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New Haven's Dirtiest Fight Yet
This is the first ina series of articles about the state of the city's enviornment and the toxic sites located within its borders.
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Business New Haven
5/13/2002
By: Linda Mele
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It's a tour, but not the kind you would likely find sponsored by the Convention and Visitors Bureau. The “Toxic Tour,” sponsored by the Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice (CCEJ) and the New Haven Environmental Justice Network (EJN), winds its way through the streets of New Haven as a guide points out the city's most toxic sites.
The CCEJ strives to protect “urban environments in Connecticut through community education, promoting changes in state policy and promoting individual, corporate and governmental responsibility towards our environment.” The New Haven EJN is a grass-roots organization that works with the CCEJ to disseminate information to the residents of New Haven to improve the health, safety and environment of the community.
The New Haven group was established in 1999 to bring attention to the re-opening of English Station, a power plant that was “mothballed” in 1992 and that sits in the middle of the Fair Haven section of the city which is populated mostly by poor Blacks and Hispanics.
It is situated on an island at the mouth of the Mill River on Grand Avenue and is the former United Illuminating (UI) power plant in Fair Haven. English Station is comprised of three structures: the 1920 old English Station, the 1950 building and the 1890s Station B.
While the UI mothballed the entire plant in 1992 because it was obsolete and uneconomical to run, they maintained all the permits and the plant was held in “deactivated reserve.”
With deregulation on the horizon in 1998, UI was required to divest itself of all interests in energy generation and all its generating plants were sold within months - except for English Station, one of the dirtiest plants in the U.S., according to Michael Mitchell, president of CCEJ.
Despite three proposals from buyers who wanted to convert the site to “renewable energy ventures,” UI transferred ownership of English Station to the fledgling Quinnipiac Energy (QE) whose principals were proposing to use #6 fuel oil. The only thing filthier than #6 oil to burn is coal.
QE was established in 1999 as a Delaware limited liability company (LLC) for the sole purpose of acquiring English Station. Its original principals were Mark Mininberg, Ralph DeGeeter and Joseph Camean. After QE's proposal was approved by the Department of Public Utilities Control (DPUC), QE reformed, dropping Joseph Camean and adding Scott DeGeeter and Jeffrey Mannis.
According to New Haven's EJN, Mark Mininberg, who owns the controlling interest in QE, is an environmental attorney who has represented clients in the state who were being sued for waste disposal violations. One of the defendants he sued is John “Jack” Betkoski III, a commissioner on the Connecticut DPUC whose term expires June 30, 2005, according to CCEJ officials.
The CCEJ was founded in Hartford in 1997 to oppose the siting of another fossil-fueled generating plant in the southern section of Hartford due to the closure of the state's nuclear power plants.
According Mitchell, it was the tenth power plant that was to be positioned next to a neighborhood that is 80-percent black and Hispanic populated.
“It's an area that is already overburdened with major air pollution sources and its residents suffer disproportionately from the health effects of environmental exposure,” Mitchell says.
CCEJ members researched the issue and provided information about the correlation between air pollution and respiratory health. What can't be ignored in studying the state of New Haven's environment - and the reason for the involvement of the CCEJ - is that New Haven has 33 designated brownfield sites, 13 of which are in Fair Haven.
Just a few blocks beyond the picturesque Wooster Square neighborhood with its grass clipped just so and nicely matched outdoor lighting, a faulty boiler at an East Street factory emits pollutants and continues to be “grandfathered” in. It can keep operating as long as the boiler doesn't blow up, according to tour guide Lee Cruz, vice president of the Mill River Watershed Association.
The New Haven EJN has sponsored three tours in the past year, according to Mitchell, and the CCEJ also holds “tours” in the Hartford area.
“The goal is to draw attention to the most environmentally polluted sites in the city so they will be cleaned up,” Mitchell says.
Another goal is to draw attention to those companies that are environmentally conscious, but get a bad rap because of where they are located and what happens just outside their barriers, Cruz says.
One example of that is the Alderman & Dow Iron & Metal Company at 358 Chapel Street.
“What goes on behind that fence is perfectly legal and in compliance with all the regulations, but look what is piled up on the sidewalk outside their gates, ” Cruz says of the pile of scrap metal and “who knows what else” that's been dumped on the sidewalk between the fence around Alderman & Dow and the street.
“Last month, Riverkeeper Peter Davis shooed some kids away who were playing on a similar pile of stuff and when he looked under it he found several gallons of toxic material,” Cruz says.
Davis, who says he is not trained in the removal/disposal of most hazardous/toxic material, says this is nothing new and is cause for concern because of the many other sites around the city that are just like it that he doesn't know about.
“A few weeks ago, I found 300 tires in the Hill neighborhood that were just dumped there, and last week I found an abandoned trailer on Poplar Street with five 55-gallon drums of toxic waste inside. Before that, I found a 3,000 gallon tank abandoned on Chapel Street that who knows what was in it,” Davis says.
Davis, who is nearing the five-million-pound mark of refuse and other abandoned junk he's removed from the city's streets, parks and shoreline - everything from refrigerators, bicycles, car parts and supermarket carriages to baby diapers, newspapers, trash and construction material - says he called the state to remove them.
“We're trying to attack the problem from all angles,” Davis says, “but it's a never-ending job.”
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