Delays Mire English Station Cleanup

English Station’s cleanup has stalled for over a year as the new owner refuses to sign off on a remediation plan — and as United Illuminating investigates just how contaminated its former power plant site still is.

Those updates in the long-suffering saga of the former English Station power plant’s cleanup came to light during the latest monthly meeting of the city Environmental Advisory Council.

At the meeting, local environmentalists spent an hour quizzing top state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) regulators after collecting written updates from former site owner United Illuminating and from a representative of the site’s current owners. Two key reasons surfaced for why the dilapidated, contaminated 8.9‑acre former power plant property on the Mill River has been so quiet as of late.

The first is that the site’s owners — the New York-based holding companies Haven Properties LLC and Paramount View Millennium LLC, which in turn have leased the former English Station site to a third related holding company, GMP Property Solutions LLC — have refused to agree to a partial soil and PCB remediation plan put together by United Illuminating and DEEP.

That appears to be because the owners fear that the cleanup as currently envisioned by UI and the state might not allow for a future residential use at the former industrial site. They don’t want to give up on that possibility quite yet, and have therefore withheld key signatures.

The second reason for the delays is that UI contractors are still scouring the hulking, cathedral-like main former power plant building on the manmade Ball Island in the Mill River to figure out what kind of contaminants remain in that structure.

That ongoing investigation will ultimately determine whether or not the building can be preserved, or if it will have to come down.

So nearly five years after the state first entered into a partial consent order with UI to clean up that former Fair Haven power plant site, disagreements among the site’s owners, the power company responsible for the cleanup, and state regulators overseeing it all continue to drag out the process.

Remaining unknowns at the site itself mean that there’s not even a clear schedule in place as to when anyone besides an environmental cleanup contractor might be able to step foot on the power plant site again.

According to state regulators, UI is well on track to spend more than the $30 million initially budgeted for the cleanup when the partial consent order was first inked in 2016.

“This is a hard one, and we’re working hard to resolve this,” DEEP Deputy Commissioner Betsey Wingfield told the local environment group at the EAC meeting this past Wednesday night. ​“It’s complicated by the three players. … It will be great to see the site ultimately cleaned up, which is the most important piece.”

Delay #1: Owner Not Giving Up On Mixed-Use

The first cause for English Station cleanup delays emerged in a three-page memo written on April 5 by Hartford-based attorney Gary O’Connor on behalf of GMP Property Solutions LLC and the site’s owners.

In response to the EAC’s request for an update on the English Station cleanup, O’Connor stressed that the site’s current owners are ​“extremely committed to the development of a mixed use project at the Site.”

He wrote that the owners are working with UI, DEEP, and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ​“to assess the impact of the proposed remediation on any future development of the Site. GMP’s goal is to ensure that the proposed remediation will allow for the productive reuse of English Station – one which will be an asset to the entire community.”

O’Connor was clear in his memo that the owners have deliberately held off on granting necessary approvals for UI to start its soil and PCB cleanup at ​“Parcel A” —the rubble-strewn site of a recently-demolished former power plant building at 510 Grand Ave. (UI won approval from the City Plan Commission in January 2020 to undertake that Parcel A remediation work.)

O’Connor said the owner delays stem from concerns that the so-called Parcel A PCB Soil Remedial Action Plan (RAP) would clean up the site to the standard necessary only for a ​“low occupancy” use. O’Connor noted that that would limit occupancy of any building at the site to no more than 16.8 hours per week.

“This restriction would have essentially eliminated any residential, commercial, or manufacturing use of the Site,” O’Connor wrote about that restriction.

He continued in that memo by saying that earlier this year, federal regulators provided a ​“critical clarification, and as a result, an owner’s certification has been prepared for Haven’s signature. A number of drafts of the owner’s acknowledgment have been submitted to DEEP, and DEEP has requested additional revisions to each draft. GMP and Haven are continuing to work with DEEP to finalize the owner’s acknowledgment.”

One more hiccup in providing such owner signoffs, O’Connor wrote, has subsequently emerged.

DEEP has now asked the owners to approve a Partial Non-PCB Soil RAP at the same time as it OK’s the other Parcel A cleanup plan, he wrote.

“The RAP is considered partial, because it does not address PCBs, groundwater, and contaminated soils in certain areas on the Site, including the soils under the power plant,” O’Connor wrote. ​“Despite the added complexity of incorporating the DEEP Conditional Approval of the Partial Non-PCB Soil RAP into the owner’s acknowledgment of the DEEP Approval of the Parcel A PCB Soil RAP, GMP and Haven are hopeful that they will shortly have a draft of the owner’s acknowledgment, which is acceptable to DEEP, and ready for Haven’s signature.”

“GMP and Haven have been deliberate in their negotiations with EPA and DEEP in order to ensure that any owner’s acknowledgment or certification will not foreclose the development of a viable mixed use project,” O’Connor concluded in his explanation of the year-plus of delays in signing off on the next stage of cleanup work. ​“They sincerely believe that remediation without a pathway to the productive reuse of the Site is a tremendous disservice to the community.”

At the EAC meeting, DEEP Deputy Commissioner Betsey Wingfield and DEEP PCB Program Coordinator Gary Trombly were clear with the local environmentalists that the state partial consent order governing English Station’s cleanup requires UI to remediate the site only to an “industrial/commercial” standard.

