State to receive $3 million from feds to fix state roads and bridges damaged in floods

PAUL HUGHES 

HARTFORD — The Federal Highway Administration will award Connecticut $3 million in emergency funding to help repair state roads and bridges damaged in the Aug. 18 flash floods.

The governor’s office on Thursday announced the FHWA notified state officials that the “quick release” funding from its Emergency Relief program is being directed to the state Department of Transportation.

The emergency funds will assist DOT with ongoing road and bridge repairs to restore essential transportation links. State transportation officials reported 30 state roads were damaged in the 1,000-year rainstorm and flood that swept across western parts of Connecticut.

At this time, only two state roads remain partially closed. There are two sections of Route 67 in Oxford and Seymour and a section of Route 34 in Oxford. DOT officials expect to complete temporary bridges that will allow Route 67 to fully reopen by the end of September, and a temporary bridge needed to reopen Route 34 in Oxford is anticipated to take until the end of October to complete

In a joint statement, Gov. Ned Lamont and Transportation Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto applauded $3 million in emergency FHWA assistance.

“The quick support of federal emergency relief funds ensures that the rebuilding efforts on our roads will continue uninterrupted,” Lamont said.

The governor’s office reported state officials continue to prepare requests for major federal disaster declaration that could make federal funding available to help homeowners, businesses, and local and state governments pay for recovery costs. Meanwhile, the Lamont administration will also continue to pursue more emergency relief funding.

At Lamont’s request, President Joe Biden issued an emergency declaration on Aug. 22 for Fairfield, Litchfield and New Haven counties. The declaration authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to supplement state and local response efforts and help coordinate relief efforts.

In a related development, the state Department of Economic and Community Development received 129 applications Tuesday and Wednesday from small businesses for state grants to cover cleanup efforts, replenishing lost inventory, replacing equipment, and offsetting lost revenue.

In the immediate aftermath of the Aug. 18 flooding, the DECD stood up a $5 million grant program for businesses with fewer than 100 employees in Fairfield, Litchfield and New Haven Counties. Businesses are eligible for grants of up $25,000 to help them rebuild and recover. Nonprofit organizations are also eligible to apply.
DECD spokesman James Watson said Thursday that 129 businesses submitted applications in the first two days after the online application window opened Tuesday. The requests totaled $2.8 million.

The state grants are intended as a stopgap until expected federal disaster assistance starts flowing to businesses. Grants will be awarded on a rolling basis until the $5 million runs out.

Connecticut River Bridge project begins

Kimberly Drelich Old Lyme ― Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner told a crowd of people gathered at a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday that “it’s really time” to replace the Connecticut River Bridge, which was built in 1907 between Old Lyme and Old Saybrook.

Now, a project is doing just that.

Federal, state and local officials gathered at Ferry Landing State Park to celebrate the start of a $1.3 billion project to build a replacement bridge, which they said was years in the making.

The railroad bridge is the oldest movable bridge between Boston and New Haven, and it sometimes does not open and close as it should, Gardner said.

He said the new railroad bridge will be better in every way: resilient, reliable, modern and designed with a taller, 24-foot span above the water so it will need to open less often for boats passing underneath and be prepared for higher water levels.

Amtrak will be able to increase train speeds on the new bridge from the current 45 miles per hour to 70 miles per hour, added Gardner.

The bridge carries more than 50 Amtrak trains, Shore Line East commuter rail trains and freight trains each day, according to Amtrak.

Polly Trottenberg, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, said she has celebrated a few infrastructure projects up and down Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, and it never ceases to amaze her the hundreds of thousands of people they serve, the important economic role they play, and how the infrastructure needs renewing.

She said this project will build a better, safer bridge where trains can go faster.

“This bridge has been cranky and creaky for a long time,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “It has been a great bridge. It was a masterpiece in its time, but its time has passed, and we now recognize that resilience and reliability require that it be essentially just completely rebuilt.”

He said the new bridge, which is important to the whole rail system, will be the same kind of masterpiece as the original bridge, calling it “a key to commerce, commuting and culture” in the rail-dependent state. It also will be key to curtailing emissions from cars.

He pointed out that the northeast’s transportation system is older, so the region needs to rebuild its infrastructure faster than the rest of the country.

Jason Hoover, assistant vice president of major bridge programming at Amtrak, said in an interview that the new bascule-span bridge is expected to be completed in 2031. The project also will entail replacing and moving the nearby fishing pier further out to the river.

He said the contractors, Tutor Perini Corp. and O&G Industries, are ready to begin the work, and environmental work on the project already started last month.

