National Geographic Covers Seaside Park Solar Panel Debate

landfill NatGeo
Looking north into Black Rock Harbor from the summit of the landfill where a proposed solar array is stirring debate in Bridgeport, Connecticut (Photograph by Jackson Kuhl)

In a story titled Fight Over Solar in Bridgeport: Two Types of Environmentalism Collide, the National Geographic’s Jackson Kuhl examines the pros and cons of constructing thousands of solar panels on the old dump in Seaside Park.

Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Except the project spills over from the landfill into the adjacent Seaside Park, an area developed under former mayor P.T. Barnum and today listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The National Association for Olmsted Parks, a group dedicated to preserving the works of the landscape architect who designed the park, even wrote a letter to Bridgeport mayor Bill Finch asking him to reconsider the plan.”This is not an argument against renewable energy,” said Rick Torres, a city council member (R-130) and business owner in the city’s Black Rock neighborhood. “This is about taking land that was dedicated as park land and industrializing it.”

Full story here.

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36 comments

  1. Why couldn’t we get rid of some of the million square feet of obsolete manufacturing eyesores or some of the brownfields in the City for solar panels and beautify the landfill making it aesthetically beautiful for the hundreds of thousands of visitors to Seaside Park? These decisions are so ridiculous. If I were the Mayor I would consider the message and legacy I am leaving behind. Let’s face it, things change, times change and of course mayors change. Brownfield utilization would be the way to go. Does the city even have a marketing and economic development department?

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  2. This is about “de-dumpifying” Seaside Park, where long ago a portion was “de-parkified” to serve as the city dump. Who stood up for Barnum then? The current proposal would complete a plan started by nature and transform a covered dump into a power park which would underscore the progressive nature of its residents. The current proposal puts the park back in Seaside Park and involves the kind of change P.T. Barnum might enjoy. Industrialization is a subjective term that’s not relevant to this topic, IMHO.

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    1. Barnum would have enjoyed the solar park. Much like the Feejee Mermaid, the entire thing is a big hoax. Barnum was, after all, just a flimflam man. Much like most of the ‘green’ hype of late (hybrids, recycling, etc.), solar is not that useful. The cells don’t make much more power than it takes to produce them. They just make us feel better about wasting too much energy. The benefits to the city weren’t that great if not a loss and the future losses could be far more. You could argue it would be far greener to leave the park green than paint it black with solar panels. The trees and plants are reducing your carbon footprint without a carbon cost of producing them.

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  3. Just a sidebar … supporting downtown the other evening a group of friends I had to import from Milford and New Haven attended the Andy Warhhol exhibit at Housatonic. It was not very well attended and of course there were no members of the City administration or the BRBC. This is so sad. Pathetic, at best. The highlight was dinner at the Star of Istanbul restaurant. The food, as always, Excellent. Just an FYI, in the little Asia section of Bridgeport, the best Thai food, Ruuthai Kitchen on Beechwood Avenue. Immaculate. Those politicians and wannabes should really get a taste of the neighborhoods and the people they represent.

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      1. Bob, I was down there yesterday. There is minimal work going on with infrastructure. I remain hopeful. If Bass Pro is not complete with other construction beginning on the site by next election cycle, it will not be favorable for the current mayor. I was at St. Andrew’s country club as my brother’s guest last week. I had the honor of meeting Former Mayor Bloomberg. When I was done with my soapbox they were caught up in my excitement. They wondered why there was no marketing going on in New York and I said I’ve been questioning that for years. I do believe in the Steelepointe project and will continue to support it even if there is a change in administrations.

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  4. Wait, a national publication of such renown as National Geographic agrees with us activists against the Finch Administration on their ridiculous proposal? The Park Board mocked, nationally, as representatives of the “Park City?” Is the import of this lost? Once again, Finch, National Geographic article = NATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT FOR BRIDGEPORT! They made this proposal with a straight face, all of them. Power Trip. A game of mine is bigger than yours.

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  5. Why does no one spend a few lines to question the fiscal arrangement? On the one hand $7 Million is a good number, just slightly less than the Finch administration allowed public safety overtime deficits last year of $8 Million. But the $7 million would be spread over 20 years. That means at best it looks like an average of $350,000 per year and that is really “chump change” for this administration that can pay $500,000 for access roads in another town for those who are politically connected and/or smarter than our City “leaders.”

