CT Construction Digest Monday May 6, 2024
I-95 fully reopens in Norwalk following fiery tanker crash
State Senator Bob Duff, who represents Norwalk and Darien, said a lot of hard work went into reopening the closed section of I-95 by Sunday morning.
"It's really amazing progress in about 80 hours that we went from completely closing an artery that is completely important and relied on by hundreds of thousands of people each day to being back open again," Duff said on Sunday morning.
He went on to say he visited the site at around noon on Saturday and was "amazed" at how quickly the progress to reopening was being made.
Duff added that watching the live camera the DOT put up near the site was like "watching the 'The Truman Show.'"
"I'd love to see the ratings of that webcam because I know people were watching it. I was watching it like crazy," Duff said. "It was great that people could share in the progress that was being made."
I-95 South will reopen by 10 a.m., Lamont says
The southbound lanes of I-95 are expected to be reopened at 10 a.m., according to Governor Ned Lamont.
“It is truly amazing that in less than 80 hours from that fiery crash Thursday that shut down traffic in both directions, the highway again is fully open,” Lamont said.
Lamont commended efforts by the state's Department of Transportation, as well as local fire and police officials, for their roles in the environmental cleanup and emergency demolition of the Fairfield Avenue overpass.
"It takes a village...and everyone did their part," Lamont said. "I am impressed by these efforts and thankful for the dedication, skill, and labor of everyone who has been involved."
DOT Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto said the reopening of I-95 in less than 80 hours since the fiery crash was a "team effort," but added that the work is not over.
"While the roadway is open, the work continues as we are planning how and when the Fairfield Avenue Bridge will be replaced,” Eucalitto said.
The state's DOT engineers have been working to develop a "preliminary replacement plans of the Fairfield Avenue Bridge" over the weekend, the release said. It added that designs of the new bridge should "be completed within the next two weeks."
Norwalk police take to skies to alleviate traffic
Norwalk police said the department has deployed drones to help monitor city roads for potential traffic jams, as drivers seek for alternate routes due to the closure of I-95.
In a social media post, police said they are using the drones for real-time updates on where traffic is building up around the city. The department is then using that information to strategically deploy patrols to help traffic run more smoothly.
"They continue to assist with our traffic management plan as we shift officers to needed intersections," the police department said on X.
Across Norwalk, main thoroughfares like Connecticut Avenue and other highway-adjacent roadways have been clogged since Thursday's crash. While the congestion has dipped with a downturn in commuters over the weekend, Norwalk police said they continue to monitor the roads.
"We remind everyone to lower their speeds and exercise caution as officers and crews work through the night."
The DOT traffic maps showed congestion at 6:30 a.m. on Sunday following last night's reopening of the northbound lanes.
There was light traffic traveling in the northbound side, while workers were seen on the other side clearing and fixing up the southbound lanes.
The DOT camera shows crews paving the southbound side of I-95 where the crash occurred Thursday morning. The northbound side reopened Saturday night without repaving. However, the southbound side had been damaged by the fire under the Fairfield Avenue bridge. Traffic on the northbound side, which reopened around 8 p.m. Saturday, was flowing early Sunday morning.
I-95 north reopens hours after bridge demolished
The northbound lanes of I-95 reopened to traffic just before 8 p.m. Saturday after crews managed to remove debris ahead of schedule, according to Gov. Ned Lamont.
"Completely removing that bridge in less than 36 hours is an impressive feat and is credit to the hard work and dedication of the contractors and Connecticut Department of Transportation crews, who are pushing to get the entire highway fully reopened in both directions by Monday morning," Lamont said in a statement.
Driver of sports car caused crash, police say
A Connecticut State Police report shows a 22-year-old Stamford driver of a Chevrolet Camaro struck the front end of an oil tanker while attempting to change lanes around 5:30 a.m. Thursday. The sports car was traveling southbound in the four-lane highway’s far right lane when it merged into the right center lane occupied by the tanker, leading to the initial collision, Connecticut State Police officials wrote in a two-page crash summary.
The tanker, which was hauling 8,500 gallons of oil, then veered into the left center lane, struck a tractor-trailer and burst into flames before coming to a stop directly under the Fairfield Avenue overpass.
In the aftermath, Norwalk fire officials originally said the crash occurred after a sedan cut off a tractor-trailer, prompting the tanker to swerve into another vehicle in an effort to avoid a collision.
But in an email on Saturday, Sgt. Luke Davis, a spokesperson for the state police, confirmed the Camaro struck the tanker while trying to merge in front of the truck. He said the collision forced the sports car to spin onto its side.
As of Saturday, police have not filed any charges in connection with the crash.
