The Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority has paid off its entire $220 million in losses from an ill-fated deal with the now-defunct energy giant Enron Corp.
CRRA made its final $4.2 million payment Thursday on the $210 million in bonds used to finance the Hartford waste-to-energy plant Mid-Connecticut Project. The plant was started in 1985, when the agency borrowed $310 million to build it.
The agency had retired $100 million of that original debt in 1996 and refinanced the remainder. CRRA went further into debt in 2001 when it paid $220 million to Enron on the promise of the energy giant buying Mid-Connecticut’s electricity at $2.2 million per month. Enron went bankrupt less than a year later, when it was revealed the company committed massive accounting fraud.
With the bonds to finance the Mid-Connecticut Project now paid off, CRRA’s contracts with its 67 member towns automatically ended. New contracts with 50 of those towns took effect on Friday with the CRRA’s new Connecticut Solid Waste System.
Under the new system, disposal fees have been reduced from $69 per ton to $62.50 per ton. Towns with 15-year contracts pay $60.50 per ton.
