shansky said, The Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority has always been willing to sit down with the relevant stakeholders, which necessarily includes the city, to discuss green infrastructure.”

In an email to the Independent after the meeting, Bonnett added: I thought Adam’s question to Tom Sgroi hit the nail on the head: Question: Have you made any material changes to your plan [based on the public participation]? Tom answered, I don’t think there were any changes that needed to happen.’”

City Plan staffer Joy Ford reminded commissioners that WPCA must return for approval for each future phase of the plan, as new buildings are built or upgraded or new wetlands planted.

Stay tuned.

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