Noisy Greenwich Ave night work to continue for a few more months, Aquarion says
GREENWICH — The noisy night time construction on Greenwich Avenue is on track to finish early this summer, an official from Aquarion Water Company said last week.
Aquarion and its contractors have been working nights since February to dig up the road and access about 2,000 feet of old water mains that needed to be replaced. The roadway is sealed up by the morning and the process starts over again each night.
“Projected completion is late June, early July and that’s, obviously, weather dependent,” Justin Xenelis, Aquarion's manager of utility programs, said during the Board of Selectmen meeting on April 25.
Xenelis said they were finishing the chlorination, flushing and testing of the new mains and that they will begin transferring the water service from the old mains to the new ones after that. The old mains will be abandoned in place once the work is complete.
A stretch of Greenwich Avenue is under construction in Greenwich, Conn. Tuesday, March 5, 2024. An Aquarion project to replace the water main beneath Greenwich Avenue is under construction during nighttime hours through June.
Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media
Xenelis also said the utility company is aware of the upcoming sidewalk sales on Greenwich Avenue in mid-July and that it is prepared to work around that if the project is ongoing then.
Crews are generally working from from 10 p.m. to 10 a.m., Sunday through Friday, which has disrupted some residents’ sleep. There was discussion of shifting some work to the daytime at the last board meeting, but no changes to the work schedule were discussed last week.
The selectmen unanimously approved Aquarion's request to extend its work into the summer, but asked that the company come back so there is an opportunity to discuss the timeline and any issues that may arise.
“Let's just keep checking in,” Selectwoman Lauren Rabin said. “This is really important work that needs to get done but it's also very disruptive to our businesses and our residents.”
Similarly, the board approved intermittent road closures for Eversource that may go into August, but said the company needs to check in as that work proceeds. The Eversource work is more contained and will take less time than the Aquarion water main replacements.
Visit the Aquarion project website for additional information and project updates.
MANCHESTER — Town officials will consider a major step forward for redevelopment of the long-vacant Broad Street Parkade.
The Board of Directors is scheduled to vote at its Tuesday meeting to authorize the town manager to sign a development agreement with Texas-based Anthony Properties for redevelopment of the property, roughly 10 months after the town settled a lawsuit with a previously ousted Parkade developer to the tune of $2 million.
Manchester began considering the revitalization of the "dark side" of the Parkade more than 15 years ago, after tasking the Redevelopment Agency with creating a plan for the Broad Street area in 2008.
Mayor Jay Moran said he recognizes that the authorization would lead to the town's third signed agreement to redevelop the property, but he is confident that Anthony Properties would get a shovel in the ground.
"I'm pretty optimistic, personally," Moran said. "As far as the community is concerned, I think they're just waiting to see some action down there."
Moran said the town's Parkade plan is still mixed-use development, but the expectation is that residential components would be built before any retail.
"Right now, we're going with what the market is saying," Moran said.
Moran said while it has been proposed that the town's new library could have been located at the Parkade, a survey showed that residents wanted to keep the main branch on Main Street. Additionally, the property was purchased with the intent of getting it back on the town's tax rolls.
"If we put a municipal building there, we wouldn't be getting taxes," Moran said.
Moran said if the Board of Directors knew back in 2009 the roadblocks that would have come after they put the Broad Street redevelopment to a referendum, "they would have crawled instead of ran."
"We've been hit with recessions, hit with COVID, developers having issues with financing and construction costs," Moran said. "All of us would have loved to see a shovel in the ground five, six years ago."
After the Board of Directors adopted the Redevelopment Agency's Broad Street plan in September 2009, voters approved $8 million in bonding for revitalization of the area. The town purchased the 18-acre property representing the "dark side" of the Parkade in March 2011, and demolished the vacant strip mall and rezoned the parcel in 2012.
Canada-based developer Live Work Learn Play was selected to redevelop the property in 2013, and Manchester signed a contract with the company in 2016. Legal and financial issues with the development, including a contested easement involving a shared driveway and parking area, stopped the plan in its tracks, and the contract fizzled out in 2018.
The town began negotiations with a new developer, Manchester Parkade I LLC, in 2019 and signed an agreement in April 2021. Town officials announced in January 2022 that it had voided the agreement, citing the developer's inability to secure financing.
Manchester Parkade I LLC responded by filing a lawsuit in May 2022, alleging the town breached the parties' contract. In the meantime, the Redevelopment Agency began to seek new bids for the project in February 2022, selecting Anthony Properties in a 10-1 vote in July 2022.
The town began negotiations with Anthony Properties in August 2022, but suspended talks after Manchester Parkade I LLC filed a temporary injunction against the town that same month. Negotiations were resumed after the lawsuit was settled in August 2023, leading to the creation of the contract that the Board of Directors will consider Tuesday night.
