Waterbury Clock Company Complex

As announced in the Rep-Am on June 26, the former Waterbury Clock office building will soon be demolished, along with portions of the factory complex. The buildings have been crumbling apart for decades. The factory complex is listed on the National Register of Historic Properties.

The former Waterbury Clock Company office building in 2007

Aerial View of the former Waterbury Clock Company factory complex, 2020

The Waterbury Clock Company was formed in 1857, a spin-off of the Benedict & Burnham Manufacturing Company. It became a highly successful company, selling its products all over the world.

Although the name of the company specified clocks, they also produced watches, most notably the "dollar watch" starting in the 1890s. The watch was an oversize pocket watch with a mechanism based on alarm clocks. The company teamed up with Robert H. Ingersoll, a retailer in New York City, to improve and market the watch under the Ingersoll name. By 1910, Waterbury Clock was producing 3,500,000 dollar watches each year for Ingersoll. The watches were so ubiquitous, Ingersoll declared the product to be "the watch that made the dollar famous."

Despite the popularity of the dollar watch, Ingersoll went into bankruptcy in 1922. Waterbury Clock bought out their holdings, continuing the use of the Ingersoll name for a line of cheap watches. They later added a line of Disney character watches, including a highly collectible Mickey Mouse watch.

Waterbury Clock is also known for the devastating effects of radium on its employees. Radium was used in the early 1900s by several companies to highlight the dials on clocks and watches, making them visible in the dark. The radiation that made the dials glow in the dark also sickened and killed many of the young women hired to paint the radium onto the dials. All of the buildings in the North Elm Street complex have been tested for radiation hazards.

Waterbury Clock Company was purchased by Norwegian investors in 1942 and was renamed United States Time Corporation in 1944. The name was changed again in 1969, to Timex.

The Life and Death of a Factory

Waterbury has lost another historic factory building to catastrophic fire. The building most recently known as Ansonia Copper and Brass caught fire on July 30, 2018. The dramatic fire was covered by all of the area news media.

WTNH Channel 8 coverage of the factory fire, July 31, 2018

Amazingly, the fire was contained to just one building. Sadly, it was the oldest and most beautiful building in a sprawling complex of historic factory buildings, with a rich history that made it worth preserving.

Gordon Webster Burnham

Gordon W. Burnham (1803-1885) was born and raised to be a farmer in eastern Connecticut, but instead wound up as one of Waterbury's most successful and wealthiest brass magnates, rubbing shoulders with Cornelius Vanderbilt and marketing Waterbury's brass products to the world.

Gordon W. Burnham
Published in The Town and City of Waterbury, Volume II

A Century of Melting Pot Frictions: Part Four

Part of a series exploring the prejudice each new immigrant group encountered when they arrived in this country.
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Russians

Russian and Italian immigrants were often grouped together as anarchists, perhaps because many of them were socialists advocating for improved labor rights. Russian socialists were referred to as Bolsheviks, the Russian political party led by Lenin which seized control of the Russian government in October 1917. Within a year's time, newspapers across the United States were instilling a fear of the "red terror," Bolshevism, in the hearts of their readers.

Industrial Estate Sale, Day One

9 Town Line Road, Wolcott, CT

The estate sale has begun! Buyers from Rhode Island, New York, Vermont, Wisconsin, and, of course, Connecticut, made the first purchases this morning. Someone in Switzerland sent me an email last night letting me know he wanted to come, but can't make it, and inquired about a few machines.

The sale runs daily, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., through Sunday.

Industrial Estate Sale

My father passed away last year. The sale of the contents of his business, on Town Line Road in Wolcott, is being held next week, June 11 - 15. For full details regarding the sale, visit mechanicalcurios.com.

Here are some sample photographs of the variety of items being sold. See something you like? Come buy it!

City Ready-Mix Concrete Co.

There are certain landmarks I drive past regularly, always meaning to stop and take a closer look, always meaning to find out more about what it is. The City Ready-Mix Concrete structure is one of those landmarks.

City Ready-Mix Concrete plant, 434 Harper's Ferry Road.

City Ready-Mix Concrete has been at Harper's Ferry Road since the 1950s. I haven't been able to find any information about the company, but I did solve the "mystery" of why concrete plants have towers and long conveyer belts.

City Ready-Mix Concrete plant, 434 Harper's Ferry Road.

