Mattabassett Plans Additional Meetings With State

It will be up to the chairman of the Mattabassett District board of directors to determine what happens next with the proposal to allow Middletown to join the district, but Chairman William P. Candelori says he has far too many misgivings about it to bring the proposal up for a vote anytime soon.

In fact, Candelori said, his board was so unhappy with the agreement that “our first thought was to send it back to Hartford and let it get rewritten … but that wouldn’t work.”  

He also said he won’t be ready to bring the merger legislation up for a vote to his board until all of the members’ concerns about it are assuaged.

“I have a very supportive group of people on that board and the less satisfied they are with this the less likely I am to bring it up for a vote.”

To get more information on the deal, Candelori said he and other district officials will meet privately next week with officials from the state’s Department of Environmental Protection to hash out details of the agreement.

The DEP’s commissioner, Daniel C. Esty, met with the board this past week to talk about the legislation, but Candelori said the board still has more questions.

The board’s engineering committee will also meet next week to discuss with DEP officials a proposed $100 million upgrade to the district’s sewer treatment plant in Cromwell.

The district provides sewer services to Cromwell, New Britain, Berlin, Farmington, Rocky Hill and Newington.

The sewer plant upgrade, needed to address ways to reduce nitrogen output from the plant’s wastewater treatment process, is another major issue the board has under consideration but which also has proven controversial.

Candelori reiterated Friday his consternation with what he sees as the DEP’s efforts to pressure the district to undertake the upgrades and to allow Middletown to join. And he laid out, again, an alternative for the district if the DEP issues a consent order against the district to force it to undertake the upgrades.

“We could sue in Superior Court and we would lose that lawsuit. We would appeal, and we would lose that appeal.” But through such a series of lawsuits, Candelori said, the district could drag its feet for 10 years on making the upgrades.

“And I guess what we would gain, is time,” he said.

Middletown has approved joining the district, a move that would allow the city to abandon its aging and problematic sewer plant on the banks of the Connecticut River. The DEP also enthusiastically endorses the proposal.

Candelori said the Mattabassett board also largely backs the idea and thinks it makes sense, but the board is frustrated by state legislation passed this spring that it must approve to move the plan forward.

The law, signed last week by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, was negotiated without the district’s input and includes measures that the board doesn’t like.

For instance, the board had backed a proposal to give Middletown and the board’s three other charter members, New Britain, Cromwell and Berlin, three voting seats each. The legislation, however, gives New Britain five seats, Middletown four and the other towns three. In addition, the law requires the board to pay Cromwell $100,000 annually for being the host community for the sewer plant and requires that the first chairman of the newly expanded board be from New Britain.

“In the end, we just didn’t think it was fair,” Candelori said.