Marc Lemcke is a Westport resident, and a close observer of Aquarion.
Yesterday, he attended a hearing in Hartford on the proposed sale of the water utility. He writes:
You’re driving a bus at 110 miles an hour, when you see a wall in front of you. You cannot stop. Everyone on board knows: This will not end well.
Yesterday’s hearing before the Connecticut Energy and Technology Committee felt like that.
The proposed $2.6 billion sale of Aquarion Water Company to the Regional Water Authority carries enormous risk — and committee members know it.
The “bus driver” is committee co-chair Jonathan Steinberg, Westport’s state representative.
He is probably the least to blame, having warned early about the risks. Yet all eyes are on him, to see whether he can avert what could become a disaster.
The odds are squarely against him. Here’s why.
Hartford’s rushed enabling legislation, passed in an emergency session in 2024, created the state’s largest public agency. It would be financed entirely through $2.6 billion in debt. Not partially. Entirely.
Aquarion reported net income of just $33 million in 2023, according to the Connecticut Mirror. That’s the math.
The state Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) rejected the deal.
However, the Superior Court found that PURA misapplied the statute — essentially ruling that the regulator must operate within the legislature’s framework, not independently of it.
Next week, PURA — with newly appointed commissioners — will issue a revised draft decision and may approve the deal, pointing to the 2024 enabling legislation.
To be clear: at a lower price, this deal could offer many advantages for Westport ratepayers. RWA has strong water quality, is innovative, and serves customers rather than investors.
Meanwhile, the town focuses heavily on Aquarion’s property tax payments — which we fund through our water bills, and which will decline over time under public ownership.
The sale of Aquarion is a textbook example of what journalist Dan Davies calls an “accountability sink” — a situation in which responsibility is diffused across complex systems, making it nearly impossible to determine who is accountable when Aquarion is in trouble.
Much now rests with Representative Steinberg. At the end of a long legislative career, he finds himself again at the center of Connecticut’s utility universe — driving a bus carrying more than 200,000 passengers.
We can only wish ourselves luck — and start preparing for much higher water bills, while considering more water-friendly gardens. That may not be entirely bad.
(“06880” Opinion pages are open to all. Submissions may be sent to 06880blog@gmail.com.)
I continue to be perplexed by folks’ resistance to RWA’s acquisition of Aquarion. People regularly complain about Aquarion’s capitalist pursuit of profits at the expense of ratepayers. There is now an opportunity to put the water utility in the hands of an entity that has zero profit motive, only a mandate to provide reliable water to it’s ratepayers at the lowest cost possible consistent with its primary mission. Their interests should be directly aligned with ratepayers. All their ratepayers, of course, not just Westport’s, but what’s wrong with that?