Where it stands

Where the Proposal Stands

The Plainfield trash plant remains a proposal under active review by state agencies; no final permit decision has been issued. CT DEEP’s own Office of Adjudications identifies two applications on file, Nos. 202503132 and 202503134, “submitted by TRC Environmental Corporation on behalf of SMART Technology Systems, LLC.” Writing in August 2025, DEEP stated those applications were “still undergoing preliminary review by staff” and that “A Notice of Tentative Determination has not been issued on this application.”¹³ April 2026 reporting and later checks of the agency indexes show the same picture at DEEP.¹⁹ The Connecticut Siting Council record has now changed. SMART Technology Systems, LLC has filed Petition No. 1719, which asks the Council for a declaratory ruling on the 45-megawatt facility instead of proceeding by application for a Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need.¹

This page separates what has been filed from what has not, sets out the two separate state approvals the project needs and the legal test for each, places the plant against the state’s own diversion and climate targets, and records the votes and legislation to date. Every date is tied to the public record or the reporting it comes from, not to when this page was edited. Where a fact rests on reporting rather than a primary document, it is dated and labeled as such.

The status board

Filed and Not Yet Filed

The distinction below is the practical one: it tells a resident whether the formal chance to be heard has arrived. At the Siting Council a petition is now pending; at DEEP no comment window has opened.

Per April 2026 reporting, the company said the DEEP air permit and solid waste plan were already filed, the town building, stormwater and wastewater permits would be filed with Plainfield later in 2026, and a project development permit would go to the Siting Council “in the near future,” with no date set as of April 7, 2026.¹⁹ That Siting Council filing has now been made, as a petition rather than an application. A separate Plainfield-area case, Docket 550, remains on the Council’s list and is an unrelated 50-megawatt solar facility spanning Sterling and Plainfield.¹

The new filing

Petition 1719 and What It Asks For

The Connecticut Siting Council’s pending-matters list describes the filing as a petition by SMART Technology Systems, LLC “for a declaratory ruling, pursuant to Connecticut General Statutes §4-176 and §16-50k, for the construction, maintenance and operation of a 45-megawatt trash-to-energy electric generating facility and associated equipment on six parcels… owned by O&G Industries, Inc. located east of Black Hill Road (State Route 14) and west of the Providence and Worcester Railroad right-of-way, Plainfield, Connecticut, and associated electrical interconnection.”¹

Two things are worth stating carefully, because they are easy to get wrong in either direction.

• A petition for a declaratory ruling is a lawful route, not a way around the Council. It is provided for by statute, it is filed with the same agency, and the Council still decides. Describing it as skipping state review would be inaccurate.
• It is a different route from an application for a Certificate, and the public’s role in it is smaller. The Council’s own guide for residents states that “within sixty (60) days of receipt of a petition for a declaratory ruling, the Council may decide to hold a public hearing, but a public hearing is not required by law,” and that if it decides against one, “the petition proceeding is held ‘on the papers.’”¹⁵ That is the practical difference for a resident: in this track a hearing is discretionary.

One feature of the petition track cuts the other way, and it is in the Council’s guide as well: the burden of proof sits with the developer, not with residents. The guide states that “the petitioner has the burden of proving to the Council that construction and operation of the proposed facility at the site selected would not result in a significant adverse environmental impact,” and that the Council decides “after balancing the public benefit against the environmental impact.”¹⁵

The filing date, and the clock it started

The petition was filed on August 7, 2026. Counsel for SMART transmitted it to the Council’s Executive Director that day “via electronic mail and hand delivery,” enclosing the original and fifteen copies, appendices A through N, and a $625 filing fee, with a copy to the Plainfield Town Clerk.¹⁷ The petition itself is dated the same day.¹⁶

That date matters because it starts the sixty-day period in which the Council decides whether to hold a public hearing.¹⁵ The Council’s schedule for the proceeding is now posted, and it fixes the dates: public comments, state agency comments, municipal comments and requests for party or intervenor status are all due September 6, 2026; the Council’s “Deadline for Action” is October 6, 2026; and its deadline for a final decision is February 3, 2027.²⁶ On August 10, 2026 the Council’s Executive Director wrote to Plainfield’s First Selectperson inviting the Town’s written comments, and separately solicited comments from fifteen state officials across fourteen agencies and offices, both by the same September 6 date.²⁶ As of the August 10 service list, the petitioner is the only listed participant; no party or intervenor status has yet been granted.²⁶

The argument SMART is making

The petition is titled a petition “for a declaratory ruling that no Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need is required” for the facility.¹⁶ Its statutory argument rests on CGS 16-50k(a), which it quotes as providing that the Council “shall, in the exercise of its jurisdiction over the siting of generating facilities, approve by declaratory ruling… the construction or location of any… grid-side distributed resources project or facility with a capacity of not more than sixty-five megawatts, as long as such project meets air and water quality standards of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.”¹⁶