He said the project will make the corridor more reliable and faster.

“This is a really good example of how the bipartisan infrastructure bill is helping us transform our network to get us to double ridership by 2040,” Hoover said.

Amtrak said in a news release that the project received $826.64 million from the Federal Railroad Administration due to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the state and Amtrak are contributing the rest.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said during the ceremony that it was never a foregone conclusion that there would be resources to do this project. He said the project is moving forward after decades of talk because of the commitment of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, along with elected officials in Congress, to the bipartisan infrastructure bill. He also credited the northeast delegation for advocating that $30 billion of $66 billion reserved for rail infrastructure upgrades go to improvements to the Northeast Corridor.

But citing a backlog in needed infrastructure improvements, Murphy said the bridge project can’t be the end. He said there will need to be more investment in the future.

U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, said that as far back as 2006, an engineer had found the bridge was structurally deficient and repair work was no longer capable of keeping it functional.

“It is just so exciting to finally see this come to fruition,” Courtney said of the project.

Courtney also said he helped secure a commitment from Amtrak for a project labor agreement, which guarantees local workers will be part of this project and there will be job training and fair wages.

“This is an exciting day for us,” said Nate Brown, vice president of the Connecticut State Building Trades.

Gardner said 150 workers will be on site on average, with a peak of up to 300 workers.

Gov. Ned Lamont said the project has a special meaning to him after the state lost a number of bridges during the recent flooding in the Naugatuck Valley. Those bridges have to be rebuilt with extra structural support, extra culverts and ways to reroute water.

He also said that while discussing the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore which was struck by a ship in March, Trottenberg told him that boats are now bigger than before.

Lamont said the new bridge between Old Lyme and Old Saybrook will be taller to accommodate larger boats and rising waters.

He noted that the new bridge will be another “100-year bridge.”

Plan calls for six-story Amazon warehouse with 1,000 parking spaces in these CT towns

Luther Turmelle

Representatives of a Pennsylvania industrial property developer have submitted plans for a 650,000 square foot warehouse straddling the Naugatuck-Waterbury border, more than two-and-half-years after the plan was first announced.

A limited liability company affiliated with the Bluewater Property Group, which is based in suburban Philadelphia, submitted plans for the project on Aug. 30 to the inlands wetlands commissions in both communities. The plan was first made public in January 2022.

The footprint for the warehouse calls for a 652,400 square foot facility with 59 loading docks and parking for over 1,000 vehicles. Thomas Hyde, chief executive officer of Naugatuck Valley Regional Development Corp. which is representing the two communities in the process, said the warehouse will be six stories tall.

"It's an encouraging sign," Hyde said of the application being submitted.

The warehouse is being proposed for a 183-acre site straddling both communities, located off of South Main Street in Waterbury with easy access to Route 8, Interstate 84 and near rail service. Hyde said that the site is one of the few large undeveloped properties in the immediate Waterbury area.

As originally proposed, the plan had been expected to create as many as 1,000 jobs. Bluewater officials were not immediately available for comment on the submission of the development plan.

The application was expected to be introduced into the record before the Naugatuck Inland Wetlands Commission on Wednesday. Waterbury Town Planner Robert Nerney said the city's Inland Wetlands Commission will likely consider the application for the warehouse at its Oct. 4 meeting,

Amazon Proposes Sprawling Warehouse on Waterbury-Naugatuck Line

Nick Sambides Jr.

A developer working for e-commerce giant Amazon has submitted plans to build a sprawling multistory warehouse straddling the Waterbury-Naugatuck line that proponents say could create as many as 1,000 jobs in the lower Naugatuck Valley.

A project almost three years in the making, the six-story, approximately 650,000-square-foot robotic-assisted facility would feature 59 loading docks and parking for more than 1,000 vehicles on 183 acres at the Waterbury/Naugatuck Industrial Park off Waterbury’s South Main Street.

Both municipalities partnered on the industrial park because they likely couldn’t have developed it otherwise, said Tommy Hyde, chief executive officer of the Naugatuck Valley Regional Development Corp., a nonprofit economic development agency formed to help the cities develop the parcel.

About evenly divided by the town lines, with access to Route 8 and bordered to the south by Sheridan Drive, Great Hill Road and Union City Road, the park space intended for Amazon accesses Route 8, Interstate 84 and a new rail line. The industrial park is one of the rare plots of large, wooded parcels of open space left in both municipalities, Hyde said.