That partial consent order requires UI to remediate “to industrial/commercial standards, suitable for an office building, industrial facility, something of that nature,” Wingfield said.

Trombly said that that means that the soil has to be cleaned to less than one part per million (PPM) for PCBs when it comes to a majority of Parcel A—that is, the rubble-strewn parcel closer to Grand Avenue and under the buildings on both Parcel A and Parcel B. Trombly said that soil cleanup on the rest of Parcel A and on Parcel B—which is home to the main former power plant building—must be to the industrial commercial standard of less than 10ppm.

“Obviously, the site could be remediated to residential standards,” Wingfield said. But that’s not what’s required in the partial consent order. “We don’t have a cost estimate” for what the difference is between industrial/commercial and residential-level cleanups, she said.

“If it wasn’t a money constraint, wouldn’t we want to achieve the highest level of remediation?” asked EAC member Iris Kaminski. The English Station site is “in the heart of the city. It’s a beautiful area. Why would we want to compromise and do commercial/industrial remediation when you’re putting so much work into this, so many experts. We want to do it once and have a good job done.”

Wingfield returned to the terms of the partial consent order.

“What we can hold UI to is industrial/commercial,” she said. “The standards have been set so that people who access that site would be safe at that level.”

Are there any penalties that the state can levy against the owners or UI for not proceeding with the cleanup more quickly? EAC Chair Laura Cahn asked.

“In order for there to be penalties, they would have to be built in to the PCO [partial consent order] or any order that was issued,” Wingfield replied. “Those orders did not” include any penalties for the owners or power company not following a timely cleanup schedule.

If there are no penalties, Cahn continued, what’s the incentive for either party to move promptly on this cleanup at all? Why shouldn’t both parties just drag their feet, if there are no consequences imposed by the state.

“Remedial costs continue to escalate,” Wingfield said. “It’s not in UI’s interest to let this drag on forever. They would like to get this liability off their books.”

“It’s just the complexity between the owner, UI, and the complexities of the station that’s been holding things up,” said Trombly.

Wingfield agreed. “You have a responsible party, UI, that doesn’t have full control of the property as the property owner,” she said. Usually, the property owner and the remediator are one in the same. Not so here. “There are three parties that are involved in all of these discussions, even though UI is fundamentally responsible for the remediation.” That has led to confusion, delays, and—to New Haven neighbors eager for a clean property—much frustration.

A March 31 progress report authored by UI’s David LaBelle and Shawn Crosbie, meanwhile, listed one of the power company’s ongoing recent top priorities as trying “to obtain signatures/acceptance on the current approved RAPs pursuant to requirements in the CTDEEP and EPA approval letters.”

In a section of that report identifying upcoming activities on the cleanup project, they wrote, “Work with State of Connecticut on obtaining property owner’s signature for the Parcel A PCB Rap and Non-PCB Soil RAP (Parcel A&B).”

Delay #2: Unclear Future For Main Building

The second reason for the delays, Wingfield and Trombly stressed on Wednesday, is that UI is still scouring the hulking, cathedral-like main former power plant building on Ball Island (known as ​“Parcel B”) to figure out what kind of contaminants remain in that structure.

That ongoing investigation will ultimately determine whether or not the building can be preserved, or whether it will have to come down.

That lack of clarity around ​“Parcel B’s” contamination has thrown UI’s and DEEP’s cleanup of the site well off track, Trombly said.

“One of the biggest reasons the schedule’s been protracted is that the fate of the main power plan building is still unknown and the investigation continues within that building,” Trombly said. ​“Without a clear understanding of what is in the big structure on ​‘Parcel B,’ a schedule is very difficult to develop.”

What kind of work is taking place in the building right now? asked Cahn. What does that ongoing investigation look like?

Trombly said that the state and UI are evaluating concrete, trenches, and discharge tunnels in the main building to determine the current, remaining level of PCBs.

“There’s a main floor, eight feet of interstitial fill, then a mat on the bottom. They’re investigating the soil beneath the main floor to the mat.” Ultimately, UI will have to remove contaminated soil in that interstitial fill space between the floor and the mat before they can sample just how contaminated the mat is.

And that’s just the floor.

“You also have a structure that can be nine stories high in some places, six stories high in others.” UI has to investigate paint, building materials, spills, and nearly every other part of that towering, extant structure.

“If the building is to stay up, all of that has to be decontaminated,” Wingfield said. ​“There’s a variety of ways to do that. And there are ongoing discussions between UI and DEEP about what standard that building material needs to be remediated to.”

That will be to either a ​“low occupancy” standard, which UI believes is all it needs to do, or a ​“high occupancy” standard, which DEEP is pushing for.

“It is up to UI to propose a remedy to the department in terms of addressing building materials and contamination in the building,” Wingfield said. ​“They can do that by remediating or taking the building down. That is fundamentally in UI’s hands.”

And when discussing the Parcel B remediation — that is, the cleanup of the main building on Ball Island — Trombly told the local environmentalists that the federal ​“high occupancy” use standard for PCB-remediated sites is use in excess of 6.7 hours per week.

UI spokesperson Ed Crowder, meanwhile, told the Independent that there isn’t much new to report on the cleanup project as the company continues to work with the owner and the regulators to come up with a path forward.

“We’re working through a lot of issues with the regulator,” he said. ​“We’ll proceed when we have full consent and approval from the regulator.”

Click here and here to read UI’s latest progress reports on the cleanup.