10 March—As Donald Trump continues to admire himself, back in Connecticut captive customers of the Aquarion Water Company are facing unreasonable rate hikes because last week a Superior Court judge intimidated the state’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) into approving the utility’s distress sale by Eversource Energy, which had bought it nine years ago but shouldn’t have, to the unregulated South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority (SCCRWA).

We won’t enumerate the reasons Eversource shouldn’t have bought Aquarion, even though water companies traditionally are good utilities to own. But for reasons beyond PURA’s refusal to allow Eversource to screw Aquarion customers any more than they (we) already were being screwed, Eversource simply had to dump it. Trouble was, no private entity wanted to take on Aquarion. But public SCCRWA was willing.

But SCCRWA wasn’t able to consummate the marriage until the Connecticut General Assembly (for all the wrong reasons, as usual) came up with legislation in 2024 specifically to enable the private water utility’s sale—classified as a merger—to the public water utility. The problem for Aquarion customers is, public utilities in Connecticut, unlike private utilities, are not subject to regulation by PURA. But the sale needed to be approved by PURA anyway.

However, amid intense opposition from Aquarion’s public and private customers (including Connecticut Attorney General William Tong), and politicians (including those who had voted for the enabling legislation), PURA nixed the deal last November. Since Eversource needed to dump Aquarion to keep its upper management (and, to a lesser extent, shareholders) rolling in dough, the sale-merger had to go through, though, it appealed PURA’s decision to the court.

So Judge Matthew Budzik—a captive Aquarion customer himself, as it happens—in January ordered PURA to reconsider. And that PURA did, in a preliminary new decision favoring the bad deal issued last Friday. The final decision is scheduled for 25 March and is expected to be the basic prelim with perhaps a few tweaks. As expected, Eversource and SCCRWA management are happy as E. coli in dirty water.

Why, you may wonder, would the CGA have approved legislation to allow the sale-merger in the first place? Could Eversource’s lobbying have had anything to do with it? Just wondering.

If the Eversource-Aquarion-SCCRWA deal does in fact go through, the CGA can mitigate any potential harm to customers—and limit public-utility immunity in the bargain—by enabling PURA to oversee public utilities as well as private ones. All it takes is legislation. And our own 30^th District senator, Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding has suggested passage of “nonpartisan legislation to give PURA authority to review all parts of the deal.”

Observers worry about PURA’s final decision due in only two weeks. But why worry? There are options available through PURA and the courts, for starters. And, even better, the CGA, which just rushed through what its Democrat bosses and the Lamont administration classified as “emergency” legislation, could easily do it again—this time for a real emergency . . .