“It’s a property the city’s owned for several decades, and they could never develop it because there was no access from the Waterbury side,” he said. “And then one day, the two mayors were together and they realized you can access it from the Naugatuck Industrial Park. They teamed up.”

The parcel intended for Amazon was about 150 acres until primary developer Blue Water Property Group of Pennsylvania bought an adjoining parcel within the last two years, Hyde added. 

Blue Water did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Amazon, a giant multinational technology corporation with a market capitalization of $1.87 trillion, already owns 10 warehouses in Connecticut. They are mostly located along the Route 15, I-91 and I-95 corridors, in Bristol, Cromwell, Danbury, Meriden, North Haven, Orange, Stratford, Trumbull, Wallingford and Windsor.

The Waterbury-Naugatuck warehouse would be about the same size as Windsor’s.

Amazon has a mixed record as an employer. The company said it provides good working wages, benefits including health, vision and dental insurance, a 401(k) with company match, and paid pregnancy or parental leave. 

Medical advice lines, employee assistance programs, child, elder and pet care referral services, support for children with disabilities and survivor transitional support and education funding are also offered. Its warehouses are climate-controlled and have prayer pods and multifaith rooms on each floor, according to its website.

But Amazon has opposed the formation of unions within its warehouses. Workers at a warehouse in Staten Island, New York, made history by forming the country’s first Amazon Labor Union two years ago.

Workers formed the union in response to what they said were unreasonable deadline pressures, oppressive working conditions and excessive worker injury rates while the company recorded record profits.

“Amazon workers know the only way we’re going to pressure the company into treating us with respect is by uniting under one banner and exercising our right to come together as an independent union,” the union website states.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has issued citations to Amazon facilities in Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois and New York for failing to keep workers safe, and delivered hazard alert letters for exposing workers to ergonomic hazards.

OSHA investigators found Amazon exposed warehouse workers to a high risk of low back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders through the high frequency with which employees must lift packages, the heavy weight of the items handled by workers, employees awkwardly twisting, bending and extending themselves to lift items, and long hours required to complete assigned tasks, the agency said in a statement.

In response, Amazon said it has invested more than $1.5 billion since 2019 into safety initiatives and cut its recordable injury rates at U.S. warehouses by 28%.

The company also has a longstanding commitment to robotics, which critics say can greatly limit its need for human workers.

Pending legislative bills in Connecticut and New York would compel Amazon to require its facilities to disclose work-speed data to present and former employees. The legislation would also protect workers from being fired or disciplined for failing to meet undisclosed speed quotas or deadlines that do not allow for proper breaks.

The wetlands boards in Naugatuck and Waterbury will start reviewing the proposals this month, Hyde said.

East Norwalk Train Station reopening after 3-week closure, with new temporary platform for commuters

Katherine Lutge

NORWALK — After a three-week closure to complete work related to the Walk Bridge Replacement Project, the East Norwalk Train Station is reopening Saturday.

“During this recent phase of work, crews demolished the existing north platform, constructed a temporary platform and installed access ramps to facilitate the future construction of the new station,” said Josh Morgan, spokesperson for Connecticut’s Department of Transportation. “We advise commuters to arrive a bit earlier than usual as they get adjusted to the new temporary platform.”

Future closures will be planned for crews to replace the East Norwalk Train Station. When complete, the station will have new six-car platforms on both sides along with improved parking and drop-off loops.

“Getting this work completed in only three weeks and inside a small footprint is a great success,” Morgan said.

DOT coordinated with the city of Norwalk to ensure commuters were able to travel on a free shuttle to use the South Norwalk Train Station instead.

“Over the last few weeks while work has been ongoing, the shuttle service has proven to be successful,” Morgan said. “In just the first 10 days, we saw over 750 commuters utilize the shuttle.”

This is the second time this year the station was closed for three weeks. In March, the station and a portion of East Avenue under the rail bridge were closed as well.

“We have not heard complaints from residents or commuters during construction,” Morgan said. “That is really a testament to the strong collaboration between CTDOT, the City of Norwalk, Norwalk Transit District, Park Norwalk and Metro-North Railroad. We all worked in partnership to ensure the public was aware of the temporary closure and that alternative means of transportation were available.”

The next closures are anticipated for fall 2025 and summer 2027, Morgan said.

The new station project is connected to DOT’s $1 billion Walk Bridge Replacement project along with other rail improvements in the Norwalk area.

With East Norwalk only a few minutes ride from the Walk Bridge, DOT is improving the area in what are called TIME-2 projects for Track Improvement, Mobility and Enhancement project. These projects are designed to improve the railway speed and rider experience.