Depending on the set-up, the long conveyer belt runs from a quarry to the processing plant. Either before or after being placed on the conveyer (from what I can tell, there are a couple of different plant types), the rocks and gravel are broken down into small bits.

The tower, better known as a silo, is used to store fine sand. The sand and the broken-up rocks from the quarry get poured into a mixer, combined with some water, and then squirted out as concrete.

High-quality concrete involves chemists monitoring the relative chlorides, sulfates, alkalis, and solids. There are a number of different recipes for making concrete. The ancient Egyptians used lime and gypsum. Today's manufacturers use materials including limestone, clay, gypsum, minerals, and various chemicals.

In modern manufacture, cement is used as the paste to hold together the bits and pieces (aggregates) of concrete. That's right: cement and concrete are two different things.

There's another abandoned concrete plant nearby, in Torrington. I've driven by it a number of times over the years, and always wondered what it was. Now I know.

Old concrete plant at a quarry on South Main Street in Torrington.

Ready-mix concrete is still in demand, and there is at least one ready-mix company still in business in Waterbury. Sega Ready Mix Concrete is in the industrial complex on Chase River Road in Waterville. Their silo and conveyor belt are visible from Route 8. If I have time this summer, I'll see if I can get a tour of their plant--and some answers to my lingering questions about how concrete is made!

Sega's conveyor and silo.

Radium

As reported in today's Hartford Courant, the last surviving woman to have worked for Waterbury Clock painting radium onto watch dials has passed away at the impressive age of 107. Mae Keane spent two months in 1927 working with radium, following the instructions to bring the tip of the brush to a fine point with her lips. Luckily for her, she was not very good at the job and was transferred to another job. Those two months were enough to cause lasting damage: Keane lost all of her teeth when she was in her 30s and suffered from pain in her gums for the rest of her life.

As I understand it, when radium is ingested (which happens when you use your mouth to point a brush containing radium paint), the body treats it like calcium, absorbing it into your bones. Without sufficient calcium, bones crumble. Since radium is radioactive, it quickly causes bone cancer. Many of the women who worked for Waterbury Clock and other companies using radium died horrific deaths from radium poisoning.

For more on the "Radium Girls" and their history, I recommend this article from 1996.

Although the dangers of radium were obvious, and very public, by 1928, using radium on watch dials continued until the 1960s. As of February 1, 1963, the sale of pocket watches with radium dials was banned in New York City, on the grounds that they exposed their owners to excessive levels of radiation. Wristwatches, however, were still considered safe.

By 1967, the general public was growing increasingly concerned about exposure to radiation. An article focusing on the dangers of X-rays mentioned that millions of bedside alarm clocks had radium dials, and compared the risk of wearing a radium-dial wristwatch to 30 years of nuclear fallout, a top concern of the '60s.

Manufacturers eventually abandoned radium in favor of less dangerous luminous compounds, but it wasn't out of concern for workers' safety: it was a response to public fear of being exposed to radiation by their watches.

A while ago, I had the opportunity to "play" with radium (don't worry, I did not touch it, breath it, lick it, or otherwise put myself in danger). I was given access to a box of Fitrite Radium Outfit, which has instructions on the label for coating the hands of a watch with radium. It would have been sold to watch repair shops, not used in factories.

The label design suggests it might be from the 1930s.

Inside the box: small metal containers for the radium paint, a radium spreading stick,
and a razor blade for scraping off excess radium from the watch hand.

The radium paint in strong lighting.

The same container in complete darkness. I didn't have at tripod with me, so it's very blurry.

Morden Manufacturing

One of the great things about Waterbury is the depth and breadth of its history. There are countless stories to be discovered and shared. Here’s one that starts as the story of an early woman entrepreneur, and ends as a tragic tale of suicide and a phantom lover.

In 1901, a woman named Lucena Mandana Morden left Portland, Oregon and came to Waterbury, seeking a manufacturer for her patent. Nicknamed Lulu, she was born in 1866 in Nebraska to Canadian immigrants. The youngest of eleven children, Morden at first chose a traditional career for herself, attending the Teachers’ College at Emporia, Kansas. She lived with her family in Nebraska during the 1880s, working as a teacher.

Sometime around 1890, Morden relocated to Portland, Oregon and trained as a stenographer. She lived with her brother, Charles Augustus Morden. Still not satisfied with her life, Morden enrolled as a History major at Stanford University, graduating in 1896. She returned to Portland, taking a job as a stenographer for the Chamber of Commerce.

