Officials Promote Eco-Technology

“… The Bridgeport Eco-Technology Park is today nothing that anyone would associate with the word “park.” Spanning parts of the West End and South End, it includes a fuel-cell facility, a mattress-recycling business, a company that makes permeable pavement and more, with a number of other public and private components in the planning stage.

“But the effects, officials say, could be felt far beyond Bridgeport. On Thursday, the city put its progress on display before a wide array of state and federal officials, local business leaders and other interested parties.

“‘We don’t believe the rhetoric we hear about the competition between jobs and the environment,’ Mayor Bill Finch said. ‘Helping the environment is not a destroyer of jobs, it’s a creator of jobs, and they’re jobs right here in Bridgeport.'”

Wow. Where should we start in regard to addressing the bs-propaganda slung at us by this bile-green administration and its propaganda arm–the Connecticut Post.

First off, power plants that use fossil fuels and require large infrastructure for receiving fossil fuels–as well as pollution-generating accessories and pollution-generating servicing are not really green. Energy generation through natural, ambient forces is “green.” Fuel cell plants are not really green. And they are tax-negative when considered from a land-use/opportunity cost point of view. Their obtrusiveness–as with all large-scale, power-generation infrastructure–detracts from the tax base by devaluing surrounding properties. (Which is why you don’t see power plants in places like Darien or Westport. Even Norwalk decided to decommission their waterfront power plant so they could add value to their grand list through redevelopment of the site.)

Also, power plants employ very few workers per acre of developed property. They are employment-negative in that regard.

Now, if we look at the other waste-recycling operations in this “Eco-technology” park, we will see other similarly tax-negative, employment-negative uses of land that used to employ many thousands of well-paid factory hands on lucrative tax base.

Let’s not forget the “permeable pavement” plant–which most publications would have candidly called and asphalt plant.

So we have a “park” that brings lots of pollution and few jobs–and lousy paying at that–to a land-poor city that already hosts billions of dollars worth of tax-negative state and private infrastructure in the form of warehouses, waste storage and transfer facilities, highway connecting roadway (that used to be residential and high-employment, commercial tax base), huge, obtrusive, polluting land-devaluing, waterfront power plants, etc.

Where is the real plus for Bridgeport in this “Eco-technology” park? There isn’t any. It is just another cleverly utilized propaganda tool for the Finch Administration that exists only to keep the “region” pristine at Bridgeport’s expense.

Truly, the Finch Administration and the Connecticut Post will succeed in creating a forever-dump, graced by Seaside Park on beautiful Long Island Sound, if the people of this city keep patronizing the two entities. Perhaps it would be better if both entities fade away before the start of the new year.

Oh yes, go back to Stamford, David. Create a nice “eco-technology park” for your city in Shippan, on the water, down the street from Dan Malloy’s taxpayer refurbished house.

DO ANY OF THE MAYORAL CANDIDATES HAVE ANY INTELLIGENT COMMENTS THEY WOULD LIKE TO SHARE ABOUT THE “GREENING OF BRIDEGPORT” AND THE LONG-AWAITED BRIDGEPORT RENAISSANCE? WHAT WILL WE GET FROM YOU? MORE OF THE SAME? IF YOU WANT TO MAYOR THEN YOU SHOULDN’T BE AFRAID TO SPEAK UP AND SHARE YOUR IDEAS. LET’S HEAR THEM SO WE CAN THINK ABOUT THEM BEFORE NOVEMBER!