Deregulation May Lead To Sale Of  NU Land On Hanover Road

By Andrew Gorosko

Conservationists gathered in town this week to discuss the potential sale of area open space land owned by Northeast Utilities (NU) due to the state’s deregulation of the electric utility industry and the proposed merger of NU with Consolidated Edison of New York.

Elaine LaBella, the Housatonic Valley Association’s (HVA) director of land protection, said HVA has been working to learn which area properties owned by NU are worth protecting as open space land. HVA has held meetings throughout the Housatonic River watershed during the past five months in researching the topic, she said at a May 16 session at Booth Library.

Founded in 1941, the Cornwall-based HVA is a non-profit conservation organization dedicated to protecting the Housatonic River and its 2,000-square-mile watershed. HVA, which receives funding from a wide variety of private sources, seeks to balance natural resource protection with community growth. HVA sponsored the session with the Candlewood Lake Authority.

In Newtown, HVA has identified a parcel of NU-owned land on Hanover Road which may be of interest to the town or a land trust as worthy of acquisition and protection. The forested 55-acre piece is west of Hanover Road and southwest of the intersection of Hanover Road and Echo Valley Road. The property is mostly wetlands. About one-third of the parcel is upland. The land was open to hunters in 1999. High-tension power lines run across the property in an east-west direction.

Wesley Gillingham of the Newtown Forest Association, a local land trust, said he will review the parcel to determine its value as open space. Mr Gillingham also is a member of the town’s Conservation Commission. Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) alternate member Robert Poulin also attended the session.

The land in the area under discussion for possible future preservation by the state, municipalities, or private land trusts is owned by NU, not by the Bridgeport Hydraulic Company, which has extensive land holdings in Fairfield County.

With the onset of electric utility deregulation by the state, HVA became concerned that some valuable open space lands may be threatened by sale to private parties for development, Ms LaBella said. “Market forces may or may not change things as we know them now,” she said. “The marketplace is changing,” she said.

NU aided HVA with the HVA study of NU’s open space holdings, Ms LaBella said. The results of the study have been provided to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for review.

Electric utility deregulation has accelerated the pace of change at NU, said William Stax of NU. NU’s divestiture of its hydroelectric generating facilities has produced concern about the future of the firm’s open space holdings that have been used for recreation, he said. Those concerns led the five towns with frontage on Candlewood Lake to obtain a conservation easement on the man-made lake to ensure that it remains a lake, he said.

NU created the lake 70 years ago to serve as a reservoir for its Rocky River Hydro pumped-storage electric generating plant in New Milford. Since then, the lake has become a major recreational area with extensive development on its shores.

If NU’s unregulated open space lands are put up for sale, the state, towns, and area land trusts will be given two months’ notice of the properties being placed on the real estate market, and thus be given the first opportunity to buy them, Mr Stax said. If the state, towns, or land trusts indicate a desire to buy the properties, there would a seven-month period to negotiate property sales, he said. The properties would be sold at their fair market value.

The properties which may be placed on the real estate market are NU’s “unregulated lands,” which do not fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).