    When you consider the significant amount of contaminated land that is doing nothing in the City it’s a shame waterfront parkland (despite its dumped-on history) will be committed for at least 30 years into the future. And then you reflect on the fact these other sites have waited (and will likely wait) many years for remediation because of the costs involved. Where is the least desirable 12-14 acres of such brownfield in the City, the dirty site where Las Vegas bookmakers will give you favorable odds nothing will change on that property in the next 20-30 years? Want to bet?

    You have to look at the assumptions to understand a hike in our mil rate would mean more revenue raised from the solar panels and fuel cells as business property. However, since UI has the right to make changes without coming back to the City it would be wise for them to change equipment in future years that would cost less, be taxed less and be more efficient producing more juice for them to sell, don’t you think? That would assist their stockholders and perhaps diminish City revenues.
    What might be included to deal with that in the contract? While the initial project talks about certain numbers of megawatts, shouldn’t the City share in the future efficiency as technology changes? A portion of UI’s added revenue for added megawatts is fair. Any other ideas to deal with a real “green Green deal?” Time will tell.

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  6. Barnum meant for Seaside Park to be his legacy for future generations, and the strollers, bathers, athletes, fishermen and picnickers who enjoy the park today owe a nod to his memory. In his autobiography he expressed the hope that:
    “When the hand that now pens these lines is stilled forever, and thousands look … across the water to Long Island shore and over the groves and walks and drives of the beautiful grounds at their feet, it may be a source of gratification and pride to my posterity to hear the expressions of gratitude that possibly will be expressed to the memory of their ancestor who secured to all future gener­ations the benefits and blessings of Sea-Side Park”
    www .bridgeportct.gov/content/89019/95776/95824.aspx

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  7. In 2013 the American Society of Landscape Architects gave Mayor Finch the Honorary Membership thing and in its testimony said about Finch: “has enhanced two major parks designed by Frederick Law Olmstead.” Does any landscape architect from Black Rock want to write them a memo to retract?

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  8. In the toughest neighborhoods of Black Rock, street boys say the same thing: National Geographic has it all wrong,-if it’s surrounded by barbed wire and we’re not allowed in there, it’s a closed dump and not a park.
    (wink)

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  9. Nat Geo article points out the proposed solar/fuel cell project would ideally produce 5 MW of electricity.

    If true, that would be just 1.2% of the coal-burning plant’s 395 MW generation capacity. We’d need 79 of the proposed solar/fuel-cell projects installed and running optimally to equal the generation capacity of the coal plant. (Am I a fan of CT’s last coal-burning electricity power plant? Nope.)

    Has anyone–including those who reportedly see “the solar project as an opportunity to transition away from the coal-burning generation”–done the math?

    I hope the City Council will seriously look at the viable options … including incentives for UI to propose the solar panel/fuel cell project for alternative sites (e.g., brownfields) and incentives for PSEG to retrofit/replace the coal plant with a cleaner option (e.g., NG).

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    1. Someone mentioned the coal-burning plant now operates at 1/7th its capacity–56.4 MW. If true, then to replace that, we’d need more than 11 total 5 MW “green” projects up and running. Yes, eleven.

      Either way, does not seem even a viable initial step … toward a “transition away from the coal-burning” plant. So can we stop making believe it is?

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  10. The first thing the City Council needs to do is tear through that contract and amend the hell out of it. Get rid of the language that allows UI to walk away with or without cause. Insert language that requires the UI to return the property in the same condition as it was given to them. No damage to the cap. All structures and equipment removed. Clarify the language on the lease terms. Is it $150K a year or is it $350K. It should be $350 triple net. That would mean no right to offset taxes with lease payments. And remove the hold-harmless clause for the city. Create a contract that is in the best interest of the taxpayers.
    If UI balks or needs to renegotiate, then let’s go back to the drawing table.
    If the contract is approved as presented then the city’s only receiving personal property taxes and no lease payments. And still UI can walk away at any time and not owe the city a dime.
    I am totally convinced the last place UI wants to put this facility is at the landfill. The see nothing but potential problems and came up with lease they cannot refuse. The potential for hidden problems. The logistics of building on a capped landfill.
    And yet they can walk away with no penalties and will not pay more than what they would pay on any property in Bridgeport in PP taxes. Such a deal!!! Such a deal …