How a $500 million cut in Eversource spending could affect people in Connecticut
It just one of tens of thousands of behind-the-scenes spending decisions in Connecticut a few years ago, as Eversource touched base with a Stonington home owner on the best way to screen the sight lines to an electric substation it was expanding next door. They reached common ground, with Eversource agreeing to plant a tree at the cost of a few hundred dollars or more.
Coming off a year in which it rang up more than $1.1 billion in capital expenses in Connecticut, Eversource is now serving notice it will prune that amount by $100 million a year amid continuing rancor with state regulators and lawmakers. With major projects underway already in many parts of the state that have taken years to plan, it is anyone's guess how that decision will cascade into the Connecticut grid and all the extra little touches that work requires — along with any accompanying impact on jobs for the external contractors that Eversource hires for some of the work.
Eversource is the dominant utility company in Connecticut, providing electricity to some 1.27 million customers in all but 20 cities and towns. The company also meters water through its Aquarion subsidiary it is now looking to sell, and natural gas in portions of Connecticut.
Last year, Eversource spent more than $1.1 billion on its historic Connecticut Light & Power territories for new lines, transformers and myriad other capital needs, a $174 million increase from 2022 or 18 percent. The company increased electricity infrastructure capital expenditures even more in Massachusetts last year, however, by 36 percent including for solar power generations facilities it owns there.
Speaking on a conference call this week, Eversource's finance chief John Moreira told investment analysts "emerging infrastructure needs across our system provide ample opportunity for capital deployment in lieu of using those valuable resources in Connecticut."
An Eversource manager put it more bluntly in an April hearing with commissioners of the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, as the company seeks approval to charge customers more for costs it is shouldering under varying state regulations and laws.
"We are not a bank or a credit card company," said Doug Horton, vice president of rates and regulatory requirements for Eversource, speaking in April. "We cannot finance these public-policy programs without timely recovery. And if we're not getting timely recovery for the current state-mandated contracts, we won't be able to support any new contracts that the state might want us to sign."
Profits down in Conn., up in Mass.
After reporting a $435 million loss last year largely to account for an aborted foray into wind power, Eversource recouped that amount in the first quarter with a $522 million profit that was a 6 percent increase from a year earlier.
Its Connecticut electricity operations saw net operating profits drop last year, however, by $14 million to $519 million for a 2.6 percent decline. The 2022 results had been impacted by $72 million in credits Eversource extended customers after 2021 settlement agreement with PURA, which included compensation for extended outages caused by damage from the August 2020 storm Isaias.
By comparison, operating profits across Massachusetts and New Hampshire were up 11.5 percent last year.
Eversource added close to 100 employees at its CL&P operations last year, but its workforce has stayed fairly constant dating back a decade, with a about 20 fewer employees entering this year compared to 2014. Across all its operations in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, Eversource added about 550 staff last year, pushing its total to about 10,170 people; about 4,000 of that number work for its Eversource Services operation, which handles work across all three states depending on needs.
As of Friday morning, Eversource had about 135 job openings in Connecticut, a handful more than in Massachusetts where CEO Joe Nolan and other senior executives work. An Eversource spokesperson said the company's decision to scale back capital expenses in Connecticut would have no impact on its staffing levels.
In March, Eversource projected a roughly 0.7 percent annual increase in electric demand in Connecticut over the next decade, and peak demand increasing by more during heat waves when households keep air conditioners running around the clock. The state also wants "smart" meters installed at homes, more electric vehicle charging stations, and increased adoption of ductless air conditioning and heating units in homes that can offer energy savings over central air conditioning and furnaces.
To keep up with those increasing electric demands, upgrading the grid is critical, which takes spending and hiring contractors to complete the work. Eversource lists just over 23,600 circuit miles of local distribution lines in its historic CL&P territories, about 2,850 miles more than in Eversource's NStar territories in Massachusetts.
Eversource currently lists five major projects underway in Connecticut, from relocating Walk Bridge transmission lines in Norwalk as construction ramps up to replace the bridge; to new 115-kilovolt lines along the west bank of the Housatonic River in Stratford, Shelton and Monroe; to swapping out aging transmission cable in underground conduits in Hartford with upgraded lines.
'A bigger piece of everything'
Projects take years from conception to completion. As one example, after ISO New England identified a need for extra voltage capacity between Stonington and western Rhode Island in 2017, Eversource filed in May 2021 for Connecticut Siting Council approval of associated upgrades for its Mystic substation opposite the Sea View Snack Bar, on the Greenmanville Avenue gateway to the Mystic Seaport Museum, with the work completed a year later.
