State lawmakers drop utility fee plan

HARTFORD — State lawmakers on Tuesday ditched a complex effort to begin routing fees on power generation toward alleviating Connecticut’s looming municipal trash dilemma, after both Republicans and Democrats balked at the prospect of adding to Connecticut’s sky-high electricity bills.

The proposal, which would have diverted $8 million a year in expected rebates on customer’s monthly energy bills to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, drew scrutiny from Republicans. They described the legislation as a last-ditch attempt to manage the impact of the anticipated closure of one of the state’s largest waste-to-energy plants operated by the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority.

That appeared to influence at least some Democrats, who had hoped to use the money to help the nearly 50 towns that rely on Hartford’s MIRA plant to burn their trash.

Instead of holding a vote that could have sent the bill to the House floor, state Rep. Joe Gresko, D-Stratford, said the legislature’s Environment Committee would delay any action this session, effectively killing the bill.

“More and more of at least my side of the aisle were peeling off,” Gresko told Hearst Connecticut Media Group. Many Democrats feared “headlines” saying they supported a measure to strip the rebates that power customers are slated to receive from the closure of Hartford’s MIRA plant, he said.

Supporters argued that over time, it would save Connecticut residents money by reducing municipal tipping fees enough to offset the loss of rebates on energy bills, which they said amount to a few cents per month for each customer. A fiscal impact analysis prepared by legislative researchers also determined that the measure could reduce electricity bills by encouraging utilities to draw more power from cheaper waste-to-energy plants.

Republicans, however, noted that the bill would have required the state’s energy utilities — Eversource and United Illuminating — to pay rebates to customers if they fail to get at least 4 percent of their power from waste-to-energy plants. That scenario would become inevitable once MIRA closes, taking its 35 megawatts of power generation off the grid.

“There’s a potential, and I would argue very much a likelihood, that this $8 million is going to increase and therefore be multiple-millions of dollars that could be used, as it is now, to supplementing the costs of ratepayers in this state,” said state Rep. Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield.

Instead of sending those rebates to customers, the legislation would have deposited the funds in a grant program established by DEEP last year to help towns come up with solutions for reducing their solid waste streams. In its first year, DEEP used nearly all of the $5 million initially allocated toward the program, Gresko said.

Katie Dykes, the DEEP commissioner, submitted testimony in February arguing that interest in the grant program proved that towns need additional resources to come up with better methods of sorting and reducing the trash they currently send to incinerators like MIRA.

One of the most promising methods, Dykes said, is diverting the food scraps that make up about one-third of Connecticut’s trash to facilities that “digest” the waste and turn it into biogas. They can then be purchased by natural gas utilities and used to heat homes and businesses.

“In other words, the bill would spur greater investment in anaerobic digestion capacity in the state, while enabling monetary support for business and municipal actions designed to reduce the amount of solid waste generated for disposal and increase diversion of food wastes and other recyclable materials, thereby reducing the state’s reliance on out-ofstate landfills for disposal capacity,” Dykes said.

The bill’s support for using biogas to generate natural gas fuel also drew criticism from several conservation groups in Connecticut, which argued that the fuels would contribute to climate-altering carbon emissions.

“Transitioning off fossil gas is necessary to meet the requirements of the (Global Warming Solutions Act), and at this time, Connecticut must begin to plan how we will reduce our gas pipeline system, not add to it,” Sierra Club state Director Samantha Dynowski said in testimony to lawmakers.

Hearst Connecticut Media file photo Employees move piles of materials to separate recyclables from trash to be sent to the landfill at AMEC Carting recycling plant in Norwalk in 2011. A proposal abandoned by lawmakers Tuesday sought to create a new source of funding to help cities and towns find new ways to reduce solid waste streams.