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    1. If the City of Bridgeport were not self-insured, there is no question they would not be able to enter into a lease like the one proposed with UI. No insurance company would cover the City for the kind of liability that is being created. If any of UI’s employees or contractors are somehow injured or become ill due to environmental factors, the City would be responsible even though those employees would not be there but for UI’s benefit. How could any prudent business person think such a risk is worth the almost non-existent reward?

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  11. Turning an overgrown dump into an income-producing asset is a wise move that would affirm Black Rock’s reputation as a forward-thinking seaside hamlet.

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    1. The amount of income produced by the solar park is VERY questionable. It could very easily cost BPT to have the thing. The amount of carbon it would reduce is also questionable. Solar panels only save little more carbon than it costs to produce them. If you equate the amount of carbon (energy) it takes to produce something to its cost and the amount of carbon a panel saves to the value of the electricity produced, a panel will take 15 years to save the carbon it took to make it. A tree, on the other hand, removes carbon from the air by producing several pounds of leaves a year and increasing its own mass. All this is free. Is that forward thinking?

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    1. A check is better than nothing, but a bill is worse. If one UI worker gets hurt by stepping on a nail that was not properly ‘capped,’ BPT would get a bill. BPT is liable for anything that happens on the property due to the garbage dump. What if the worker plants that nail to step on at a future time?
      The other question is: I pay for this park. It is MY property. If I want it left barren, that is my choice. If UI wants to buy the park from me and pay for it, they should do that. Then they could assume all responsibility and cost. As the deal stands, I assume the responsibility, UI uses the land as they want and who assumes the cost is up in the air. Even the generating and environmental value of the solar farm is up in the air. How is this good for me?

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  12. So REBEL, what are our real choices???
    These panels anywhere in the city will produce the same amount of personal property taxes. If UI can offset the lease payments with the PP Taxes, there is no revenue from the lease. Like so many people are saying, put it anywhere in the city and then solicit bids for the dump for recreational uses. Win, win instead of lose, lose.

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    1. Thanks for your sound ideas, Bob Walsh.

      To all: Please beware the false choice we’re being presented:
      1. Take the solar/fuel cell plan as-is
      -OR-
      2. Do nothing

      That is: EITHER accept the current weak proposal as the showpiece/one-and-only approach to increasing our alternative-energy portfolio in the city, at the cost of putting off for at least 30 years any remediation and/or recreational use of former dump land within the Olmsted-designed Seaside Park … OR ELSE … stagnate in a cloud of coal smoke for eternity and forfeit millions!

      You’re really buying into that as the entire universe of possibilities here?

      If you are, then unfortunately you are playing into Finch’s latest fallacy … that is strikingly similar to the Chicken Little play he and his gang used to advance the Moutinho driveway fiasco: Our way (which turned out to be a case study in mismanagement and bad governance) or there will likely be “… blood on our hands if we do not act …” (Mayor Finch, Feb 4, 2014–full excerpt and link below*), the feds will pull all funding and the FAA will shutter the airport for eternity. Has anyone at the FAA ever confirmed this was the case?

      Why do we in Bridgeport repeatedly get forced into fake exigencies by an administration with no credibility, little competence, and a questionable agenda?

      * “We have, potentially, blood on our hands if we do not act expeditiously … I know none of you want to go to the funerals of the next families who lose their loved ones in the most gruesome ways you can imagine. Let’s be serious. We have people’s lives in the palms of our hands.”
      –Mayor Finch at Feb 4, 2014, City Council meeting, reported by Brian Lockhart in the CT Post
      blog.ctnews.com/connecticutpostings/2014/02/05/bridgeport-city-council-approves-driveway-settlement/

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      1. Thank you Pete for reminding me of those asinine comments from Mayor Finch on Manny’s Minefield because that is what the City Council allowed it to become. The mayor, the City Attorney, the City Council President, the Airport Commission, the town of Stratford all tiptoe around the truth and refused to provide taxpayers a complete explanation of how it went so bad. When pressed they would fall on the sword of “time was of the essence.” And you can be sure that same mantra will be used to sidestep the truth about the landfill.
        When the council had the perfect opportunity to demand and force that written report, they ran like little children when the mayor suggested the blood of future accident victims will be on their hands. Such BS. And yet they bought it.
        The same opportunity will present itself again with this matter. It will take a 2/3 vote of the council membership to approve this deal. Will they demand full disclosure or will they allow the mayor to bully them once again?
        Time do smell.