Eversource identified more than 20 discrete elements of the project, from an extra 45 feet of fencing topped with barbed wire, to installing 600 feet of conductor cable; to a monitoring system to detect any build-up of hydrogen gas in a battery compartment.
As disclosed in Connecticut Siting Council filings, workers on the project ran the gamut, from crews to repair disturbed ground and plant the tree for the benefit of the homeowner's backyard vista; to Berlin-based Heritage Consultants, which undertook a survey to determine the possibility of any cultural artifacts in the vicinity of the work; to a Massachusetts acoustics consultant called Cavanaugh Tocci which conducted measurements to assess any noise impacts as a result of the work.
The project cost Eversource $5.8 million, with the company projecting that Connecticut ratepayers would pay just over $2 million of that amount and the rest borne by other states. The project was part of the larger, $190 million Eastern Connecticut Reliability Program that Eversource completed this year on the heels of the 2017 ISO New England study.
"Over the past decade, we've spent a significant amount of money on electric reliability for our Connecticut customers," Nolan said on this week's conference call. "Our investments have paid huge dividends for our Connecticut customers."
But Nolan's message is not resonating with many Eversource customers whose eyes are drawn each month to the bottom line of their bills. In J.D. Power's annual survey of utility customer satisfaction published last December, Eversource again ranked near the bottom of large Northeast utilities, even as the Orange-based United Illuminating subsidiary of Avangrid bested the regional score for mid-size utilities.
Speaking last week in Norwalk, Gov. Ned Lamont said worries for the future capacity and reliability of the Connecticut grid are among his biggest in the context of a growing Connecticut economy.
"Energy — that's one thing that we don't control," Lamont said. "Energy prices and electricity prices are a bigger and bigger piece of everything we do."
John Penney
New London ― When it comes to traffic flow, it doesn’t get much more complicated than a downtown intersection that must take into account cars, buses, trains and ferry passengers.
The intersection of Water Street and Governor Winthrop Boulevard has for weeks been a construction site with workers replacing wiring, vaulting and other components of what Director of Public Works Brian Sear called a traffic signal system that’s long overdue for improvements.
“If there was ever a traffic signal failure there, it would be catastrophic,” he said. “The existing equipment – 1980s technology ― is very old, and they don’t make replacement parts anymore.”
The city is deep into an $891,000 signal replacement project first discussed six years ago that is designed to keep traffic leaving the city circulating smoothly. The work, being handled by Colonna Concrete & Asphalt Paving, will include the replacement of outdated intersection signal lights – which cost $250,000 each ― with modern versions that feature anti-glare technology.
“We’re also replacing the poles the lights hang on with lower reinforced concrete posts that make it easier for pedestrians and drivers to see the lights,” Sear said. “Approaches will be reconfigured for ADA compliance with greater widths and better grades, and we’re adding sidewalks on the ferry side of the street.”
The one-way Water Street is a main city artery sending vehicles out of the city and towards the Interstate 95 ramps, as well as to the heavily traveled Route 32 corridor.
In addition to Governor Winthrop Boulevard intersection traffic, vehicles entering and exiting the nearby ferry terminal crisscross Water Street, which runs parallel to Amtrak railroad tracks. Local transit buses also regularly idle in the far-right lane of the street leading to frequent lane switches by impatient commuters.
The signal upgrade work, expected to be complete before Memorial Day, is partially funded by a $391,000 state Community Connectivity Grant, with the remainder paid with city infrastructure funds.
One thing that won’t change is the timing of the lights. Sear said the city years ago worked with Cross Sound Ferry officials to develop a stop signal cycle that gave a level of priority to the lines of vehicles disembarking from the ferries.
Sear said “low-tech” sensors triggered by exiting ferry vehicles prompt a signal change. A different alert system is used when an oncoming train is detected to bar traffic from crossing tracks.
“The reason we chose that intersection for an upgrade with state-of-the-art equipment is the presence of the ferry and the essential need to keep traffic moving in-and-out quickly and safely,” Sear said. “And that’s even more important with (National Coast Guard Museum) coming in.”
Stanley Mickus, spokesman for the Cross Sound Ferry, said the ferry area is a bustling area with several excursion points filled with pedestrians, taxis and ride-share vehicles.
“(Mayor Michael Passero) and the city have been great partners in working with us with our traffic concerns,” Mickus said.
The project has led to a series of lane closures that can shift even during the course of a few hours. At one point on Tuesday morning, the street’s far left lane was shuttered only to re-open to allow workers to shutter the extreme right lane.
Sear said the old signal system will remain in place until the replacement components are installed, tested and cleared for regular use.