Bridgeport’s South End has always been more than just another neighborhood. It is a living community on the Long Island Sound.
Now, United Illuminating wants to rebuild its Fairfield to Congress Railroad transmission line by planting utility poles as tall as 195 feet through the South End, on private and city land in densely occupied community blocks.
The Connecticut Siting Council should deny this proposal. Doing otherwise would not only damage irreplaceable cultural sites – it would also silence residents’ voices in shaping the future of the neighborhoods they call home. This would not be the first time we have been forced to shoulder the region’s burdens. The South End has unfairly been the designated area for coal plants, substations, and other infrastructure for decades.
The plan would claim acres on actual neighborhood blocks, placing massive monopoles right in our streets, on the land where families gather in churches, children play on sidewalks, and entrepreneurs open storefronts with great hope.
These towers would loom over homes and historic landmarks – including our own 1848 Mary and Eliza Freeman Houses and the Barnum Museum, Bridgeport’s only national landmark. The message has long been that Bridgeport is expendable.
But our history proves otherwise.
In the 19th Century, Little Liberia (1821–1899) stood here as one of the earliest settlements of free people of color, Black and Indigenous. Residents built businesses, a school for colored children, and even Bridgeport’s first free lending library. They created opportunity and community under circumstances meant to deny them both.
That spirit of possibility never left. Lewis Latimer, who lived here, transformed Edison’s lightbulb into a lasting world-changing invention. If Latimer could take something that flickered for only seconds and make it light the world, surely today’s utility can be required to explore alternatives that won’t harm our community.
The current proposal is not the only option. Community partners have identified alternatives – including undergrounding segments – that United Illuminating dismissed as “too expensive.” Independent engineering estimates obtained by local groups suggest otherwise. If the Siting Council denies the application, the company would need to reapply under updated rules requiring a transparent, public analysis of costs and alternatives. That is the process Bridgeport deserves – one based on evidence, not assumptions.
This fight is about more than just utility poles. It is about fairness, transparency, and respect. When concerns arose in more affluent Fairfield, the Council shifted the project to protect that community in a decision that has since been found illegal. Bridgeport –- a designated environmental justice community -– was left to bear the burdens, with utility poles slated near residences like the Windward Apartments, cultural resources, and areas planned for affordable housing and small businesses. That disparity echoes a long history of environmental injustice. But the public is engaged now, and we are watching.
It also threatens to derail the revitalization already underway. Over the last few years, the South End has drawn millions of dollars of investment to restore historic sites, create housing, and attract new businesses. That momentum builds on a legacy of vision – the same community that once hosted a seaside resort hotel for wealthy Black travelers (documented in a letter to abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass) is now striving again to welcome visitors, families, and entrepreneurs. Planting steel poles over these efforts would undermine the economic momentum residents have worked so hard to build.
Bridgeport’s South End is worth protecting – not only for the heritage of Little Liberia, its archaeological sites, or the more than 100 structures eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. It is worth protecting for the people living here today – and the future we are still building.
Tomorrow, September 18, the Connecticut Siting Council is scheduled to vote—but that decision may be delayed, as Gov. Ned Lamont recently suggested. If it is delayed, it must be to ensure a fair and transparent process where everyone has a chance to evaluate and respond to the proposals.
When the time comes, the council will face a choice: side with a utility that dismissed alternatives out of hand, or stand with a community fighting for its heritage and its right to decide what happens where it lives, works, prays, and plays. It should choose the latter.
Maisa Tisdale is President and CEO of the Mary & Eliza Freeman Center for History and Community in Bridgeport.