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    2. Positioning a dump/landfill as a place for recreational activities would be a difficult challenge. That sound I’m hearing in the distance is N.I.M.B.Y.

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  13. Local Eyes,
    I know you get basic concepts pretty well although they do not necessarily show up in your prose.

    The “dumping place” like all dumping places where the piling on has stopped, perhaps been treated or capped and is let rest, will change over time by itself. Rotting of some materials, decomposition of others, gases, liquids released and the elevation of the pile is reduced. What is in any of the piles may be known from dumping records (but often these were not kept, or not well kept, and may not be available anyway) or from sampling with bore holes. It’s one step in remediation attempts.

    Now Rick Torres and perhaps others noted a similar dumping site, as close as Norwalk with similar acreage was cleaned up and turned into recreational space for a relatively low cost per acre recently. And it seems “recreational” activities in parkland or abutting current parkland with traffic infrastructure makes grand sense to some.

    Knowlton Park project, one of Mayor Finch’s gems, has been constructed on former industrial land along a watercourse and the expenses in 2013 Fiscal Year alone total over $3.4 Million!!! What is the utilization projection and actual? And the property was “taxpaying” previously. At Seaside Park, the solar and fuel cell additions are “re-industrializing” parkland. How to make sense of this for residents is up to the Mayor. Where is the GRAND VISION? And while I do support GREEN, I want the GREEN we part with as taxpayers to be regularly itemized in the GRAND VISION. Where is it? Time will tell.

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  14. The Knowlton Street park is hardly if ever used by anyone. For those who don’t know, it’s not in a residential neighborhood and offers picnic tables and seats.
    I drive by there numerous times and only see many of the benches used by the homeless to sleep on. This park in this location makes no sense, but then again this is Bridgeport.

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  15. The next step in the grand vision involves a solar park in Black Rock. That’s where the obstruction is and a vote awaits. The CC is where I’d look for an itemized list of the grand visionaries of the green stripe. (wink)
    Knowlton Park is in an odd location and could become pivotal in a possible development deal. Until then it’s a park that lays in readiness. Supply creates demand–just ask the homeless guy on the bench.

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    1. “Supply creates demand” is a great battle cry, Local. Which “Titan of industry” are you quoting today? Wasn’t it Charlie Walsh of the CT Post who would write an occasional piece about the Bridgeporter, who had fallen on hard times leading to sleeping on park benches? That wise old citizen may have retired or passed from park benchdom by now so you are inviting a new one, in a new park, on a different park bench.

      However supply only creates demand where there is no cost to the demander, right? No cost to me, I might as well have some, but the cost is paid by someone else, and they were not even asked whether they were interested in supplying their hard-earned cash.

      Industrial auctioneers are kept very busy these days by large corporations who have too much of something (like solar panels they thought would sell for a certain price) they cannot sell at almost any price. Move on.

      A local deli saves their excess rolls, grinders and other bread goods and bags them so clients of Bridgeport Rescue Mission can use what does not sell towards the end of a week. The generous deli owner has to provide enough bread (at his expense) so his deli shelf is not bare and he can make all the sandwiches, but he figures better to have some oversupply than have customer demand I cannot fill and a customer goes elsewhere. Pragmatic and generous but the supply does not create demand. It satisfies it in a fashion, but those folks coming to Bridgeport Rescue Mission would rather be elsewhere spending their own funds and satisfying their personal demands, had they the current opportunity.
      Can we get CC voters to allocate taxpayer money this year as if it were their own? Because if furloughs are the solution for the number who are City employed, some of it may be. Time will tell.

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