Morden’s life took a new direction in 1898, when she filed her first patent, for a “Separate-Leaf Book” (book bound with two metal rings). The patent was approved on June 19, 1900. The next step was to find a manufacturer for her patent. Morden’s brother, Charles, helped finance the venture with a loan.

Illustration of Morden's patent, No. 651,950 (June 19, 1900)

Morden came to Waterbury hoping to find an existing company willing to manufacture her product. According to a very brief history of her company given in the December 1921 issue of Office Appliances: The Magazine of Office Equipment, the smallest order she could place was for 100,000 lots each of three sizes. Instead, she decided to establish her own manufacturing company for her new product.

Advertisement in The Inland Printer, November 1906.

Morden established her new business at 53 Canal Street in 1901, then relocated it to 59 Grand Street. The Morden Manufacturing Corporation of Waterbury was incorporated on August 9, 1904, and a factory space was established at 143 Waterville Street. The company relocated to 40 Johnson Street, in the former Turner mansion at the corner of Chestnut Avenue (the conversion of the house into a small factory was controversial; it has since been replaced by a massive brick apartment complex).

As president of her company, Morden may have been the first female manufacturing executive in Waterbury. For much of her company’s history, she was the only female manufacturing executive here.

Advertisement in The American Stationer, February 23, 1907.

In the 1920s, Morden moved into a part of the house/workshop on the corner of Johnson Street and Chestnut Avenue. She never married and apparently had few friends. She was dedicated to her business, garnering 47 patents. The company’s capital was listed at $40,000 in 1920—larger than many of Waterbury’s other small manufacturers.

Advertisement in Office Appliances: The Magazine of Office Equipment, July 1922.

Morden Key Ring, illustrated in Hardware, November 10, 1906.
The ring opened using a recessed lever ("A") to activate a swivel gate ("C").

Somewhere along the road of this success story, things went terribly wrong. The first possible hint of trouble appears in the 1910 census, which listed Morden as widowed. It’s possible that the census taker was mistaken—in fact, there are numerous errors in Morden’s listing. She claimed to be a full ten years younger than she actually was, that she was born in Connecticut, and that her parents were born in England. Was there a miscommunication between Morden and the census taker, or was Morden showing the first hints of mental health problems?

On December 21, 1926, Lulu Morden committed suicide. Her body was found by the police, alerted to the possibility of a problem by her gardener and handyman, Frederick M. Feest. Morden had sealed up the windows of the kitchen with quilts, and turned on the gas. Next to her body were letters and other documents addressed to the Waterbury National Bank – the content of the documents is unknown.

Morden was buried in California, alongside her mother, Hannah Lewis Morden. She was survived by her sister, Mima Morden, and her brother, Charles Morden.

At first, the newspaper accounts (in the Waterbury American) detailed Morden’s health problems and loneliness as the likely cause of her suicide. The American ended its first article (21 December 1926) about her death by stating “Miss Morden’s career is a story of struggle against odds and a subsequent rise in the industrial world. When signing business letters she always used the business signature of L. M. Morden and, it is said, that hundreds of business men dealing with her for years were under the impression that they were exchanging letters with a man.”

The sensationalism of her death led to widespread coverage. Some newspapers fancifully wrote about her story as an illustration of the perils of ambition. Pennsylvania’s The Kane Republican (24 December 1926) wrote that Morden came east “with a determination to succeed in the business world… [and] killed herself here in her palatial home because in her eagerness for financial independence she had neglected to make friends.”

Other newspapers leapt onto a supernatural interpretation, beginning with the Waterbury Republican’s article, “Mystery Veils Strange Death of Woman Here,” on December 22, 1926. The paper reported that “Miss Morden imagined that she had lost a phantom lover” was being rumored about town. Although the significance and veracity of this were unknown to the paper, the article went on to explain that the phantom lover “is supposed to have appeared at various times in the reminiscent mind of the woman and influenced her strangely.”  The Medical Examiner denied any mention of the phantom lover in Morden’s will or other documents found with her body.

The phantom lover rumor, not surprisingly, became a national news item, spinning quickly from a “rumor about town” to a full fact. On December 25, 1926, the Los Angeles Times ran an article blaming Morden’s death on the mysterious phantom lover, declaring that she took her own life “as a result of ‘jilt’ by imaginary admirer.” Morden was described as “eccentric,” with a personal fortune worth half a million dollars, and wearing clothing twenty years’ out of style. The article claimed that Morden “told persons that this phantom appeared to her at times in her dreams and made love to her; and that it also advised her regarding business affairs.”

