LTE: Pollution Has A New Face - and it looks like United Illuminating

To the Editor:

For 200 years, Bridgeport has helped to power the rest of Connecticut—often at great cost to ourselves. We gave up our waterfront for coal plants. We turned waste into energy. And we allowed transmission lines to crisscross our highways and train corridors because the lights had to stay on.

We’ve paid more than our share.

In return, we believed in a better future. That the city could finally recover, grow, and thrive. We believed that after generations of pollution and neglect, we could help rebuild Bridgeport into something beautiful, creative, and economically vibrant.

That belief led my partner and I to pour our life savings into an abandoned, boarded up textile mill with a negative high profile facing I-95 and the tracks of Metro-North. After nearly 40 years, the ugly, blighted plywood over the 288 windows started to disappear and transform from a dilapidated carcass into a living building. Neighbors from the South End and commuters passing by made a point to stop and thank us–many said they never thought they’d see that building come back to life. Over six tireless years, we transformed it into a thriving hub for artists—44 lofts and creative studios in a 34,200 square-foot building. We didn’t ask for special treatment. We just believed in the city and did the work.

Then in 2023, we heard—not from the utility, but from a concerned neighbor—that United Illuminating planned to take a permanent easement through our property and install massive high-voltage transmission lines directly above our roof.

There was no public hearing for our block. No direct outreach. No conversation about what this would do to our business, to our tenants, or to the neighborhood we’ve helped rebuild. Just a cold notification that our future was about to be rerouted.

How is this possible?

We sit on one of the most economically active stretches of the largest city in Connecticut. And yet somehow, a foreign-owned utility company has been allowed to sidestep our city’s progress, seize our land, and jeopardize our livelihood—all in the name of “modernization.” Already, the threat of UI’s planned monopoles has visibly frozen interest, sales and development along Railroad Ave. Investors cannot plan, uncertain whether their potential properties will be seized next by UI or its foreign owned parent company, Avidgrid- Iberdrola.

But let’s be honest: this isn’t about reliability. UI’s own documents confirm that this project is designed to send more power to New York, not to meet projected energy needs in Connecticut. And once these towering lines are in place, UI can lease them out for fiber, cable, and other uses—generating new revenue streams using land taken from Connecticut residents and businesses.

We’ve spent the past few decades cleaning up the mistakes of the past. And now UI wants to bring them back—stringing enormous metal towers over homes and businesses, humming with 115-kilovolt lines, and lowering property values while raising long-term environmental concerns.

And worst of all? They expect us to pay for it. UI’s proposal sticks Connecticut ratepayers with the bill for a project that disrupts our communities, takes our land without consent, and primarily benefits shareholders in Spain and customers in New York.

This is not about being anti-development. We understand the importance of a strong power grid. But real strength comes from smart planning, transparency, and respect for the communities that make Connecticut run. UI has offered none of that.

We need infrastructure. But not at the expense of the very people working hardest to build something better. Not at the expense of our communities, our properties, and our future. Recently in front of my building , I spoke with a team of utility engineers contracted by UI to assess the large, empty space below Railroad Ave. I asked them if there was enough space to bury the proposed transmission lines. Their answer: "more than enough". We also discussed the safety of buried lines vs above ground lines, especially in light of what the world has learned from disasters like the tragic Eaton and Pacific Palisades fires. Buried lines are safer, cleaner, and smarter.

Bridgeport has done its part. It’s time for UI to do theirs—and that starts with listening, respecting local investments, and stopping this destructive land grab in its tracks.

Michael Villani