SMART states the project “is a waste-to-energy development project under 65 MW,” will meet DEEP air and water standards, “has minimal air pollution emission rates,” and “will not have a substantial adverse environmental effect.”¹⁶

The petition is candid that this differs from how such plants have been treated before. In its own words: “Previous waste-to-energy facilities, also known as resource recovery facilities, were required to apply for Certificates of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need. However, the SMART facility is both a Class I renewable energy source pursuant to CGS §16-1(a)(20), and a Class II renewable energy source pursuant to CGS §16-1(a)(21).”¹⁶ Whether that distinction carries the legal weight SMART places on it is the question the Council must answer, and this site does not assert the answer.

What the petition adds to the public record

• Scale. The facility would occupy about 81.2 acres of an approximately 506-acre sand and gravel mine owned by O&G Industries, with roughly 115 acres kept as a conservation buffer, and a 115-kV electrical interconnection.¹⁶
• Tonnage, including a maximum not previously on this site. An average daily acceptance rate of 1,800 tons, typically five days a week, “with an expected maximum acceptance rate of 2,500 tons per single day.”¹⁶
• Truck traffic, in the developer’s own words. The petition states that at an average 1,800 tons a day and about 15 tons per delivery, the facility would take “around 120 loads per weekday.” A load is a delivery, so each one is a truck arriving and later leaving. SMART’s consultant concluded “no significant impacts to traffic are expected.”¹⁶
• Products. Renewable pipeline-grade natural gas, food-grade liquid carbon dioxide, and syngas burned in a gas-fired boiler to power the facility and export to the ISO New England grid. Non-recyclable solids are intended for beneficial-use determinations as landfill daily cover or roadway asphalt additives.¹⁶
• How SMART frames the project. As “the first totally integrated MSW recycling and recovery complex proposed in the United States,” sited “as a replacement for and significant improvement upon” the closed MIRA mass-burn incinerator.¹⁶

DEEP granted the Town’s intervention motions

On August 29, 2025, DEEP’s Office of Adjudications ruled on filings made by the Town of Plainfield through its counsel. The Town had petitioned for a hearing and moved to intervene. DEEP held the hearing petition to be premature rather than denying it, because “A Notice of Tentative Determination has not been issued on this application,” and said that when DEEP does make a determination the notice “will provide information on how to file a Petition for Hearing with the Office of Adjudications, as well as how to provide public comment and the deadline for both.”¹³

DEEP granted the Town’s two motions to intervene. The request for intervening-party status under Regulations of Connecticut State Agencies 22a-3a-6(k) is “granted,” on a finding that a decision “will or may reasonably be expected to affect the Town’s legal rights, duties, or privileges.” The separate motion under CGS 22a-19 is also “granted.” No contested permit hearing had begun, however; DEEP said the future scope “may be limited by the legal issues and jurisdiction of this agency in any future contested case” and made “no conclusions regarding the merits.”¹³ The precise effect of those orders in a later proceeding will depend on that proceeding and any scope set by DEEP.

One comment period has already opened and closed

Separately from the DEEP window that has not yet opened, the applicant ran its own public comment period. In a March 5, 2026 letter to the Plainfield Aldrich Free Public Library, counsel for SMART wrote that the company had prepared a Preliminary Draft Materials Separation Plan and intended “to collect comments on the Draft Plan pursuant to the requirements of 40 CFR 60.57b(a),” asked the library to hold a copy for public review under 40 CFR 60.57b(a)(1), and stated that SMART “will be receiving public comments on the Draft Plan from March 5th through April 9th of 2026,” with a public Zoom meeting at 7:00 p.m. on April 9, 2026.¹⁴

Two distinctions matter. This was a process run by the applicant under a federal rule, not a Connecticut DEEP comment period, and it does not substitute for the DEEP window still ahead. And it has closed. Its stated deadline has passed, so a resident cannot now file into it. We have not obtained the Draft Plan itself, the comments submitted, or any response to those comments, and we do not treat the plan’s contents as established until we do.

The developer’s own schedule runs to 2031

Exhibit C to the petition is a dated project schedule, generated 11 March 2026. It is considerably longer than the “not before 2028” timeline reported in April 2026, and it is the developer’s own planning document.²⁵

Two things follow from that. The plant would not be operating for roughly four and a half years on the developer’s own plan, and the Siting Council stage was scheduled to run a full year, to 30 March 2027. Schedules slip; this is a plan, not a commitment.²⁵

The regulatory roadmap

Two Separate Approval Tracks

A project of this kind must clear two different state bodies under two different statutes. Neither has issued a decision, and a resident may weigh in on both. The table states each track’s governing law, the legal test, and its current status.

