State regulators have so far heard two days of testimony on how and whether to allow the Connecticut’s second largest electric utility to be taken over by a foreign corporation.
Spanish giant Iberdrola has reached an agreement to buy UIL Holdings, the owner of United Illuminating, Southern Connecticut Gas and Connecticut Natural Gas. The Public Utility Regulatory Authority last week began lengthy hearings on the deal. But one very important UI customer says its been denied a place in the negotiations.
The City of New Haven asked to be allowed to intervene in the proceeding, to discuss the condition of the former English Station power plant. The city wants a cleanup of the site, which UI sold in the 1990s, to be a condition of the deal. But Mayor Toni Harp told a news conference that the regulators aren’t playing fair.
"We tried to work within PURA's process to discuss English Station, but PURA shut us out," she said.
The city says the clean-up is essential if English Station is ever to be put to a new use. "The property remains tainted with PCBs, asbestos and other toxic chemicals," said Harp.
Meanwhile, a representative of the current owners of the English Station site, Asnat Realty, did appear before the PURA hearing during the public comment session, arguing passionately for the setting up of a multi-million dollar clean-up fund.
But the two days of hearings focused largely on other matters.
"I see three Connecticut interests here, that aren't necessarily always compatible," said PURA chairman Arthur House. "Connecticut's utilities would stand to benefit from the operational, financial and perhaps other benefits of association with a global company," he said. But he went on, "there's obvious interest in protecting a Connecticut utility from potential weakness that might derive from the other parts of that global company."
"We want effective, simple, direct regulations which are not unreasonably burdensome," concluded House.
"To render a decision, should this acquisition be approved, that 10, 20 years from now, when the players who are currently here are no longer here, that Connecticut will look back and say that strength was brought to the acquisition, weakness was avoided."
PURA will meet to hear more testimony next week.
