ANSONIA – A public hearing is scheduled for 6 p.m. April 30 at the Ansonia Senior Center (65 Main St., 2nd floor) on Aquarion’s $56 million offer to purchase the city’s wastewater collection and treatment system.
Aquarion placed the bid on April 3. It includes a $41 million cash payment to the city, as well as a promise to invest $15 million in capital improvements in their first five years of ownership.
The bid also includes a 10-year property tax exemption for Aquarion, as well as the establishment of a ‘rate stabilization fund’ using $7 million of current Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA) assets.
Aquarion says the fund will help soften rate hikes.
The bid anticipates monthly bills increasing by about 34 percent over the next five years. The company says that increase would be more without the $7 million rate stabilization fund.
The owner of a single-family home currently paying $41.47 per month would continue to pay that amount for the next twelve months, before gradually increasing to $55.71 per month by 2029, according to the bid offer.
Currently, single-family homes also pay a $230 annual “project fee” separate from the monthly rate, to repay about $40 million in loans that Ansonia took out to fund a plant upgrade in 2008. If the WPCA is sold, then that fee will go away, according to Sheila O’Malley, Ansonia’s economic development director.
City corporation counsel John Marini said that the remaining debt from those loans – about $14.3 million – would be paid off by the city using funds from the sale.
An appraisal conducted last October by ScottMadden Inc. valued the assets of Ansonia’s Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA) at anywhere between $40 million and $71 million. The same appraisal said that offers near the top end of that range were unlikely.
Short-staffed And In The Dark
If Aquarion takes over, they’ll have to bring the WPCA up to state standards in terms of staffing.
The wastewater treatment facility on Division Street is supposed to have eight full-time employees, according to WPCA documents. It currently has three.
Multiple employees have left in recent months. Current sewer administrator Jason St. Jacques said in the WPCA’s April meeting that one employee left for Farmington because of uncertainty concerning the potential Aquarion sale.
“Ninety percent of (the employee leaving) was the uncertainty of the sale,” St. Jacques said. “The other ten percent was, he got a little bump in pay. It wasn’t much, but it was something that we could have matched.”
Last month, the WPCA raised questions about the sale, too.
Members of the board alleged that they were being kept in the dark about the sale of a system they supervise, and that the city was stonewalling their efforts to hire new employees.
The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) has threatened fines against the city for a lack of properly qualified WPCA staff as recently as last month. DEEP regulations require a Class IV chief operator at the plant, which Ansonia hasn’t had since 2021.
Aquarion’s bid offer says that all current WPCA employees would be retained upon the sale and their pay would either be matched or raised. The offer also says that Aquarion would work to get the facility’s staffing back into state compliance.
DEEP has also threatened fines against the city for a lack of housekeeping at the WPCA.
In June 2023, an inspection found a disorderly facility and improperly trained employees, in addition to finding that the facility had no stormwater management plan – a requirement for wastewater treatment facilities.
O’Malley said that the city is in ongoing conversations with DEEP about the litany of violations – that selling the facility would be the most cost-effective solution.
Ansonia isn’t alone in struggling to maintain its WPCA. Both WPCA and city officials have said that demand for Class IV operators exceeds supply, and that facilities across the state are struggling to attract them.
Ansonia, Derby and Seymour previously considered regionalizing their wastewater assets, but that solution never materialized. Derby previously considered, but did not go through after Aquarion pulled their offer.
Aquarion’s current bid offer to Ansonia expires on May 31.
