Hartford Business Journal

12 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | NOVEMBER 21, 2022 Hartford City Council member James Sanchez outside the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority facility's Maxim Road entrance. HBJ PHOTO | MICHAEL PUFFER Diamond In The Rough? Hartford officials eye 80 acres of closed trash-burning plant site for redevelopment By Michael Puffer mpuffer@hartfordbusiness.com A fter decades burning much of Connecticut's garbage, a massive trash-to-energy plant in Hartford's South Meadows ceased operations this summer. Now, Hartford officials hope to see the roughly 80-acre property around the plant used for economic redevel- opment. But some worry the decom- missioning plan submitted by the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority (MIRA) — the quasi-public agency that runs the plant — will leave behind massive, deteriorating buildings and pollution as roadblocks to redevelopment. The closure plan MIRA submitted to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) this spring would cart away remaining waste, clean the facility of oils and chemicals and secure the on-site properties. Sprawling industrial build- ings would be left in place, as would a long conveyor and other equipment. "They are looking to just walk away, do the minimum possible and just walk away and leave the burden upon the city," said Hartford City Council member James Sanchez. "This is a burden the city does not need because we already shoulder plenty of burden for the region." MIRA President Thomas Kirk said many people understandably, but mistakenly, conflate decommis- sioning the plant with preparation for redevelopment. Kirk said the future of the MIRA-owned property along the Connecticut River has not been decided beyond decommissioning the existing plant. The property might be put back into use for the state's trash-disposal needs, or some other industrial use that could benefit from the existing buildings, he said. The closure plan is meant to make the plant safe and eliminate any impacts from MIRA operations, Kirk added. "The destiny of the site is not yet determined," he said. "It is a valuable site for solid waste management, but also a valuable site for many other opportunities." A good opportunity The plant's aging buildings are surrounded by parking lots, elec- trical transmission equipment and scrubby fields. The entire property is bordered by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Its gritty, industrial look is mirrored by the neighboring 201-acre Brainard Airport and nearby 33-acre Hartford Regional Market. These three properties might not be much to look at, but Hart- ford officials say their combined acreage, located along a bend of the Connecticut River, represent one of the city's best remaining economic development opportunities. With that hope in mind, Sanchez wants to see the existing structures on the MIRA site removed and soils cleaned to standards allowing for mixed-use residential and retail development. Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin is another proponent of redevel- oping the MIRA site, airport and regional market in concert. "Taken altogether, between the prop- erty owned by Brainard Airport, the property owned by MIRA and the land owned by the currently dilapidated regional market, there are hundreds of acres of riverfront land at the intersection of New England's two major highways," Bronin said. "And we should look at this opportunity through the eyes of the generations that will come after us and see how we could maximize that opportunity for the benefit not just of the Capital City but the region and state as a whole." Bronin said he hasn't yet identi- fied a development concept for the MIRA site. He's also not certain if the existing structures should be removed. But the mayor said he does not want the site to be used for municipal solid waste purposes in the future. "My first priority is to make sure that site, which is contaminated and in need of environmental remediation, is remediated," Bronin said. "MIRA has substantial reserves remaining in its accounts and I think it's important and a matter of basic environmental justice that those reserves are dedi- cated to fully cleaning up a site that has burned much of the state's trash for half a century." Bronin has been a proponent of closing and redeveloping Brainard Airport, but the Connecticut Airport Authority has shown no interest and there has been significant pushback from pilots and business owners on the site. In April, the General Assembly authorized $1.5 million for the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) to lead a study of possible airport redevelopment. A report is due back to lawmakers by Jan. 1. The CRDA manages the Hartford Regional Market, a 70-year-old agricultural distribution center along Reserve Road with 185,000 square feet of warehouse and refrigerated space that officials said is in need of significant renovations. Local officials demand answers Windsor consulting, engineering and construction management firm TRC Environmental Corp. developed MIRA's plant closure plan, which estimates a $3.9-million cost, with a separate savings of $100,000 for the value of scrap metal. That would pay for cleaning and dismantling heavy equipment and floor and storm drains; removing coal ash from a pond; covering the coal area with soil; sealing water cooling intakes and discharges; and removing and disposing radioactive sources, among other things. A similar 2013 decommissioning study by TRC estimated costs of up to $19.3 million, but that plan included demolishing the buildings. The most expensive building to demolish would be the power plant, which once burned coal and was used by Connecticut Light & Power and a predecessor, Kirk said. Power plant demolition would require costly removal of asbestos and other hazardous building mate- rials, Kirk said. The 2013 study contemplated much more extensive work because, at the time, a proposal was being floated for the Metropolitan District Commission to build a new waste-to- energy plant as part of a broad rede- velopment incorporating an energy park and high-end condominium development in the South Meadows, Kirk said. "It was important to know what we were looking at to prepare that site for development," Kirk said. "It was kind of a very optimistic development dream." Luke Bronin

• Cover