The Miami News ran a nearly identical article the following day, adding a few embellishments (such as her clothing being 25 years out of style). Both articles mistakenly gave her age as 50, rather than her actual age of 60. Since her age on the 1910 census was also off by ten years, maybe this was deliberate on her part.

Is there any truth to the rumor of Lulu Morden’s phantom lover? It is too remarkable to have been the invention of the Waterbury Republican, and it is too bizarre to have been an unfounded rumor. Perhaps Morden really did believe that she was visited by the ghost of a lost love—that could explain why she was listed as widowed in the 1910 census. While she never was married, if she suffered from a mental illness involving a ghostly lover, perhaps she considered herself to be the widow of the phantom.

This is the sort of story that most likely has no firm answers. It’s the sort of story that makes for great fiction. Maybe someday there will be a gripping ghost story written about Lulu Morden and her phantom lover.

Stripping Down Chase

Not much left to this building now. Seeing more of it disappear every week is a powerful experience.

Mile Long No More

Driving down Thomaston Avenue yesterday, I had to stop and take photos. The old Chase Metal Works is disappearing rapidly.

 

The Metal Works factory complex was built starting in 1910 (expansion was constant for years, partly because the company's production increased during World War I). The entire Chase complex of buildings sprawled over 211 acres in two towns. The bed of the Naugatuck River was re-routed to make room for the factory. By the 1940s, the plant was nearly a mile long, rivaling Scovill’s mile-long mill (now the Brass Mill Mall).

A portion of Chase Metal Works in the 1930s.
The section currently being torn down is in the upper center and right of center in this photo.
(Collection of Mattatuck Museum)

 
Roger Freeman, MIT graduate, was the construction engineer for the Chase Companies. He put together a construction team of about a dozen assistant engineers and four hundred laborers. The engineers included another six graduates of MIT; the others were from Dartmouth, Rensselaer and Yale. In a report to his alumni newsletter, Freeman reported that they designed and built reinforced concrete and structural steel factory buildings for the Metal Works and for Chase Rolling Mills and Waterbury Manufacturing  over two years’ time during WWI. The last concrete building was a six-story flat slab structure, 200 feet by 60 feet, constructed at a pace of six days per floor.  

The factory building with the sawtooth roof was constructed in 1916 and was considered very modern at the time. It was a challenge for the Metal Works’ Chief Engineer, John E. Williams, to heat the building. He wrote in 1928 that “the amount of glass used in its roof of modern saw-tooth construction and its huge rooms, make the heating a serious question for consideration by the modern engineer.” He solved the problem by installing a then-unique heating system connecting over 78 miles of hot water pipe directly onto the condensers in the power house.

In October 1915, Chase Metal Works reported that they had begun work on several additions to its facilities: a one-story brick and steel factory building, 140 x 180 feet; three two-story additions, 60 x 260 feet, 60 x 320 feet, and 60 x 120 feet; two two-story brick additions, 60 x 160 feet and 60 x 200 feet; and two other additions, 60 x 80 feet and 60 x 120 feet.

Seeing it being torn down, I felt like it was the end of an era. But what era? Chase shut down the Metal Works factory in 1976. The only thing ending now is the era of abandoned factory buildings. However, without those visual relics, the past will seem more distant and unrelated to our present.

South End

I've been planning on writing this blog post for a few weeks now. The theme was going to be "why South Main Street is a terrible location for the biofuel plant." Earlier this week, I had decided that today was the day I finally would have time to get this done. Lo and behold! this morning's newspaper announced that Chestnut Hill had decided to give up on moving into Waterbury.

I was sorry to see how much animosity was involved in the announcement. I can understand their sentiment, however, since they probably assume that Larry DePillo represented all of the opposition. DePillo devotes a tremendous amount of time to protesting just about everything (okay, I'm exaggerating, it just seems like that sometimes) and he typically cites information that is either completely wrong or is correct but misinterpreted. More than once I have seen outsiders to Waterbury become exceedingly frustrated and flat-out baffled by DePillo's speeches at public hearings. While I appreciate the energy he puts into his causes, I wish he would take the time to get his facts right. He makes all of us look bad.

