Pass the UCONN Water Company Bill

The University of Connecticut has proposed to divert water from reservoirs and rivers in several watershed regions in the state to spur urbanizing development on prime agricultural soils in Storrs, Connecticut.

The petition at the bottom of the webpage; so go there if you are ready to sign—

here are 9 good reasons to sign this petition:

1) UConn was regulated as a water company until AG Blumenthal issued a formal opinion in 2000 telling relevant agencies to ignore the applicability of these laws. An entire constellation of “water company” laws—27 of them according to Ct Water Works Association—are not enforceable upon the publicly-owned UConn water infrastructure.
(See “Nature and Sources of Opposition”: http://www.cga.ct.gov/2003/jfr/s/2003SB-01094-R00ENV-JFR.htm).

—Legislation must be passed to empower regulators to enforce these laws, which are normal and do not prevent sustainable development everywhere else in the state.

2) Good citizens of Mansfield and Willimantic have tried to control the destructive land-use and water management activities of UConn since “water company” status was removed. In terms of water management, planning and operation, UConn has “sovereign powers” and can ignore at least 27 water laws. Citizens participate in planning and environmental impact processes that are purely for show because UConn is able, due to lack of regulation, to achieve its predetermined end. When citizens go to their municipality, or relevant state agencies, to try to get UConn to plan for and manage the public-water system the way it is done in the rest of the state, they are told that “UConn is not a water company. There is nothing we can do because the 27 water company laws are unenforceable.”

—Legislation must be passed to empower regulators to enforce these laws; without them, citizens are totally disempowered, too.

3) UConn enjoys carte blanche in regard to the publicly-owned system because the Mansfield government has never demanded that UConn be returned to water company status. Tellingly, Mansfield did not support the 2 water company bills raised by its state Representative Merrill and Senator Williams in 2001 and 2003. Its town council has totally failed to demand a Storrs Water Commission instituted that would be accountable for the municipality’s stake in the publicly-owned system. Mansfield’s Town Council will continue to defer to UConn, using the excuse that it has no powers to control the planning for, and the operation and billings and rates, of the publicly-owned system.

—Legislation must be passed to make the Mansfield Town Council, and other municipal boards, accountable for the enforcement of water company laws that are standard everywhere else in the state.

4) At the very moment UConn 2000/21st Century UConn was unrolling, UConn presented a “water plan” that said there would be little or no growth of population served. In response to this obvious falsehood, DPH was informed in written comments sent in summer 2000 during its review process for UConn’s submitted plan. At the end of November 2000, while the DPH was still reviewing the UConn water plan, AG Blumenthal abolished UConn’s water company status—which removed DPH’s enforcement power to regulate UConn’s water plan; so henceforth, UConn’s water plan, and planning became unregulated.

By cooking population #s, and not being stopped from doing that by a newly-disempowered DPH, UConn was able to build out beyond its water supply without fear of regulation—and that has created today’s water crisis in Storrs.

In 2005 the state was shocked that the Fenton was sucked dry, but the DPH had been told years earlier by NWC that this was going to happen. In 2007, UConn state employee Tom Callahan stated publicly that UConn had enough water for its future plans (http://articles.courant.com/2007-05-22/news/0705220866_1_gray-water-connecticut-water-university-water). State employee Callahan’s claim was not true, of course, but since there was no law that could be enforced to prevent him from misrepresenting reality, his claim was considered “true.”

Today, with its plans to draw water from far outside its watershed, we see how untrustworthy UConn has become—for example in the way it unaccountably shifts the gallons-per-day projections of water demands in its EIE—because it is not regulated as a water company. When it is regulated, the DPH can enforce water planning laws, and demand and receive honest future growth figures.

—Legislation must be passed to make the DPH accountable for the enforcement in Storrs of water company laws that are standard everywhere else in the state.

4) Because it is not a water company, UConn is not empowered by law to conduct water system planning, and relevant state agencies are not empowered to regulate UConn as it conducts water system planning.

The chaos and panic experienced by towns identified in UConn’s Water Diversion EIE as places where millions of gallons of water will either be sucked from or pass through results from the fact that whole process is occurring outside the constellation of water company laws. The current “three options” plan for water pipeline creation and diversion into Storrs, Connecticut “by UCONN” and the Town of Mansfield is extralegal, and no one can explain what regulatory regime or system of legal accountability is presently in place.

—Legislation must be passed to make the UConn and relevant agencies accountable for the enforcement of water company planning laws that are standard everywhere else in the state.

5. UConn’s management and use of the publicly-owned well fields on the Fenton and Willimantic Rivers is not regulated, as it should be, by DEEP because “University of Connecticut” is not included in the aquifer protection statutes. State employees who serve as UConn’s “environmental policy directors,” Thomas Callahan and Richard Miller, are aware of this, but in keeping with UConn’s “environmental ethic” have not proposed legislation to solve this problem.

—Legislation must be passed to make UConn and relevant agencies accountable for the enforcement of water company laws that protect wellfield aquifer protection areas—and that are standard everywhere else in the state.

6. The Town of Mansfield’s manager, Mathew Hart, has said the university will also control and manage sewer facilities that would “clean” the water as it exits the various structures where they want to provide water. This implies that UConn is already authorized to act as both a water company and a water treatment company. The statutory basis that would empower UConn to do these things does not presently exist, nor does a clearly-defined regulatory regime or system of legal accountability.

—Legislation must be passed if citizens expect UConn’s sewer operations to be regulated according to state norms.

8) Realizing that, because it operates the public-water system extra-legally, and faces serious legal problems as a result, UConn partners Mansfield for legislative bonding (i.e., the acquisition of scarce tax dollars) for water-supply and sewer extensions.

For example, at this very moment, UConn is breaking the contract that state employee Tom Callahan signed with Mansfield to supply non-University users with, and to bill for, publicly-owned water. The contract says that UConn will do the billing, but it doesn’t: New England Water Utility Services does the billing. This reveals the lack of a clearly-understood regulatory regime and system of legal accountability.

It also raises the possibility that the publicly-owned system has been, or is being, privatized, without any public disclosure or hearings.

The water system in Storrs is publicly-owned and yet citizens have absolutely no representation in the process of selecting water companies that would be taking water they may one day need to sustain themselves and their families. And, since there are no water company regulatory systems in place to govern the publicly-owned water system, there is no entity empowered by statute to regulate the rates being charged for water or the amounts used.

—Water company legislation must be passed to prevent the publicly-owned water system from being privatized without the awareness and consent of stakeholders.

9) UConn is an instrumentality of the state and its functions are supposed to execute the policies of the state plan of conservation and development. However, for the reasons detailed above, the handling of water resources by their financial offices and Office of Environmental Policy runs in direct opposition to the state plan of conservation and development.