Residents want noise mitigation on I-95 in Westport, Norwalk

Mike Mavredakis

WESTPORT — Neighbors are looking to the state to make I-95 quieter as part of an ongoing two-mile construction project in Westport and Norwalk.

Westporter James McKay, who has lived in his current home near I-95 for 22 years, wants the state Department of Transportation project on Route 33 of I-95 to include noise mitigation components like those the state is asking for in Greenwich, he said.

“If it is good enough for Greenwich, then it's good enough for Westport,” McKay said.

The state recently nixed a $205 million improvement project on I-95 in Greenwich that would have added noise mitigation components. Gov. Ned Lamont said that he is going to direct the DOT to “revisit” the project and find a “more comprehensive solution,” according to the Greenwich Time.

McKay said the level of noise has been increasing over the past two decades. He said his neighbors have been complaining about the noise for years as well.

He blamed changing traffic patterns and commerce market conditions for the rising noise levels.

There are no new noise walls included in the Westport-Norwalk project, according to a public informational meeting about the project in June. This project does not meet the criteria for adding noise walls using federal funds, according to the meeting presentation. It would have to be a completely new highway, lane expansion, change in alignment or addition of new facilities for to be included.

A Norwalk resident asked why state funds could not be used to add noise barriers in Norwalk during the meeting. Project officials said it would take “an act by the state legislature.”

“As noted in our previous response and discussed in the presentation, the allocation of state funds for new noise barriers at a new location requires an act by the state legislature,” Brett Stark, a consultant liaison engineer from BL Companies, said at the meeting in June. “A local legislator must be the one to initiate the request, it is not the matter of DOT requesting the funds.”

Stark said this is a safety improvement project.

The DOT proposal for this project includes installing a concrete barrier, increasing the width of the shoulder, replacing the guide-rail, as well as adding new lighting and a longer on-ramp on Interchange 16. It also includes updates to the drainage system, pavement, replacing the bridge over Saugatuck Avenue and the “rehabilitation” of the bridges over Franklin Street and the Saugatuck River, Stark said.

The construction will cost $98 million, with 90 percent paid for by federal money and 10 percent from the state, according to the informational meeting presentation. Back in June, the project was expected to begin in late 2021 or early 2022 and completed by the fall of 2024.

McKay said the time to act on adding the noise features is now since the project hasn’t been awarded yet.

Should construction noise reach 90 decibels or higher, the construction team will make efforts to decrease noise levels, according to the presentation.

The DOT and state Sen. Will Haskell, D-Westport, could not be reached for immediate comment.

Gas and water pipeline project to begin in Wilton

J.D. Freda

WILTON — Aquarion Water and Eversource Energy are beginning construction this month on 1.8 miles of new water pipeline and two miles of new gas pipeline between New Canaan and Wilton.

Both pipelines will run along Route 106/New Canaan Road from Old Kings Highway to Belden Hill Road. The joint project is expected to be completed by December.

Two miles of 16-inch gas pipeline will be installed along Route 106 between Wilton and neighboring New Canaan. Eversource Senior Project Manager Ken Zembrzuski said the company has invested $9 million into the project.

He said the pipeline is vital to strengthening and protecting the natural gas distribution system, “particularly as the demand for natural gas increases.”

Aquarion Water is choosing to “strengthen the resiliency” of the existing Southwest Regional Pipeline by adding another parallel pipeline. The Wilton phase of the project will start at the Belden Hill water tanks. Work will then “proceed approximately 1.8 miles southwest to the New Canaan town line at the Silvermine River,” according to Project Manager Dennis Fields. Future work may be done in New Canaan to extend the pipe further southwest through the town.

Burns Construction was awarded the contract for the project and three crews from the firm will complete the work.

Wilton Coordinator of Community Affairs Sarah Gioffre reiterated that this is a “year-long project” and that various town officials, including Town Planner Michael Wrinn, Wilton Police Lt. Dave Hartman and Department of Public Works Director Frank Smeriglio, have been working with Aquarion and Eversource since last year to iron out specifics.

Route 106/New Canaan Road is a state-owned road, therefore all work is officially authorized by the state.

However, town officials are requiring Aquarion and Eversource to inform residents who live along New Canaan Road and its adjacent streets about the project. The companies must also, per Gioffre, send updates to local media and keep a section of their websites dedicated to the project and provide updates as they come.

There will be a detour down Old Boston Road and Beldin Hill Road, connected by Seir Hill, during the working hours of 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. All school bus stops will remain at their current locations. The roadway will not be closed to school buses and emergency vehicles, but all other vehicular traffic must follow the detour routes.

Gioffre also notes that residents should be given ample opportunity to have their voices heard. She is encouraging residents to send comments to Fields at dfields@aquarionwater.com or Zembrzuski at kenneth.zembrzuski@eversource.com. All public comment will accepted through May 1.