The Republican-American has run a few stories suggesting that those of us opposing Chestnut Hill never bothered to research the facts before arriving at our decisions to oppose the plant. I certainly was more than willing to consider their proposal in full fairness, and from what I can tell, many other opposition voices also did the research first. For more on the topic, see Bryan Baker's blog post, "Good Riddance".

Unfortunately for Chestnut Hill, the facts were damning. Their poor track record is unsettling. Their venture in New Jersey was a colossal environmental and health disaster. Their lack of respect towards the Waterbury community compounded the problem. Factor in the unsuitability of the location relative to several plans to revitalize that neighborhood, and factor in pollution concerns, and the proposal falls flat.

One question that I was going to raise before reading the news this morning, but that I think is a valid concern going forward, is the issue of pollution levels. Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention, but it seems like the amount of pollutants legally allowed for each site creating pollution (like FirstLight and Phoenix Soil) is based solely on the output of that single business. [If someone knows the answer to this, please share!] While the amount of pollutants being produced by a single business might fall within legal safety limits, the combined total pollutants being produced by all the businesses in Waterbury's flood plain area is, logically, higher. If a company wants to add a plant that creates even a miniscule amount of pollution, shouldn't the acceptability be based on the total existing pollution level?

Speaking of which, what is the current total existing pollution level in downtown and the South End?


Now that Chestnut Hill has decided to forget about Waterbury, we're left with the question of what to do with that factory site. A few people have expressed bitterness over the loss of Chestnut Hill (which I don't think is that great a loss). The great thing about this whole situation is that people are demanding to know how the city will bring that site back to life. This is fantastic. One year ago, this neighborhood barely registered on anyone's radar. The Loyola group has struggled for support. The residents of this neighborhood have struggled to have even their most basic needs met. Our success in preventing Chestnut Hill from starting their biofuel factory on South Main Street is only one small step in revitalizing an important part of our city.

The question remains, what is the future of that property? It's a large tract of land with a rich history and loads of contaminants. I decided that I should stick to my original plan of visiting the site before tossing out any suggestions.

I drove down to the South End this afternoon and parked in the side lot at PetSmart. I wound up spending almost two hours walking the perimeter of the Anamet facility (a good chunk of that time was spent talking with security guards at Ansonia Copper & Brass / FirstLight -- I was accidentally trespassing, but after I explained myself we had a really good conversation about the brass industry and what's going on now with old factory sites). I took a lot of photos and came to a few conclusions.

Basically, I have to say that the property is not well-suited for industry. Times have changed, as have logistics and expectations. The only practical way that large trucks can reach the site is from the Meadow Street exits of I-84, but even then it's a little tricky with some of the turns.

In times past, the Naugatuck and Mad Rivers were seen as power sources and convenient sewage systems. Today they have the potential to be fantastic recreational facilities and therefore a reason for people to choose to move to Waterbury. We should be working to convert the rivers to parks, rather than encouraging the restoration of industrial facilities on these magnificent resources.

Also in times past, it was considered perfectly acceptable to locate people's homes directly across the street from factories. This can't possibly be seen as acceptable today. It's just plain uncivilized.

There are factory buildings running along South Main Street from Jewelry Street to Washington Avenue. They are bleak, bland and crowd the street. They have no architectural value. Tear them down and widen South Main Street, turning it into a tree-lined boulevard with bicycle lanes and ample sidewalks. Find money from somewhere to clean up the brownfield pollution (yeah, I know, it's not that easy a task, but let's not be stopped--if we continue to complain and protest and fight like we've done the past few months, just imagine what we could accomplish!).

I don't have any answers as to what should replace the factory buildings. It needs to be something that works well within a residential neighborhood and can function as a buffer against the FirstLight facility on the other side of the river. Imagine a greenway running along the river. That could be enough of a buffer. The Anamet property could become a mixture of condos and retail.

I took too many photos to post here, so I've got them loaded onto Picasa. You can watch them as a slideshow or you can click on this link to the page and see them individually with captions/commentary and some map locations.

More on Chestnut Hill

The more I learn about the proposed biofuel plant, the less I like about it. Turns out the company, Chestnut Hill, has a long, long list of environmental violations, not just the smell problem that was publicized.

One of the comments added to my blog post on the topic made a very good point: "If the local waste water treatment facility is not involved in the discussions, this plant could bring the existing WWTP to its knees. Smell is obviously a big issue, as is the compost on the back end. Folks love to call it organic but typically the compost is full of material that wouldn't digest, like plastics, glass, etc."

