Connecticut Senate President Martin Looney is calling for United Illuminating to clean up the pollution at a former power plant in New Haven. For nearly 25 years, UI’s former English Station plant has sat abandoned on the Mill River.
Looney said UI should set aside clean-up funds as part of its pending merger agreement with Iberdrola, a Spanish utility company.
"We need to get a $30 million dollar commitment to clean up the site and prepare it for some alternate use," he said. "And we’re obviously going to keep up the pressure because we see this as an important community benefit that should be made mandatory as part of this corporate agreement"
Looney was speaking on Wednesday. He said the site would be a valuable spot for redevelopment, except that it’s toxic, and has significant levels of Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and asbestos. Those are substances linked to cancer.
A spokesman from UI says the company is drafting a consent order with the State Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to clean up English Station. He says the consent order would be separate from the merger agreement, and that it would detail what pollution needs to be cleaned up, and how much UI would pay to do it.
Connecticut’s Public Utility Regulatory Authority needs to approve the merger between United Illuminating and the Spanish company before it's final. The authority said in May that it would not require an English Station clean-up plan in order to approve the deal.