Aquarion pushes to cut back on water
After two years of pumping less water out of its reservoirs and wells for Connecticut customers, Aquarion Water saw the tide turn in 2018 with a slight increase, that still left its water production at its lowest level since the Great Recession year of 2009.
If an ominous sign of the times during drought, ebbing output is a good thing when reservoirs are full — if still a scenario that many in water-constrained Connecticut have a few choice words about, on summer days when electronic road signs flash the day’s restrictions.
Two years after a punishing drought gripped the region to force strict mandates on water usage, resulting in a 6 percent decline in production by Aquarion, a new mindfulness for conservation appears have taken hold in Connecticut as the state mulls new streamflow requirements that could have an even greater impact.
Aquarion’s water output increased just 0.9 percent last year, with the company serving two of Connecticut’s four largest cities in Stamford and Bridgeport where it has its main office; as well as portions of the the Danbury, Torrington, Hartford and Mystic areas. Aquarion pumps water to nearly 200,000 customer accounts in more than 50 Connecticut municipalities in all, not including additional supplies it siphons off for sale to help meet demand in nearby systems.
Connecticut is eyeing the possibility of new “stream
flow” regulations that will force suppliers like Aquarion to release more of the water held behind dams to benefit the ecosystems of water beds downstream, placing additional usage constraints on households and businesses.
If the supply of water is governed both precipitation and winter temperatures that can influence runoff into reservoirs and aquifers, consumption plays a major role as well on demand. That consumption is dictated by population and housing stocks; conservation awareness; emerging technologies to limit water use or repurpose it; new landscaping paradigms; or changing mixes of commercial establishments that have varying intensities of water requirements, such as manufacturing.
The drought arrived two years into the development of a State Water Plan, which
culminated in a 600-page document revealed in January 2018. Among other key points, the report’s authors determined that Connecticut has lagged other states in water conservation, and that the state’s river basins are inadequate to meeting “all … needs all the time” in the the report’s words, even in typical summers when drought conditions are absent.
The State Water Plan broached the possibility of Connecticut allowing the use of water from lesspristine bodies of water for non-drinking purposes, such as irrigation. And the document renewed the discussion of stream-flow regulations, with the possibility of reducing by as much as 15 percent the amount of water companies like Aquarion can tap from reservoirs and aquifers at normal levels.
At the close of 2017 in Aquarion’s 160th year of operation, Macquarrie sold the utility to Eversource Energy for nearly $1.7 billion. Last week, Eversource reported financial and operational details from its first year of running its new subsidiary’s water utilities in Connecticut, with Aquarion profits up 16 percent in 2018 to nearly $40 million.
Revenues from Aquarion utility operations dropped 0.2 percent to below $183 million, despite the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority approving rate surcharges last year that resulted in nearly $16 million in additional revenue. Ratepayers will be on the hook for an additional $7 million in expenses from Aquarion’s response to the recent drought, as the company expands pipeline links to move more water from its big Bridgeport-area reservoirs to Stamford, Greenwich and Darien.
In its first year owning Aquarion, Eversource invested more than $100 million in the operation — up by more than half from what Macquarrie was sinking annually into upgrades — with plans to average capital investments of $125 million over the next five years. Since December 2017, Eversource has announced water main replacements and upgrades in Greenwich, Darien, Westport and Mystic.