Amazon developer offers $2.5M for 157-acre building site in Waterbury/Naugatuck

Michael Puffer

Pennsylvania-based Bluewater Property Group is offering Waterbury and Naugatuck $2.5 million for a 157-acre site on the municipalities’ shared border, where the developer hopes to build a distribution facility for Amazon.

Officials in both communities will vote on the negotiated proposal in the coming weeks, but it contains a few caveats before a deal is finalized.

Bluewater will require a deal on local property taxes, must clear regulatory land-use reviews and must finish its own due diligence on site conditions before a purchase is finalized, according to a written summary shared with Waterbury’s Board of Aldermen ahead of its Monday meeting.

Representatives of Pennsylvania-based Bluewater will appear at a meeting of Waterbury’s aldermen Monday night to explain basics of their proposal, Mayor Neil O’Leary said. The company is still investigating the site so it won’t be ready to share details of the facility's size.

“They want to build a substantial building,” O’Leary said Wednesday.

Gov. Ned Lamont said the proposal had the possibility to create 1,000 jobs when Bluewater’s involvement was first announced in January.

Waterbury has sought for decades to develop a roughly 150-acre site it owns on either side of its shared border with Naugatuck. Plans for a dog track, mall and other developments were raised, but always thwarted due to difficult topography and a steep and difficult approach from Waterbury’s South Main Street.

O’Leary partnered with Naugatuck Mayor N. Warren “Pete” Hess to work out a plan to access the site through Naugatuck and share the tax revenue from the resulting development. The borough of Naugatuck and Waterbury jointly paid $390,000 in 2017 for a 10.5-acre property needed to complete the access.

O’Leary said the land-sale proceeds will go to Waterbury’s general fund, after Naugatuck is repaid $195,000 for its half of the 10.5-acre purchase.

Prior Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s administration authorized a $2.8 million grant to defray the costs of building an access road and utilities into the property to further development prospects. That money has not yet been tapped and the infrastructure not yet built. Officials want to tailor the infrastructure to the development ultimately secured for the site.

Bluewater’s founders were among the senior management and founders of KTR Capital Partners, a private equity fund that was sold to real estate investment trust Prologis for $5.9 billion in May 2015. Bluewater has repeatedly pursued projects for Amazon.

Bluewater is currently proposing Amazon facilities in Galloway Township, New Jersey; and is building a 3.8 million-square-foot warehouse in Johnston, Rhode Island, where a 20-year tax deal was approved for the project, according to media reports.

Bluewater is also involved in an effort to build a $300 million, 2.8-million-square-foot, Amazon facility in Charlton, Massachusetts. The project was approved last year for a tax-increment financing agreement expected to save Amazon nearly $12 million in taxes over the agreement’s 10-year lifespan. Charlton, meanwhile, expected to collect $65 million in new taxes and fees over 20 years.

Solar and water construction key in the future of data center sustainability

By PCL Construction

It's estimated that the number of online devices will reach 29 billion in 2030, up from 18 billion in 2018. As a result, the global data center market will grow, with some forecasts saying the market will reach $517 billion by 2030, up from $187 billion in 2020.

With the impressive expansion comes growing urgency—and opportunity—to make data centers more sustainable. 

Data centers accounted for an estimated 400 terawatt hours in 2020, and in the U.S. alone, data centers consume 1.7 billion liters of water per day. Today, a medium-sized data center uses 15 megawatts of power and more water than two 18-hole golf courses.

"Everybody wants to make data centers more efficient and sustainable," says Sean Mulligan, PCL's director of data centers and mission critical. "The key is implementing greener practices while still allowing the data center to operate at full capacity."

Boosting sustainability without compromising the performance of the data center requires deep expertise in many fields, according to Mulligan. These include sustainable power generation and transmission; data center performance requirements and construction techniques; relevant local and regional regulations; water treatment construction and more.

Every Solution Under the Sun   

A construction partner with extensive experience in these areas – such as PCL Construction - can make a big difference for clients looking to build new data centers or retrofit existing ones to be more environmentally friendly.

"There's a true complexity to the energy world," says Rodolfo Bitar with PCL. "You might not see solar fields next to a data center for it to be using green energy. Colocation is not necessary for solar power to reach a data center. Green energy is almost like the banking system—you can pull money from any ATM, not only the branch where you deposit it."

Bitar manages business development for PCL's solar work, which grew to close to $1 billion in new work last year.  

"We're always growing our expertise – for example, we're currently exploring battery technology and other storage sources that could help data centers stay powered during the night or days with less sun," Bitar says. 

The company is also working on another side of sustainable data centers: conserving water used to cool down overheating servers. PCL's Civil Infrastructure Division is leveraging its experience building water treatment plants across the U.S. to develop cutting edge water filtration systems that can help data centers achieve a net-zero use of water. 

