FAA Announces Airport Improvement Grant Recipients
Lauren Schapker, vice president of legislative affairs, ARTBA
More than 400 U.S. airports are receiving a share of $1.187 billion for construction and improvement projects. The total includes $731 million through the Airport Improvement Program, the main federal airport capital grant program. An additional $455 million is through supplemental discretionary grants approved in the FY 2020 annual transportation appropriations law.
The funds are being provided to 439 airports in all 50 states. See the full of list of projects.
The money will be available for 100 percent of the eligible costs under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. Projects slated to receive funds include:
Waterford — Public Works and Utility Commission staff are set to move into their new office building this week, part of a phased municipal complex building project almost two decades in the making.
The Representative Town Meeting approved funding for the $15.8 million project in 2018. The town has appropriated $800,000 from its unassigned general fund balance toward the cost while the other $15 million is being bonded and will be paid down over the next two decades.
Once staff moves out of their old office building and into the new building, the former Public Works and Utility Commission administrative staff space will be demolished and, several months from now, a new fleet garage for town vehicles will be built in its place. First Selectman Rob Brule sees the fleet garage at first for public works vehicles, but then available for town vehicles.
“I think this is so unique in municipalities where you have your most expensive assets — next to firetrucks — protected,” Brule said. “These can last four to six years longer because they’re out of the elements. This space can actually house all our vehicles, so it’s not just Parks and Rec vehicles, utility vehicles, it’s Town of Waterford vehicles: Take the one that gets the job done for your department.”
Public Works Director Gary Schneider said one of the reasons for tearing down the old office building is because an old heating oil tank leak is in the soil beneath the structure.
“There’s a pool of fuel oil sitting underneath the existing building,” Schneider said. “The only way to remediate that was to take the building down.”
Schneider and Brule said part of the reason the municipal building complex work took so long to get approved and started is because of timing: It was first discussed in the early 2000s, about the same time the idea of building a new high school was considered.
In 2012, the town held off on municipal complex efforts as it prioritized construction on the town's schools. In the meantime, the complex was plagued by oil leaks, safety issues and code violations that have been resolved through minor repairs.
In late 2016, the project hit snags with a previous architect suffering financial challenges, and in 2017, the town held off while awaiting word on the availability of state aid. When the project went through the approval process in 2018, some town officials expressed concern about what they saw as exorbitant costs.
Brule said he wanted to fulfill former First Selectman Dan Steward’s goal in bringing this new municipal complex to fruition.
Schneider estimated that by late summer or early fall the fleet garage will be up and the entire project will be done by November.
Public Works Office Coordinator Sandy Kenniston has been the recording secretary for the Municipal Complex Improvements Building Committee for so long, she uses her son, a Waterford High School senior, as a barometer — she’s been taking notes at the meetings for 17 or 18 years.
Kenniston said that when she took over as secretary, she did not know the extent of what she had signed on to do.
She saw deliberations on the complex ebb and flow for years until the project was delayed for the sake of the new Waterford High School.
“There was a big span of time where the committee was put on hold,” Kenniston said. “Even though it’s been 17 years, I haven’t been going that long because the town stopped having those meetings for a substantial amount of time.”
When the committee disbanded in 2012, Kenniston said she didn’t think she and the other staff would have a new building to go to. She said some of the committee members felt the plan was dead once the group dissolved, and they has likely wasted almost a decade planning the complex.
But when the committee reunited in 2015, renewed discussions brought renewed hope for a new complex. Now, Kenniston said, she and others are “very excited” to move into the new building.
Under a term sheet signed late last year with Sacyr Rooney, which would lead the $330 million-plus modernization of Hartford’s Mid-Connecticut plant, the quasi-public Materials Innovation Recycling Authority (MIRA) was responsible for securing commitments from municipalities by June 1 for at least 650,000 tons of annual waste shipments. MIRA leaders and board members had been concerned about being able to hit that number, as the modernization project is projected to increase tipping fees from the mid-$80 per ton range to as high as $140 per ton, which would be an approximately 60% increase.
MIRA surveyed the approximately 50 municipalities the plant serves, ultimately concluding it couldn’t secure the commitments needed.
“Most all towns insist on the need for the project to have competitive pricing absent which they will be forced for fiscal reasons to consider utilization of less desirable disposal options,” including shipping garbage to out-of-state landfills, MIRA concluded in a March report outlining the survey results to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
“We’re not ending discussions, we’re not giving up on it,” Kirk said this week. “What’s clear is the towns do not have a stomach for a noncompetitive price option.”
The impact of the fee hikes would amount to several dollars per month per resident, Kirk said.
”And yet, it’s very very difficult to get a first selectman to add $100,000 to his budget,” he said.
The proposed project by Sacyr Rooney, a partnership between Florida-based Manhattan Construction and Spanish construction giant Sacyr, would modernize the waste incineration infrastructure and install newer systems and facilities that promise greater diversion rates of recyclables and organics from the waste stream, as well as higher capacity and greater efficiency. Plans also call for upgrades to MIRA’s nearby single-stream recycling facility, which could improve revenue from recovered materials and provide other benefits.
The aging plant suffered a turbine failure in late 2018, putting it out of commission for several months, as garbage piled up and had to be shipped out of state.
Sending waste to landfills in other states is what could be on the horizon for Connecticut, if the plant is not upgraded in the next few years, Kirk said.
Many towns would be able to secure tipping fees well below $140 per ton if they went that route, he said. However, it’s not certain if that could be a long-term solution, and it would also hurt smaller communities that have less garbage, and therefore less leverage to negotiate.
Connecticut waste collectors have already been sending garbage to other states. The Hartford Courant reported last year that nearly 1.3 million tons of household, commercial and construction waste were sent out of state, some as far as Ohio. That’s compared to 2.4 million tons of waste burned in-state.