Certificate or declaratory ruling: the question now before the Council

Under CGS 16-50i, a privately owned electric generating facility using cogeneration technology is exempt from needing a Siting Council Certificate only if its generating capacity is “twenty-five megawatts of electricity or less.”² The developer’s own stated capacity for this plant is 45 megawatts,¹⁹²¹ and the project is on the state regulatory record through its DEEP filings.¹²¹¹

SMART has not applied for a Certificate. It has petitioned for a declaratory ruling under CGS 4-176 and 16-50k.¹ Which route the law requires for a facility of this type and size is a question of statutory interpretation that the Council itself will resolve in this proceeding, and this site does not assert the answer. What can be stated from the record is the practical consequence: the two routes give the public different roles, and in the petition route a public hearing is discretionary rather than automatic.¹⁵

The distinction also affects how a resident participates. CGS 16-50n, which lets the owner of abutting property petition for intervenor status, is written for a Certificate application.² In a petition proceeding the Council’s guide describes a different set of roles, including party or intervenor status that must be requested and granted, and a written limited appearance statement open to residents generally. Those routes and their limits are set out on the Take Action page.¹⁵

Why DEEP’s facility classification matters

DEEP must classify and permit each proposed component. CGS 22a-208d requires a written determination of need for specified facility categories, including resources-recovery facilities processing mixed municipal solid waste. The same chapter separately defines a waste-conversion facility. The applicant’s April 2026 legal notice describes SMART’s thermal gasification and biological anaerobic-digestion components as waste-conversion facilities; the public record reviewed here does not establish whether DEEP will apply § 22a-208d to this configuration.³ The underlying authority to permit or deny a solid-waste facility rests with DEEP under CGS 22a-208a.

The need question still has a documented factual backdrop. Connecticut’s adopted 2016 Comprehensive Materials Management Strategy uses the statutory waste hierarchy of CGS 22a-228(b) — source reduction and reuse first, then recycling and composting, then energy recovery, with landfill disposal “as a last resort” — and set a target of diverting at least 60% of municipal solid waste from disposal by 2024.⁶ DEEP’s 2023 report says the state diverted about 35% of 3.48 million tons of MSW, did not meet the 60% goal, and shipped 940,667 tons of disposal-bound waste out of state after the MIRA facility closed.⁷ The Siting Council must separately find a public need under CGS 16-50p. If DEEP determines that § 22a-208d applies, DEEP would also have to make the written findings required there.²³

The environmental justice step

Because the site is treated as being in an environmental justice community, an environmental justice public participation plan is on file with DEEP for the Norwich Road and Black Hill Road project. Under Connecticut’s environmental justice law, that community-engagement step comes before a permit application is acted on, not after.¹¹ In his July 2025 veto message, the Governor noted that CGS 22a-20a already “requires applicants seeking to construct and operate certain types of facilities in environmental justice areas to do additional, robust community engagement before submitting an application.”¹⁰

The climate-law backdrop

The State’s Own Decarbonization Targets

The “public need” review is not the only state policy this plant runs into. Connecticut has binding, numeric greenhouse-gas targets written into statute, and the same Siting Council process this plant requires is the forum where a comparable fossil-fueled power plant was already challenged on exactly those grounds.

What the Global Warming Solutions Act requires

Connecticut’s Global Warming Solutions Act, codified at CGS 22a-200a and amended by Public Act 22-5 in 2022, sets economy-wide emission-reduction levels in law: a reduction of at least 10% below 1990 levels by January 1, 2020; at least 45% below 2001 levels by January 1, 2030; “a level of zero percent from electricity supplied to electric customers in the state” by January 1, 2040; and at least 80% below 2001 levels by January 1, 2050.⁴⁵ The 2040 target is the one a new generating plant bears on most directly, because it applies specifically to the emissions from electricity supplied to Connecticut customers.

Combusting municipal waste to make that electricity is not carbon-free. By EPA’s accounting, roughly 47% of the energy from municipal-waste combustion is fossil-derived — from plastics and other petroleum-based material in the waste stream, not biogenic — with the fossil fraction producing on the order of 1,016 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour.⁸ A 45-megawatt plant that sends fossil-derived power to the grid therefore adds to precisely the emissions the 2040 target is written to eliminate.

