DEEP Uses Lawsuit Funds To Remove Dangerous Barges From NH Waters

NEW HAVEN, CT — The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection this month removed two rundown barges that had posed a navigational threat to waters and mariners around New Haven – and used a fine paid by a company that violated the Clean Water Act to do so.

One of the barges was adrift near the mouth of New Haven Harbor, DEEP said in a news release. It had broken free from the bulkhead at the abandoned English Station Power Plant on Mill River and was spotted by the U.S. Coast Guard on Jan. 16.

"We had one tanker entering the harbor and one leaving the weekend that the barge was spotted," Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Jennifer Sheehy said in a statement. "The barge was a hazard to navigation; a tanker may have hit the barge, potentially damaging the hull and creating an oil spill. If the barge could not be secured, then the port may have been closed."

Though a Coast Guard smallboat crew attached a strobe light to the barge for visibility by local boaters – allowing the port to remain open – a permanent solution was needed, the news release said.

So, DEEP, alongside federal and local partners, funded its removal and the removal of another adrift barge using Supplemental Environmental Project (SEP) funds paid by Sheffield Pharmaceuticals, LLC, which was found in 2016 to have violated the Clean Water Act by discharging wastewater to the New London publicly owned treatment works without a permit.

Sheffield's case, which went to federal court, required that a portion of the company's $1 million fine fund environmental projects in coastal Connecticut, according to the news release. The barge-removal project qualified, and it cost $150,000 to complete.

Both barges were secured at Blakeslee Arpaia Chapman, Inc.'s yard on the Quinnipiac River in New Haven on July 6, the news release said. They are currently scheduled to be removed from the water by the end of this month, at which point they will be cut up for scrap, recycled and disposed of.

Kevin Zawoy, an environmental analyst in the enforcement section of DEEP's Land and Water Resource Division, said the barge removal is a great example of the intended use of SEP Funds.

"Without the money DEEP receives from penalties, there would not have been the financial funding for this task and the navigational threat would remain," Zawoy said in a statement. "I think it’s important to note that the Department actually uses these funds to go back into the protection of the environment."

Sheehy, the Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr., said the use of SEP funding to remove the barges was "a big win" for everyone involved.

"We appreciate all the work put in to get funding and coordinate the removal of these abandoned barges and the risk they represented," Sheehy said.