What is Environmental Stewardship?

We manage land throughout our service territory, much of which is located within large transmission line rights-of-way. That land is a unique habitat for a variety of diverse wildlife, insects, plants and other natural resources that we strive to protect. 

We also care for land that the public and property owners can enjoy, taking great care to foster biodiversity, promote conservation, protect wildlife and cultural resources.

We see the preservation of resilient ecosystems within our service territory as part of our responsibility and an important aspect of our ability to deliver reliable services to our customers.

Wildlife And Habitat Protection 

The land in our right of ways (ROWs) often contains features that make it a unique habitat for plants and animals. Our environmental specialists work to help us maintain this land in a way that minimizes impacts of our operation and preserves the biodiversity of the region. 

This strategy of management can promote niche habitats that are essential to the conservation of many protected species of plants, birds, amphibians and reptiles. These areas are also essential in facilitating animal movement, as they act as patches of wilderness in more densely populated New England areas, or as travel corridors for migrating birds. 

We often work in partnership with government agencies and wildlife biologists to help avoid impacting plants and animals and support a sustainable environment around our operations and infrastructure.

Land Management and Preservation

We own and maintain approximately 40,000 acres of land throughout our service territory, along with 22,000 acres of protected watershed land, 15,000 of which is managed by a partnership with the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, The Nature Conservancy and Aquarion Water Company.

Our Eversource Land Trust consists of nearly 1,000 acres of permanently protected open space, which is open to the public for recreational use.

This land has a wide variety of ecosystems, uses and conservation needs, and we work hard with our partners to protect the many functions and resources of forested land through stewardship activities, including research activities and forest management, and the identification and removal of invasive species.

Connecticut Rail Trail expansion

Waste Management

Reduction, recycling, reuse and recovery are key pillars to limit the amount of waste needing to be disposed of or treated. In 2023, our programs prevented more than 77,000 metric tons of material from going to landfills.

Our investment recovery program is focused on repurposing things like scrap metal, batteries, generators, computers, vehicles and more through sale, auction and donation that would otherwise have gone to landfills.

In the second year of our program that refurbishes old electrical transformers to "like new" condition for reuse and recycles transformer oil, we have refurbished 2,698 units, and saved 86,224 gallons of oil. Over 600 tons of metal have been reused or recycled. 

Remediation of historic gas plant

We completed a $2.7 million, five month-long remediation of a historic manufactured gas plant (MGP) in Willimantic, Connecticut.

Gas generation equipment was dismantled and removed from the site in 1953. Environmental assessment activities identified that impacted soil and groundwater from the former MGP operation remained on the site.

We removed approximately 9,200 tons of impacted soil.

Railroad gondolas were used to move the impacted soil, creating about 80% less CO2 emissions than would have been generated by conventional truck transport over roads. We replaced a 100-foot section of a retaining wall that had collapsed after years of erosion from the adjacent Willimantic River to protect the site from severe flooding events.