The decommissioned English Station power plant in New Haven, Connecticut may soon become a waterfront park and public swimming pool.
Officials announced plans to buy and transform the site on Monday.
The plant, which was once responsible for powering the city and is visible from I-95, was deactivated in 1992.
Mayor Justin Elicker (D) said he hopes it will become a gathering place for his city.
“8.6 acres for a city like ours is just huge,” Elicker said. “3,000 feet of waterfront access, public outdoor pools, playgrounds, sports, courts, walking and biking trails, native plant gardens; a community asset, a gathering place.”
Elicker and multiple others at the announcement spoke about the importance of public swimming pools in communities like New Haven. According to the Centers for Disease Control, Black children are more than two times more likely to drown than their white counterparts.
30% of New Haven residents are Black, according to the U.S. Census.
“In the 1960s, there were many more public pools across the United States, but in many communities across America, when they were faced with having to share their pools with their Black counterparts, they decided to close those pools,” Elicker said.
“As we can all see, there's a huge challenge of equity, people having access to the pools, that has contributed to a lot of our particularly young black children not being able to swim,” he continued. “And today, we are making a statement by ensuring that New Haven has its first outdoor public pool so that everyone in our community can enjoy it.”
The site is owned by two parties, which Elicker said the city plans to negotiate with in good faith to buy. But, he said, they are willing to use eminent domain if necessary.
The area also needs to be cleaned. United Illuminating is committed to remediating the site by 2019; however, Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Katie Dykes said they haven't done so.
The two parties have not come to an agreement on how much cleaning has to be done, and the case is currently before a judge. In the meantime, even once the city owns the property, the project won’t be able to go forward without that restoration.
“Making good on their commitments and cleaning up to the standard that we believe they agreed to in 2016 would certainly move this project a long way towards providing the kind of relief that those kids would love to be enjoying today, on a hot summer day,” Dykes said.
UI officials told WSHU they had already spent more than $22 million to clean up the station. They were only obligated to spend a total of $30 million, after which they could seek alternative funding.
“While UI has not owned English Station since the early 2000s, we are fully committed to working within the bounds of the Partial Consent Order signed by state officials to remediate the English Station site to the heavy-industrial standard that was agreed to in 2016," uI spokesperson Sarah Wall Fliotsos said. "While the Mill River Park envisioned by Mayor Elicker would require remediation far beyond this standard, alternate funding mechanisms could help to bring this vision to life, similar to how Connecticut provided support to demolish a former power plant in Bridgeport owned by an out-of-state company. We are always ready to work with state and local officials to support their vision for the site.”
Elicker estimated the project will take five years to complete once they can begin construction.