The Killingly precedent

This is not a novel argument. In 2017 the Conservation Law Foundation, an established regional environmental-law group, opposed the 650-megawatt Killingly fossil-gas power plant proposed a few miles away in the same corner of the state. CLF documented the plant’s projected 2,014,335 tons of carbon dioxide per year and argued it was “wholly inconsistent” with the Global Warming Solutions Act’s targets.¹⁸ That plant went through Connecticut’s energy-facility siting review — the same track that would govern the Plainfield plant if the Council determines a Certificate is required — so the record already contains the template for testing a fossil-emitting generator against the state’s climate law before the Council.¹⁸²

Timeline

What Has Happened So Far

By the company’s own April 2026 estimate the schedule ran roughly a year or more for permits and a couple of years to build, for earliest operation around 2028. The schedule it filed with the August 2026 petition replaces that estimate: construction starting July 2027 and commercial operation 31 March 2031.¹⁹²⁵

Votes and legislation

The Referendum and the Vetoed Bill

Two events residents often assume settled the question did not. The town vote and the referendum bill both ran against the plant, and neither changed the state’s authority to permit it.

The June 2025 referendum

Plainfield voted 1,148 to 125 against the plant in a June 2025 referendum, with only about 12% of the town turning out. The referendum was non-binding.²⁰ Permitting authority sits with the state under the statutes above, so the vote records local opposition but does not decide the outcome.²³

Plainfield voted 1,148 to 125 against the plant. The vote was non-binding: under Connecticut law the state, not the town, decides whether the facility is permitted.²⁰²

HB 7004 and the veto

HB 7004 would have let towns of up to 16,000 residents overturn DEEP permit decisions for facilities in environmental justice communities through a local referendum. Its sponsors, Sen. Heather Somers and Rep. Aundre Bumgardner, both of Groton, described the Plainfield proposal as the primary impetus for the bill.²³ It passed the House 104–43 and the Senate 25–11,⁹²² but Governor Lamont vetoed it on July 8, 2025, and no override took place.¹⁰⁹

In his veto message the Governor wrote that “allowing permitting decisions to be overturned by referenda undermines the principles of objectivity embedded in our state permitting processes, will discourage important investments in infrastructure, and ultimately will drive up cost of living for residents.”¹⁰ The practical effect is that the town’s referendum route to challenge a state permit remains closed.

Questions and answers

Status Questions

Has the Plainfield trash plant been approved?

It remains a proposal under active review by state agencies, and no final permit decision has been issued. Two DEEP applications are on file, Nos. 202503132 and 202503134, which DEEP describes as in preliminary staff review with no Notice of Tentative Determination issued. At the Connecticut Siting Council, SMART has filed Petition No. 1719 seeking a declaratory ruling rather than a Certificate; in that track a public hearing is not required by law and the Council has not yet decided whether to hold one. The DEEP public comment window has not opened. The Siting Council’s own comment period is open now: public comments and party or intervenor requests are due September 6, 2026, the Council’s “Deadline for Action” is October 6, 2026, and its final-decision deadline is February 3, 2027.^2613119

Has SMART filed with the Connecticut Siting Council?

Yes. SMART filed Petition No. 1719 on August 7, 2026, seeking a declaratory ruling rather than applying for a Certificate, and the Council’s pending-matters list now shows it. Under the Council’s schedule, public comments and party or intervenor requests are due September 6, 2026. Earlier April 2026 reporting that nothing had been filed is superseded.¹²⁶

Why does the plant need both DEEP permits and Siting Council approval?

They apply different legal tests. DEEP must classify and permit the solid-waste and air components. On a Certificate application the Siting Council could not grant one without finding a public need under CGS 16-50p, and the developer’s stated 45-megawatt output exceeds the 25-megawatt cogeneration exemption. SMART contends in Petition No. 1719 that a declaratory ruling suffices and no Certificate is required; which route the law requires is the question now before the Council, and this site does not assert the answer. Whether DEEP’s need-determination provision in CGS 22a-208d applies depends on DEEP’s classification of this configuration, which the public record reviewed here does not yet resolve.²³¹⁹

Does the plant conflict with Connecticut’s climate targets?

Connecticut law (CGS 22a-200a, as amended by Public Act 22-5) sets a target of a level of zero percent from electricity supplied to state customers by 2040. About 47% of the energy from municipal-waste combustion is fossil-derived, so a 45-megawatt plant selling that power to the grid adds to the emissions the 2040 target is meant to eliminate. In 2017 the Conservation Law Foundation made the same argument against the nearby 650-megawatt Killingly plant, calling it “wholly inconsistent” with the Act.⁴⁸¹⁸

Was the June 2025 referendum binding?

No. Plainfield voted 1,148 to 125 against, but the referendum was non-binding. Permitting authority rests with the state.²⁰²

What happened with HB 7004?

It would have let towns up to 16,000 residents challenge DEEP environmental-justice permits by referendum. It passed the House 104–43 and the Senate 25–11, but Governor Lamont vetoed it on July 8, 2025, and no override occurred, so it did not become law.⁹²²¹⁰

When could a public comment window open?

When DEEP issues a Notice of Tentative Determination it opens a 30-day comment period. DEEP has confirmed in writing that no such notice has been issued for these applications, so the DEEP comment window has not opened.¹³¹⁹