After all the things I've learned about Chestnut Hill and the logistics of the intended location on South Main Street, I have to say that I am firmly against the plan as it currently stands.

For more (and more informed) reading on the topic, visit the Waterbury Observer blog for an article from May 14 by John Murray. Also visit the blog of Bryan P. Baker, who is a member of Waterbury's Environmental Commission, has been following the topic very closely and has posted several times regarding his thoughts on the matter.

The Biofuel Debate

The Republican-American and The Observer have been covering a proposal for a biofuel company (Chestnut Hill BioEnergy) to open in the former Anamet factory building in the South End. The Independents, led by Larry DePillo, have been loudly protesting the plan. My initial, uneducated, response was "biofuel is bad." Over the past several years, I have read news articles insisting that biofuel is full of hidden hazards, that it ultimately costs more than it saves, that it is bad, bad, bad. I have driven through small towns plastered with signs protesting proposed biofuel factories. But before writing this blog post, I decided I had better do some research first. Here's what I learned:

First, there is more than just one type of biofuel. The really bad kind wastes land and crops to grow corn which is converted to fuel. This is a very dangerous form of biofuel which has the potential to destroy world economies and increase the rate of destruction of vital forests. The biofuel company planning to move to Waterbury is not this type of factory. They will use food garbage from grocery stores and other large-scale producers of formerly-edible waste. This is good. This is fantastic. Instead of piling up garbage in a landfill where it does nothing but stink, we convert it into energy and thereby reduce our dependency on the non-renewable energy sources. This is the future of energy, and we have the opportunity to participate in it. There might still be some issues relating to the energy needed to power the biofuel plant, but I think that is a larger issue that doesn't really impact Waterbury.

Second, while Chestnut Hill Biofuel has a past record of operating a stinky factory (in New Jersey, if I'm remembering correctly), a biofuel factory does not need to produce any odors whatsoever. In fact, I found a website (http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_processor.html) that gives advice on how to build your own biodiesel processor, odor/fume free, in your own garage. This is an amazing concept: take your food scraps and whatever dies in the fridge, and make your own fuel. It also speaks to the potential for a biofuel factory to be a very good neighbor. If it is operating correctly, there should be no smells and no more hazard than a gas station.

Now, granted, I am not a biofuel industry expert, but I think Chestnut Hill BioEnergy is potentially a very good addition to Waterbury. They have received a $500,000 grant from the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, which suggests that they have been carefully examined and will be inspected throughout their installation/set-up process. Careful oversight should ensure that the facility will be safe and odor-free.

There are still a few other issues that have been raised. One is the selected site within Waterbury. The former Anamet factory is on South Main Street, with access from Route 8 via Washington Avenue and from I-84 going down South Main Street. These are both fairly narrow, crowded streets, not really ideal for large trucks going to and from the factory (back in the old days, the factories all had their own railroad spurs for this purpose). The future of this area of the South End is currently in limbo: it is in desperate need of revitalization. The Loyola group has a plan to dramatically improve the quality of life for this neighborhood, but the Board of Aldermen are inexplicably reluctant to help move that plan forward, despite having already funded the earliest phase of the project. I don't know if a biofuel plant is beneficial to this neighborhood. I would like to know why this specific site within Waterbury was chosen--it is in a location that has become primarily residential, while there are other areas of the city, close by, that are primarily industrial. It would be a tremendously good thing if the city had a clear plan of improvement in place for this neighborhood, but it seems like the majority of the city leaders don't care about this neighborhood (okay, now I'm wandering off on a less-informed rant).

Another issue is "why Waterbury?" Waterbury suffers from severely low self-esteem. We're like an insecure teenager who gets invited to a party by the cool kids, but assumes that it's going to end in disaster and doesn't go (or leaves early under the mistaken belief that he/she has done something embarrassing). The state is supporting the establishment of a biofuel plant in Waterbury, and many of us automatically assume that this must be a bad thing, that the state is picking on us because they don't like us. We view our industrial facilities as liabilities, not as assets. This is a mistake. The toxic pollutants left by the past manufacturers are definite liabilities, but the facilities themselves are assets. A properly operated biofuel plant could very well prove to be a tremendous asset for Waterbury.

I think the only real questions are whether or not the former Anamet factory is the best location within Waterbury for Chestnut Hill BioEnergy, and what supervision and safeguards will be in place to ensure that the facility operates properly.