The agenda for next week’s special session of the General Assembly is expected to include legislation that would allow the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority to make a bid for the purchase of the Aquarion Water Company.
The Regional Water Authority was created by a special act of the General Assembly in 1977 and would need new enabling legislation to expand outside its current territory of New Haven and about 20 suburbs.
“It gives them a chance to compete,” said Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven.
Eversource Energy announced in February it was exploring selling its Bridgeport-based Aquarion Water subsidiary, a move that could bring needed cash and limit regulatory exposure in Connecticut.
House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said the Regional Water Authority issue was the only late addition to the call for what is expected to be a brief special session for the Senate on Wednesday and House on Thursday.
A bill declaring a climate crisis that passed the House and died without a vote in the regular session that ended May 8 is not expected to be included in the call for the session to be issued by Gov. Ned Lamont, despite lobbying by environmentalists.
“We are taken aback by the total failure of our state’s top elected leaders to take action on climate,” said Lori Brown, executive director of the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters. “During the regular session, the Republicans were openly hostile to climate legislation, and the Democrats said they supported climate action, but could not get anything accomplished. And now they have failed again at the chance to pass legislation in the June special session.”
The Regional Water Authority’s interest in acquiring Aquarion had not been widely known. Kevin Watsey, the director of public affairs for the RWA, said the acquisition would make strategic sense.
“With the acquisition of AWC, it will enable the RWA to provide improved economies of scale, operational efficiencies, a broader focus on customer service and community support, as well as lower cost of capital, access to a broader customer base for commercial offerings to reduce water rate increases, and access to a deep and talented pool of individuals living within the region,” he said in an email.
The water authority first approached lawmakers earlier this month about seeking the legislative authority to expand, Watsey said,
Looney said he supported giving the authority a chance at acquiring Aquarion, saying maintaining local control over a major utility would be good public policy.
Aquarion is one of the seven largest investor-owned water utilities in the U.S., with 236,000 customer accounts in 72 cities and towns, most of them in Connecticut, and 13 in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Eversource acquired Aquarion for $1.675 billion in 2017. It had net income of $33 million on a $1.3 billion base rate in 2023.
The RWA had a net operating income of $43 million and operating revenues of $131.8 million in 2023.
On Saturday, the governor’s office provided this summary of the topics to be addressed in special session:
- Preventing a tax increase that would otherwise take effect this fall by continuing to classify commercial vehicles as motor vehicles, and clarifying that current law allows municipalities to establish mill rates on motor vehicles that are lower than mill rates on real property and personal property other than motor vehicles;
- Promoting transparency and competition in municipally-administered school construction projects by restoring a ban on construction managers self-performing subcontracting work;
- Making Connecticut a more attractive place for innovative financial services companies to establish a significant presence by expressly allowing banks holding a certain charter to accept and hold non-retail deposits and secure deposit insurance from the FDIC and by updating the name of that charter;
- Reducing the administrative costs of the state’s publicly available retirement savings program by authorizing the State Comptroller to enter into cooperative agreements with other states that have similar programs;
- Providing more certainty to the state’s vibrant insurance industry by establishing that the annual assessment on domestic insurance companies to fund certain insurance-related state offices and programs should be calculated based on those companies’ total taxes, prior to any adjustment for tax credits, from the year immediately preceding the prior calendar year instead of the prior calendar year itself;
- Relieving employers, including tax-exempt organizations, that kept employees on payroll throughout the pandemic and received the federal Employee Retention Credit from the burden of interest payments attributable to the timing and complexities of a new federal program rather than any willful underpayment by the taxpayer;
- Supporting the preservation and redevelopment of historic properties by streamlining the process by which the State Historic Preservation Office reviews those properties; and
- Amending the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority to permit the Authority to acquire water companies outside its current service area.
