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. As of the most recent reporting, dated April 2026, SMART Technology Systems had filed air and solid-waste applications with the state environmental agency, but no case was before the Connecticut Siting Council and no public comment window had opened.¹¹⁴

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 comment has arrived. As of April 2026 reporting, it had not.¹⁴

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, 2026.¹⁴ A direct check of the Siting Council’s own pending-matters list confirms no SMART, O&G Industries, or Plainfield gasification docket; the only Plainfield-area case listed is Docket 550, an unrelated 50-megawatt solar facility spanning Sterling and Plainfield.¹

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.

Why the Siting Council has jurisdiction

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 Plainfield plant’s generating capacity is 45 megawatts — the developer’s own stated figure. SMART’s waste-to-energy project is on the state regulatory record through its filings with CT DEEP,¹²¹¹ and the 45-megawatt capacity is the figure the developer has stated in reporting to residents.¹⁴¹⁶ Because 45 megawatts is above the 25-megawatt threshold, the small-facility exemption does not apply and a Certificate is required.² When an application is filed, CGS 16-50n lets the owner of any property abutting the proposed facility petition for intervenor status in the proceeding.²

Why DEEP must weigh in on need

Under CGS 22a-208d, the DEEP commissioner may not issue a permit to construct or expand a resources recovery facility unless the commissioner first makes a written determination that the facility “is necessary to meet the solid waste disposal needs of the state and will not result in substantial excess capacity of resources recovery facilities or disposal areas.”³ That “is it even needed” question is a statutory precondition, not merely an argument opponents can raise. The underlying authority to permit or deny a solid waste facility rests with DEEP under CGS 22a-208a.³

That test has a factual backdrop the state has already documented. Connecticut’s adopted 2016 Comprehensive Materials Management Strategy commits the state to 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 to a binding target of diverting at least 60% of municipal solid waste from disposal by 2024.⁶ DEEP’s own 2023 Solid Waste Disposal and Diversion Report records that the state diverted only about 35% of the 3.48 million tons of MSW it generated, states verbatim that it “did not meet its statutory goal of 60% diversion by January 1, 2024,” and reports that 940,667 tons of disposal-bound waste were shipped out of state after the MIRA facility closed.⁷ Whether a new 45-megawatt mixed-waste facility is “necessary” to meet the state’s disposal needs, or instead the “substantial excess capacity” the statute forbids, is the question DEEP must answer against that record.³

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.¹³ That plant went through Connecticut’s energy-facility siting review — the same track whose Certificate the Plainfield plant requires — so the record already contains the template for testing a fossil-emitting generator against the state’s climate law before the Council.¹³²

Timeline

What Has Happened So Far

By the company’s own April 2026 estimate the schedule runs roughly a year or more for permits, assuming no delays, then a couple of years to build, which would put the earliest operation no sooner than 2028.¹⁴

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.¹⁵ 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.¹⁵²

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.¹⁸ It passed the House 104–43 and the Senate 25–11,⁹¹⁷ 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. DEEP air and solid-waste applications are filed, but there is no application before the Connecticut Siting Council and no public comment window has opened.¹¹⁴

Has SMART filed with the Connecticut Siting Council?

No. As of April 2026 reporting, no application had been filed, and the company said it would file “in the near future.” The Council’s own pending-matters list shows no SMART or Plainfield gasification docket.¹¹⁴

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

They apply different legal tests. DEEP must make a written determination that the facility is necessary for the state’s disposal needs under CGS 22a-208d, while the Siting Council must separately find a public need and issue a Certificate under CGS 16-50i, which is required because the developer’s stated 45-megawatt output exceeds the 25-megawatt exemption.²³¹⁴

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.⁴⁸¹³

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.¹⁵²

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.⁹¹⁷¹⁰

When could a public comment window open?

When DEEP issues a Notice of Tentative Determination it opens a 30-day comment period. As of April 2026 reporting, no such notice had been posted for this project, so the comment window has not opened.¹⁴