Governor Lamont Announces President Biden Approves Emergency Declaration for Connecticut in Response To Extreme Flooding

(HARTFORD, CT) – Governor Ned Lamont today announced that he has received notification from the White House indicating that his request for President Joe Biden to authorize a federal emergency declaration for Fairfield County, New Haven County, and Litchfield County in response to the extreme flooding from the historic rainfall that portions of the state received earlier this week has been approved.

The declaration means that state agencies can coordinate with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on the deployment of federal personnel and equipment to augment emergency recovery efforts already underway by the state and its municipal counterparts. This includes actions to protect lives and property, and restorative efforts that defend public safety.

Staff from several state agencies, including the Connecticut Department of Transportation, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, and the Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, among others, have been on the ground since the initial impact of the storm to provide emergency services.

“This federal emergency declaration means that additional equipment and crews could be mobilized to Connecticut to support our many state and local crews who have been on the ground working to repair damaged roads, bridges, and dams, and also clean up waterways that have been contaminated by all kinds of hazardous items from the storm,” Governor Lamont said. “There is still much work to do to repair and reopen the roads and make sure those who live in the area remain safe, and we are committed to completing this task. I thank President Biden for taking these actions and providing Connecticut with these lifesaving resources.”

The Lamont administration is continuing to work with towns, businesses, and individuals to conduct detailed damage assessments and calculate whether the cost thresholds have been met that would enable the state to receive a major disaster declaration from the federal government, which could result in the release of federal funding to support the rebuilding and repairing of damage to eligible public and uninsured private property. Any such funding to support those efforts requires the approval of a separate declaration. The process of conducting these assessments typically takes several weeks to complete and is already underway.

Biden approves federal emergency declaration for Fairfield, Litchfield and New Haven counties

PAUL HUGHES

President Joe Biden on Wednesday approved a federal emergency declaration that Gov. Ned Lamont requested for Fairfield, Litchfield and New Haven counties after heavy rainfall Sunday and ensuing flooding caused widespread damage and two deaths.

A White House announcement said Biden authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to supplement state and local response efforts and coordinate disaster-relief efforts. The president’s approval came one day after Lamont requested the emergency declaration.

The governor’s office said state agencies can now coordinate with FEMA on the deployment of federal personnel and equipment to augment emergency recovery efforts already underway by the state and its municipal counterparts. This includes actions to protect lives and property, and restorative efforts that defend public safety.

“This federal emergency declaration means that additional equipment and crews could be mobilized to Connecticut to support our many state and local crews who have been on the ground working to repair damaged roads, bridges and dams, and also clean up waterways that have been contaminated by all kinds of hazardous items from the storm,” Lamont said in a statement.

Flash flooding from historic amounts of rainfall Sunday caused widespread damage to western parts of Connecticut, and two women were swept to their deaths in raging waters in Oxford.

The state request sought 100% federal reimbursement for the state and municipal costs for debris removal and emergency protective measures. Biden only approved a 75% reimbursement rate.

The request asked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to provide support for the repairing of dozens of bridges, dams and other infrastructure. It also requested U.S. Environmental Protection Agency support to address the numerous oil tanks, propane cylinders, vehicles, vessels and drums that are floating in multiple waterways.

Additionally, the request sought assistance from the Federal Highway Administration for the numerous destroyed and compromised state roads.

The governor’s office said the Lamont administration plans to request a major disaster declaration from FEMA that could make federal funding available to help homeowners, businesses, and local and state governments pay for recovery costs.

State officials are continuing to work with towns, businesses and individuals to conduct detailed damage assessments and calculate whether the cost thresholds have been met that would enable the state to receive a major disaster declaration from the federal government. The governor’s office said the process typically takes several weeks to complete.

Any homeowners and business owners who experienced damage to their property from this storm are being strongly urged to contact their town’s local emergency management office as soon as possible so that their damages can be documented as part of this effort.

Dozens of bridges and roads in CT were destroyed by flooding. Repairs could cost tens of millions

Ken Dixon

SOUTHBURY — Minutes after state Transportation Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto got word Wednesday afternoon that the White House approved Gov. Ned Lamont’s emergency declaration, he stood in the unusually quiet center of Route 67, a major two-lane road that links Route 8 in Seymour with Interstate 84 a mile or so up the road.

He swept an arm toward a couple-hundred-yard section, still partially covered with debris, closed for the foreseeable future after the Sunday cloudbursts and severe flooding. Concrete Jersey barriers block the little bridge over the South Branch Bullet Hill Brook that few motorists could have even noticed in the usual daily flow of traffic.

Sunday’s downpours resulted in flooding that killed two women in Oxford, compromised or destroyed 27 state bridges and dozens more local bridges, culverts and road shoulders.

The usual meager flow of brook water picked up massive volume, left its banks and created a new channel, taking out trees, undermining pavement, sending at least one car flying into the water and creating headaches for DOT workers for the foreseeable future.

“Until we clear all the debris out, we don’t know if those wall structures are able to be saved or not,” Eucalitto said, pointing to a nearby storm water catch basin. “This must have gotten clogged with debris, so the water just found its way around that way instead,” describing the way the flood changed the course of the brook, now making rebuilding even tougher.

