Town Officials on Yankee Gas: ‘The Whole Thing Just Smacks of Bait and Switch’

Saying Yankee Gas hasn’t played straight with New Canaan, town officials on Monday night opened the possibility of restarting its negotiations—possibly with a different utility—to get natural gas not just to large municipal or commercial buildings but also to residents who want it.

It’s been nearly four months since Yankee Gas declared itself “fully committed” to bringing natural gas to New Canaan this fall, and nearly three months since local government and business leaders at a public forum urged the utility to get residents more specific numbers and a timetable for conversion.

Yet no concrete plan is in sight.

Now, the utility is proposing to town officials a project far smaller in scope that seemingly could leave out private homes, members of the New Canaan Utilities Commission said at their regular meeting Monday night.

“I just think we need a plan that reflects a commitment by a company, an energy solution that gives the town the best long-term value,” Commissioner Dan Welch said at the meeting, held in the Brooks Room of the New Canaan Nature Center. “If you are going to have a company that’s going to come in and pipe a bunch of commercial loads, then what good does that do for the rest of the town? Higher property values will raise tax revenue for the whole town.”

On the strength of a Yankee Gas plan that would bring service to the town through a 5-mile main up from Stamford—as opposed to erecting a “gate station” (estimated cost anywhere from $1 million to $4 million) at Waveny that taps directly the Tennessee Gas Pipeline—the town signed a Memo of Understanding with Yankee Gas. The town at the time also was talking to another utility, CNG, which was offering a gate station option. (A gate station regulates gas pressure so that feeder lines can run off of the main pipe—in New Canaan, the best candidate for its location was deemed to be just inside the Waveny Pool/Platform Tennis Courts parking lot, along the narrow strip of grass on the right as you pull in from Lapham.)

The plan had been for Yankee Gas to save New Canaanites money by heating big buildings (including town-owned structures such as South School, Saxe Middle School and New Canaan High School, as well as the YMCA) and downtown businesses, and to roll out natural gas to residents in phases.

The plan had been held up, Yankee Gas officials said at the public forum in April, because of new regulations that raised questions about whether the gas loads in New Canaan would be enough to offset the cost of doing infrastructure work here—in other words, whether bringing gas, as originally proposed, would be fair to ratepayers throughout the state.

But there’s a danger in New Canaan signing off on a smaller plan, Welch said.

“Then you end up like one of these towns where some people have gas and other people don’t, and the ones that don’t really are not in the foreseeable future getting gas,” he said.

Commissioner Tom Tesluk said Yankee Gas seemed to have started falling short on its deal with New Canaan as soon as the Memo of Understanding was signed and word got out among New Canaanites about the exciting prospect of money-saving natural gas.

Commissioners agreed that pursuing a plan that brings CNG back into the conversation as a competitive bidder for natural gas in New Canaan is a good idea.

“I just don’t think CNG would not have shown up with this unprofessional approach, and the whole thing just smacks of bait and switch,” Welch said.