BHC Head Plays Down Threat To Utility Land

The President of the Bridgeport Hydraulic Company (BHC) this week said the only threat to 18,700 acres of water company-owned land in Fairfield, Litchfield, and New Haven counties is one that has been created by some Connecticut environmentalists.

 James McInerney, BHC president and chief executive officer, issued a statement as environmental groups held a series of public meetings in southwest Connecticut towns to discuss what they call a threat to water company land holdings now that BHC has been sold to a British firm, the Kelda Group. Representatives of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment and the State Department of Public Utility Control also have been invited to discuss the issue at a meeting of the Housatonic Valley Council of Elected Officials on Friday, February 18, at the HVCEO office in Brookfield.

“We have no plans for a massive sale of BHC lands and the proof is in our 50-year water supply plan filed with the state and our voluntary moratorium on land sales,” Mr McInerney said. “We’ve clearly stated the lands we intend to sell.”

In the water supply plan filed with the state, BHC identified 3,600 acres of Class III land and 63 acres of Class II land for possible sale. Water company land is divided into three classes: Class I land is reservoir and well fields that cannot be sold, leased, or assigned; Class II is a buffer to protect water quality and can only be sold after an extensive review by the state Department of Public Health and the DPUC; Class III land can be sold because it is outside the reservoir watershed and does not drain into the water supply.

Since BHC’s original plan was filed in the 1980s, 2,045 acres of Class III land has been sold (88 percent for open space) and 11 acres of Class II land has been sold, most of which provided access to Class III land.

 In Newtown, BHC owns 660 acres adjacent to Huntington State Park in the Poverty Hollow Road area, including 46 acres that had been earmarked for possible sale.

In its merger application to the DPUC last year, Kelda assured regulators that there would be no additional land sales. On December 19, Kelda also voluntarily agreed not to sell land for up to three years to give the state Department of Environmental Protection time to review and purchase the land for open space preservation. Under that agreement, Kelda will not sell the land during the moratorium unless it is designated as open space.

 “We are in the business of providing a safe, clean water supply and we cannot do that without safeguarding the environment, which this company has done well for 147 years,” Mr McInerney said. “The fact is our goals are the same as Connecticut’s environmental groups.”

Mr McInerney said Kelda owns 70,000 acres of land in Britain and has sold only 400 acres in the past 10 years.  “Kelda and BHC support land conservation and we have the records to prove it,” he said.

BHC officials have objected to proposals by environmentalists that the land be taken by eminent domain and placed under the control of a public regional water authority. A bill to create the new regional water authority has been introduced in the state legislature.