Melissa Bailey Photo
The city will regain control of this roundabout in the land swap.
City lawmakers OK’d a deal that makes way for the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA) to launch a 20-year plan to cut the amount of dirty water dumped into the Long Island Sound.
At its regular meeting Monday night in City Hall, the Board of Aldermen approved a land swap in which the city will give over two small plots of land to the WPCA, in exchange for a 1‑acre plot near the rear entrance to East Shore Park owned by the WPCA, at no cost to either party.
The deal is designed to fix what both sides have termed a “glitch” in paperwork made back in 2005, when the city spun off its WPCA to a new suburban-dominated entity. The deal passed Monday night through a voice vote with no discussion or opposition.
Gabriel Varca, the WPCA’s director of finance and administration, attended Monday’s meeting to see the deal through. He said the approval “allows us to move forward” with long-term plans to meet obligations set by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. The WPCA has a $450 million, 20-year plan to continue separating city sewer lines and expand the plant’s capacity so that it can treat more stormwater. The plan aims to reduce the amount of dirty water dumped into the Sound, he said.
Activists from the New Haven Environmental Justice Network have endorsed the WPCA’s general goals, but called on the agency to spend less public money on new buildings and upgrades its East Shore water treatment plant. NHEJN’s Lynne Bonnett urged aldermen to attach an amendment to Monday’s land swap that would force the WPCA to consider alternatives to burning sludge; the effort failed to gain traction with lawmakers.
Thanks NH Independent for covering this. New Haven Environmental Justice Network (NHEJN) requested that the Board of Aldermen offer an amendment to the land swap deal to require the sewer plant to address an old, unresolved issue.
NHEJN will continue to ask for fairness and shared governance from the sewer plant.
Every year the sewer plant doubles our pollution by maximizing outside sludge burning in our community for money. They release mercury (nerve toxin), particulate matter (no amount is safe), hydrochloric acid (causing chemical induced asthma) and many other hazardous chemicals. These chemicals are released into our air, land and water.
NHEJN has been asking the sewer plant to fix the flaws (as identified by the Yale Environmental Protection Clinic in 2008)in their Biosolid Study for years.
The sewer plant supposedly did the study to determine the best option for future decision making about outside sludge incineration. They refuse to fix the flaws. So what does that say?
We say that GNHWPCA's/CH2MHill's Biosolids Study of 2007 is not a reliable tool to use to help us make future decisions about continuing outside sludge incineration. (Conclusion of Yale Environmental Protection Clinic).