Increasing Costs and Diminishing Supplies?
This story is developing.
First Selectman Fred Camillo at the July 9, 2026 Board of Selectmen Meeting:
“I was stopped by neighbors who lived in little houses...they knocked them down and they rebuilt. And then they were informed by Connecticut Natural Gas that there is not enough capacity... I set up a meeting with CNG...and it was true. There is a capacity issue all over the state of Connecticut but no one was aware of it.”
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Rising utility costs, water limitations, and natural gas shortages may be constraining Greenwich’s future growth. Are state housing mandates and infrastructure realities on a collision course? |
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We read this story first on GreenwichWise.com
The Analysis
Competitive markets generally allocate resources efficiently because prices signal scarcity, encourage conservation, and reward new supply.
Public utilities are different. Water, natural-gas, and electric distribution systems are usually natural monopolies: constructing competing networks of mains, pipes, poles, and wires throughout the same community would be wasteful. Regulation is therefore needed to prevent monopoly pricing and require safe, reliable service.
The challenge is finding the right balance. Regulation can protect consumers, but poorly designed rules can also raise costs or discourage investment in essential infrastructure. The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (“PURA”) is the Connecticut regulator of investor-owned electricity, natural-gas, water, and telecommunications companies.
Greenwich residents already know the cost side of this problem. Connecticut electricity is expensive because New England relies heavily on natural gas delivered through constrained pipelines; customers bear substantial regional transmission and local distribution costs; and the state has placed numerous environmental, reliability and social-policy programs on electric bills. Water customers must also fund reservoirs, pumping facilities, treatment plants, and aging mains.
The emerging concern is not only price, but capacity. A mix of natural gas pipelines and LNG imports serve all of New England. Because geology prevents underground gas storage in the region, New England relies on a “just-in-time” delivery model that frequently faces infrastructure bottlenecks during peak winter cold snaps. In Greenwich, demand for natural gas has been surging, leading many homeowners to install propane tanks.
Water supply faces similar pressures. The most recent water reservoir built in 1954 serving Greenwich was the Bargh Reservoir. Summer demand has increased significantly since then, forcing permanent limits on automatic outdoor irrigation. New developments, such as the Central Middle School project, illustrate how local delivery capacity can constrain growth even when overall supply exists.
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These constraints especially matter because the Town does not have unlimited control over future construction. |
Recent state housing laws also require more planning and encourage housing growth. This creates a potential mismatch: state policy may promote housing while the water, electric, road, sewer, and public-service infrastructure needed to support it may take years to approve, finance, and build.
Planning and Zoning will increasingly need to consider not only whether a project satisfies zoning standards, but whether cumulative development is matched by credible plans for utility capacity, fire protection, drainage, transportation, and other essential services.
The sensible objective is neither unregulated monopoly nor regulation indifferent to economic consequences. Regulation should protect consumers while permitting timely investment, transparent recovery of legitimate costs, and coordination between housing policy and supporting infrastructure. Without that balance, Greenwich residents may face the worst of both worlds: higher utility bills and increasingly constrained service.
Post-scripts
A famous wager on resource scarcity: In 1980, biologist Paul Ehrlich and economist Julian Simon wagered on the inflation-adjusted prices of five metals. Ten years later, their combined price had fallen, and Simon won. The episode shows how prices, substitution, technology, and innovation can ease scarcity.
Nuclear fusion advances this past year offer another promising path. Unlike fission, fusion is safer with no chain reactions or long-term radioactive waste. After scaling-up, fusion reactors could provide the cleanest and lowest cost baseload power and integrate directly into existing grids. Fortunately, and perhaps surprisingly, regulators (in the US and the UK) have already recognized the advantages of fusion reactors and are implementing regulatory frameworks to accelerate commercial deployment.
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