It's another reason why PCL's broad expertise and experience is useful to clients. The team can leverage expertise from across sectors to solve challenges and break new ground in the mission critical industry. 

"The combination of solar, water and data center experience is a rare find in the construction industry," says Patrick Malone business development manager for PCL's Civil Infrastructure Division. "It helps us to find win-wins for our clients and for the environment."

"There's an ever-increasing demand. Coming up with solutions to meet those demands is the beauty of this industry. Creativity and expertise are both renewable resources."

Economic headwinds threaten construction's spring recovery

Jen A. Miller

After two years of pandemic-related fits and starts, builders are set for a busy spring. 

Construction and engineering spending reached $1.57 trillion in July 2021, according to Deloitte, and revenue growth will likely accelerate in 2022. In a survey of over 500 U.S. executives and other senior leaders in the field, Deloitte also found that 92% characterize their business outlook as somewhat or very positive, 23% higher than the previous year.  

But this spring isn't all roses and sunshine. Supply chain constraints and rising costs, in some cases exacerbated by pent-up COVID demand, are making sourcing materials and sticking to budgets more difficult. 

"It just very hard for an industry that typically operates on a small margin and has to go through competitive bidding process to accurately predict what they're going to be paying or, as important, when those materials are going to show up," said Brian Turmail, vice president of public affairs and strategic initiatives at the Associated General Contractors of America. "It's a really challenging time for what was already a challenging time."

Supply chain, inflation woes

Problems sourcing materials, and the rising prices of those materials continue to weigh on many construction sectors. In its March Construction Quarterly Survey, the National Multifamily Housing Council found that 89% of respondents were facing construction delays. They also found that 92% of their members repriced deals over the last three months, with increases averaging 25%. 

"Continued volatility of both available materials as well as pricing changes and significant cost impacts" are mostly to blame, said Paula Cino, NMHC vice president for construction, development and land use policy. "It doesn't seem to be a blip anymore."

Mark Luegering, senior vice president and chief operating officer at Cincinnati-based Messer Construction, said that they're seeing estimates go up 10% to 20% over original calculations due to supply issues and inflation. The company is reworking budgets and doing value engineering to keep jobs within budgets, and clients are willing to cut back and "make adjustments in materials they need," he said. "Owners have been very flexible and understanding." 

Jodi Rennie, vice president and regional general manager for Turner Construction Co.'s Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia and South Jersey operations, said that Turner, like other firms, is facing supply chain issues, but the firm has managed to mitigate some of those pressures because of a strong supply chain division with more than 300 people — a division it began more than a decade before the pandemic. 

"They all focus on supply chain and where are hiccups in supply chain," she said, and to see future challenges before they become current problems. Turner also shares that information with clients, and determines if they can pre-purchase materials and "maybe store it somewhere to get our material to the site long before we need it."

Pent-up demand

While winter can affect building schedules, most contractors have learned to plan for it, and build their schedules accordingly, said Turmail. But a slightly more mild winter combined with pent-up COVID demand has pushed up schedules, which has exacerbated supply chain issues, particularly with concrete.

"We've got different parts of the country where contractors are being told there's no concrete," he said. He's received notices from groups in Georgia, Alabama and Arizona about the problem. 

"The above usual demand for concrete products during the winter depleted most concrete firms' stockpile," he said. "They have downtime for maintenance and now don't have anything left."

AGC is continuing to see "waves of supply chain issues," he said. For example, where concrete is a problem now, it was roofing materials in the fall and winter. 

Construction isn't immune to global conflict either. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is also impacting the industry, even in smaller material segments. "We're hearing sporadic things [about delays] like tile products that have clay in them because Ukraine is a big exporter of clay and tile," he said.

The labor problem

Labor continues to be a challenge. According to the Deloitte report, 52% of engineering and construction executives said that their company is facing a severe labor and talent shortage. 

Vaccination rates for construction workers continue to be low (46.2% nationally, according to the Center for Construction Research and Training). However, it's been manageable so far, said Luegering, because they have enough workers that they can keep vaccinated workers on projects where owners require vaccines, like many healthcare projects do.

Because an OSHA vaccinate mandate for companies with over 100 workers was deemed unconstitutional in January, it hasn't been as major a disruption as it could have been, he added, though "still a potential concern with federal and military" projects, he said, because of continuing court battles over federal and military vaccine mandates.  

However, the COVID-19 pandemic no longer seems to be a major contributing factor. NHMC began its Construction Quarterly Survey – then called the COVID Construction Survey — at the start of the pandemic. Cino said this most recent report is the first time the coronavirus has not been considered a significant challenge, and is no longer causing delays and shutdowns. 

"That really has been stripped," she said. "Now we're in a place where we're facing broad economic headwinds."