“This was not a bridge or a culvert,” he said, pointing more toward downtown Southbury. “This was a road, but it just pushed through, jumped over, tore away all the asphalt on the roadway.” Engineers will have to determine how to replace the roadbed, which in some places is six or seven feet below the free-hanging asphalt road shoulders.

“The only thing keeping even part of it up is there was concrete bed the road was built on,” Eucalitto said, pointing to a 50-yard ribbon of twisted metal guardrail about 15 feet off the former eastern shoulder. “Everything that didn’t have concrete under it is gone.”

With Eucalitto was Paul Rizzo, the DOT’s bureau chief of highway operations, as they walked along about 100 yards of black top that was peeling away along large sections of the highway. They were both wearing high-visibility vests and hard hats. Nearby, at the community park, three people were shooting a basketball.

Farther up the hill, a utility crew from Massachusetts was trying to restore power to several families whose electricity went out on Sunday afternoon. Near the now slowly moving brook, a hairy woodpecker perched briefly, then darted off.

“It’s going to be a long recovery to rebuild this roadway,” said Eucalitto, who was late for a meeting elsewhere in town, as state DOT planners and designers try to determine how to help stranded residents on Georges Hill Road access their properties. “The river is where the road was and now there is nothing where the river was. And that’s what we’ve seen in a lot of places, where the river or brooks or streams just redirected and created new water courses.”

Eucalitto said that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will have to be consulted on the waterflow issues.

“Part of the rebuilding is getting the stream or brook or river, wherever we are, back to its natural course,” Rizzo said.

“The first thing the contractors will do here is begin with debris removal,” Rizzo said. “They have to get out of the way so they can really do a good assessment of the structure of the road. How much of the road is able to be salvaged or how much has to come out and be rebuilt? We have to start at the base and build back up. “

Eucalitto talked about the possibility of an 80-percent federal reimbursement rate for the work ahead. But with major damage in places as far flung as Woodbury, Redding, Oxford, Derby and other spots, right now the DOT is prioritizing. And Route 67 is a priority.

“We’re looking at tens of millions of dollars in roadway repairs and reconstruction,” he said during a brief tour and interview. Above, as a reminder, a little gray cloud in the otherwise sunny afternoon dropped some drizzle. “Right now, we’re reallocating resources that we have available. Moving funds around.”

Department workers were on duty nonstop from Sunday night through Tuesday and now they’ll be stationed full-time at places where traffic needs to share the road, which in some cases, like along Route 34 in Newtown, is a single lane.

“We’re opening sections, we’re closing sections,” Eucalitto said. “We just came from Route 6 in Woodbury. We got one lane open there, now, so Route 6 is passable for vehicles. What Paul’s team is doing right now, is working on every place that we think is going to be a long-term closure, like this. They’re working and mapping out what the posted detours are going to be, so we can share that because we need to determine what’s safe to be able to accommodate that much traffic, the amount of large vehicles passing through there.”

Norwich will not ask voters to increase $385 million budget for school project

Claire Bessette

Norwich ― There will be no referendum in November to change either the price or the scope of the $385 million school construction project, leaving project planners with a mandate to complete it for the price approved by voters.

The City Council on Monday withdrew two competing ordinances, one to raise the price by $50 million and one to cut the scope of the project to $342 million.

The project includes four new elementary schools, either a complete renovation or a new Teachers’ Memorial Global Studies Middle School with the School Building Committee leaning toward a new school and renovations to the Samuel Huntington School for central offices and adult education.

Both the School Building Committee and the Board of Education last week voted to recommend no new referendum, affirming they could revise the project to meet the $385 million approved by voters in 2022.

The biggest revision so far was to correct a mathematical error that overestimated middle school enrollment by 200 students. The correction allowed a reduction in size for the middle school, dropping the projected cost from $99 million to either $72.5 million for a new school or $69.27 million for extensive renovations.

On Tuesday, the building committee hired the MP Planning Group for $9,675 to conduct a demographics study to update enrollment figures. Those numbers will be required for state grant reimbursement for all portions of the project, committee Chairman Mark Bettencourt said..

MP Group Principal Michael Zuba said the group could do preliminary work immediately and be ready to incorporate new state enrollment projection data when it is released in October.

Schools starting to take shape

The building committee Tuesday got its first virtual look inside the new Greeneville and John B. Stanton schools, as project architect Jim Barrett of the DRA firm presented renderings of exteriors and images of bright, colorful interior hallways, cafeterias, gymnasiums and lobbies.

The committee previously had scaled back the cost estimates of the new buildings and on Tuesday approved several more changes to the Greeneville and Stanton school plans that collectively will save another $1.5 million.

The committee cut a planned second art room from each school, saving $1.25 million in construction costs. Acting Superintendent Susan Lessard said school officials visited the 700-student Griswold Elementary School, which originally had two art rooms.

But the school ended up converting one into an intervention room without hurting art offerings, Lessard said.

