Coast Guard Museum organizers announce planned themes for inside of museum
New London — The National Coast Guard Museum Association on Monday announced the themes that will drive the interior design of the museum and said it has plans to unveil its conceptual design to the public in the coming weeks.
The museum association is in charge of fundraising for the museum, an estimated $100-plus million project that is planned for the downtown waterfront. The group called Monday's announcement "an important milestone."
The three themes — safety, security and stewardship — are meant to represent the Coast Guard's 11 core missions, which range from marine safety to drug interdiction.
Within those three themes will be five story lines that will be incorporated throughout the museum: lifesavers around the globe; enforcers on the seas; defenders of our nation; protectors of the environment; and champions of commerce.
Gallagher & Associates, the firm hired by the museum association to develop interior design plans for the museum, spent a year reviewing the Coast Guard's 225-year history with input from an exhibit advisory panel of more than 20 nonprofit organizations before presenting the design concepts.
Visitors will begin their museum experience by watching a film that will explain the Coast Guard and its missions, and then move on to different thematic wings that will detail the stories and major milestones of the Coast Guard.
There will also be an educational and technology center, event space, and waterfront and rooftop exhibits.
Museum organizers have said that more finalized design plans, such as those announced Monday, could help attract seven- to eight-figure donations.
Museum association President and CEO Dick Grahn said prospective high-value donors have expressed interest in the safety deck, which will feature exhibits on the legacy of the lifesaving service and search and rescue, and the stewardship deck, which will feature exhibits on accident investigations and enforcement of environmental policies, among others.
The museum association has a Memorandum of Understanding with the Coast Guard to provide naming rights in recognition of various fundraising opportunities, according to Grahn. But the Coast Guard retains the right to say no to any of these requests, he said. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Power plant proposal reminds New Milford of earlier plan
NEW MILFORD — Liba Furhman paused a moment Friday morning, admiring a photo of Main Street where the white church and other buildings stood out against a backdrop of rolling hills.
“Sempra would have been right there,” Furhman said as she tapped the upper right section of the photo in the middle of the trees, indicating the location of a failed proposed power plant.
Furhman, who served as mayor from 1991 to 1995, spent the last two years of the 1990s as the chair of PowerALERT, a community organization of hundreds of residents fighting a proposal to build a 500-megawatt power plant in town.
The proposal, by California-based Sempra Energy, was unanimously denied by the state Siting Council in December 1999 because it went against the state’s environmental, economic, recreational and public welfare policies.
But nearly 20 years later, the Sempra project has re-emerged in conversation as residents again contemplate whether a power plant powered by natural gas should be built in town. This time the proposal comes from Panda Power Funds, a company based in Texas that has built several other plants around the country.
Panda proposes building a 550-megawatt natural gas plant on the site of the former Century Brass mill. The plan was unveiled last month and will be discussed at informational sessions at 7 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday at Sarah Noble Intermediate School and at 1 p.m. Thursday at Town Hall.
People on both sides of the Panda proposal have cited the Sempra plan, both to note the similarities and heighten the differences between the two projects.
Panda representatives have emphasized the cleaner and more efficient technology of their plan compared to Sempra’s and have expressed a willingness to work with the community to address its concerns.
“I’d want the people of New Milford to know that we’re early in the process and we will address these issues,” said Bill Pentak, vice president of investor relations and public affairs for Panda Power Funds. “We really do have a listening ear on this.”
But many of the environmental and property-value concerns raised in the 1990s have resurfaced online in reference to Panda’s project, including at least three Facebook pages and a petition that had more than 730 signatures by Friday evening.
Furhman said she has talked to other people about starting a new PowerALERT group, but there isn’t anything official yet. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Natural gas and New England’s energy needs
There is the natural gas that heats your home. And there is the natural gas that lights up millions of homes.
It’s necessary to keep that in mind in thinking about these things.
The 550-megawatt natural gas power plant that Texas-based Panda Powers Fund is proposing for the old Century Brass plant in New Milford is one of the latter.
The proposal comes as big natural gas power plants, and the pipelines that were supposed to carry gas to them, have come under increased scrutiny. People who used to be reluctantly in favor of them are increasingly skeptical about the whole enterprise.
They acknowledge natural gas burns cleaner than coal or oil. It’s cheaper. But given companies mine that gas — the messy, methane-leaking process known as fracking — they’re deciding the pollution may not be worth the price.
“I was a big fan of natural gas two or three years ago,” said Connecticut-based energy consultant Joel Gordes. “Not so much now.”
Environmental groups — including the Connecticut Fund for the Environment and the Sierra Club — are doing a sort of watchful waiting on the New Milford project.
“Right now, we’d like a little more information about it,” said Margaret Miner, executive director of the Rivers Alliance of Connecticut. “But it does raise red flags. We are concerned.”
The New Milford project comes at a time when grand plans to increase the amount of natural gas coming into New England have stalled.
Kinder Morgan, a Houston-based petroleum company, dropped its plans to build a new pipeline to the region in May.
And last month, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection dropped out of its participation in the Access Northeast project, which would have greatly expanded the capacity of the Algonquin pipeline in the region.
DEEP spokesman Dennis Schain said the DEEP stepped away from Access Northeast when a Massachusetts court said electric bill ratepayers in that state could not be forced to pay the cost of building the pipeline through higher bills.
Schain said that decision shifted too much of the cost of the project onto Connecticut ratepayers CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE