The John Oliver Memorial Sewer Plant started off as a joke, it started off with Oliver going on his T.V show called “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” and bashing Danbury. The feud between the Mayor of Danbury Mark Boughton and Oliver came to a point where Oliver talked about Danbury on his TV show.

“If you are going to forget a town in Connecticut why not forget Danbury because, and this is true f*ck Danbury,” he said this during one of his segments on his show. 

Boughton played into his joke: “Behind me you’ll see the City of Danbury sewer plant, we are going to rename it the John Oliver memorial sewer plant, why because it’s full of crap just like you John.” Some people would freak out over what Oliver said, but Boughton made light of the situation by saying some jokes himself.

Once Boughton made the video, Oliver was all for it, and said “I’ve just been murdered by the city of Danbury and I love everything about it.” He also said that this restored his faith in human nature. 

There was a little bump in the road when the Boughton said “We’re not really going to name the sewer plant after Oliver however he is still full of crap.”John was very disappointed when Boughton said that because he was looking forward to it. His response was “F*ck you Danbury!” 

John did not stop there; he gave the Boughton an offer he could not refuse. “I will donate $55,000 to charities in your area.” Those being $25,000 to the Connecticut Food Bank, $25,000 to fill the requests of the Danbury school teachers on Donors Choose, and $5,000 to ALS Connecticut. He said he would only donate if Boughton followed up on his promise to name the Plant after Oliver, “I want this, I need this.”

He gave Boughton one week to respond, and if he didn’t respond Oliver would give this offer to other towns, not Danbury. 

Boughton agreed to this deal as long as Oliver would go to the ribbon cutting and visit Danbury. He did in fact come wearing gloves, a plastic bag around his body, and a very big face shield like box around his face. He was very well protected, to say the least, more than the Mayor who was only wearing a face mask. 

The situation became a public thing and it was on many news websites and it was trending on Reddit. Danbury is a very small city and is never really on the news so for this situation to be broadcasted and talked about in many places was very new to the residents of Danbury. Many residents of Danbury are thrilled and supportive of the renaming of the plant. All of the publicity caused a chain of local donations, more than $200,000 have been raised.