The committee agreed to eliminate ceiling fans in the two school gymnasiums, saving $100,000. Barrett said the fans tend to become caked with dust and are difficult to clean. He said some schools end up not even using them.

Another $100,000 was saved by switching from exterior sun shades for south-facing windows in favor of sun-blocking window glazing. Barrett said the glaze would achieve the same energy efficiency rating.

Additional savings are expected from building windows on site that allow the contractor to adjust to last-minute changes.

The next two new elementary schools, Uncas and John Moriarty schools, each were reduced by 5,000 square feet, with most spaces retained but slightly smaller.

The Huntington School renovation is the last portion of the project and will be based on available remaining funds after the new schools are completed and is expected to cost between $10.3 million and $13.8 million.

Lyme-Old Lyme School Construction Hit With Higher Costs, Possible Cuts

Francisco Uranga

LYME/OLD LYME — Plans to update four schools in Lyme-Old Lyme may cost considerably more than anticipated, given bids discussed on Monday by the Board of Education’s Building Committee.

CT Examiner reviewed a number of budget and bid documents prepared by Downes Construction, which is overseeing the project for the district. With bids for Mile Creek Elementary School, the largest single portion of the schools project, still outstanding, Downes told the committee that the total costs were already $7.7 million over budget. 

Voters in Lyme and Old Lyme approved $57.5 million in borrowing in 2022. So far, bids on the project have exceeded estimates by 27 percent.

Planned projects include code upgrades, repairing HVAC systems, boilers, fire protection systems and other improvements at Lyme Consolidated School, Mile Creek Elementary School, Center School and Lyme-Old Lyme Middle School. Project plans also include an additional classroom space for Mile Creek Elementary School.

At Monday’s meeting, Downes suggested that the scope of that work could be scaled back to bring down costs.

Among the reasons for the increased costs, according to the Downes report, were scope changes that raised expenses for HVAC equipment and materials. In addition, there was a higher cost because the project was put out to bid in June and July of this year, instead of in April. For some items, there was only one vendor, which meant higher costs due to lack of competition, according to the report.

Some bids were lower than expected, but that didn’t offset the more expensive ones, said Superintendent of Schools Ian Neviaser on Wednesday. He said the committee would begin a phase of cost management to rein in the added expenses.

“We can’t legally exceed the amount that was approved by the voters,” Neviaser said to CT Examiner. “The normal thing in any construction project is cost management. We have to make decisions about what we’re going to spend our money on and how. This is a normal thing in any construction project and it’s part of the building committee’s role to make these decisions. But the budget remains the same no matter what.”

Lyme and Old Lyme residents voted in a November 2022 referendum to authorize $57.5 million in bonds to build these projects. Nearly $21.8 million will be reimbursed through state grants, but the district will still need to issue bonds for the full amount. 

In May 2023, the district received a $12 million grant for Middle School, Lyme Consolidated School and Center School HVAC system improvements. The district also was awarded a $9.8 million grant for the Mile Creek Elementary School project.

The Downes report proposed some cost management strategies by reducing scope. The document suggested that the cuts could include eliminating “work not essential to HVAC such as sitework, fire protection” and reallocating security vestibule improvements to a separate budget.

Christopher Staab, treasurer of the district’s Board of Education and chairman of the facilities and finance committee, told the CT Examiner on Wednesday that if there were to be “dramatic changes in the scope of the project” he would call for a new referendum to give residents a say.

“It is proposed to remove fire suppression systems from Lyme [Consolidated] School or the update vestibules of all our schools for better security. That’s a major change in scope,” Staab said. “It has to be presented to the town, so we hear what our constituents have to say about the overages or the cutting back of what they were expecting from the project.”

Staab said he expected these proposals to be discussed by the board in the coming weeks.

Building Commission Chair Susan Fogliano did not respond to a number of attempts by CT Examiner for comment.

Neviaser said that these are “just Downes’ ideas” and that the Building Committee has not yet considered them.

“I do not feel that not doing security is a wise approach, but the decision is up to the committee ultimately,” Neviaser said. “We will try to maintain the scope of the project as it was presented to the community and work where we can find some savings.”

Downes also proposed reducing the scope of work for the “general trades,” which accounts for most of the increase between what was previously estimated and the adjusted amounts after bids were received. That includes carpentry or masonry work necessary for HVAC system installation, Neviaser explained.

Neviaser said that the amounts in the Downes report refer to initial bids which also still have to be reviewed. Some, he said, were more expensive than anticipated due to misunderstandings about the scope of work requested.

“Here’s a perfect example. All the bids for general trades included putting plywood across the entire attic at Lyme School,” Neviaser said. “We did not request that. We only requested that they put plywood down in the areas that they’re working in. Little things like that sometimes can impact the bid.”

Downes also suggested rebidding some items such as construction cleaning and labor logistics. 

Neviaser said that most of the bids for the three schools had been completed on July 9 and August 8. He said some bid items were pending and also that others could be rebid.

Neviaser said that even where rebids may be required, they do not imply delays in the project. For the HVAC upgrades, he said, the deadline is to complete the work by December 31, 2025.