Westport, DOT address residents’ concerns over bridge replacement

Serenity Bishop

WESTPORT — While residents agree the Greens Farms Road bridge needs to be replaced, they’ve raised concerns about the noise and inevitable detours when construction starts.

Project engineer Andy Shepard said all of the residents’ concerns will be taken into consideration and properly addressed before construction work on the bridge starts in spring 2023, including where the equipment to fix the bridge will be stored.

“The bridge will be closed for construction so that means that the approach can be used for staging,” Shepard said during Tuesday night’s virtual meeting. “If anymore room is needed we can coordinate with the town once we have the contractor on board. The contractor won’t be allowed to place any material or any of their equipment on any property that hasn’t had any easements acquired for the project.”

The DOT is replacing the bridge, which spans Sasco Brook near the Fairfield line, because it was deemed “structurally deficient” during the department’s bi-yearly assessment of the bridge.

DOT spokesman Priti Bhardwaj said bridges that are more than 20 feet long, like the one over Sasco Brook, are inspected every two years with each element of the bridge being scaled on a range of one to nine — nine meaning excellent condition.

During the last bridge inspection, certain elements of the bridge were rated four or lower.

The DOT plans to reinforce the bridge with new concrete structures, even out the shoulders of the bridge because one side is currently bigger than the other side and create two, 12-foot travel lanes. The department also plans to make sure the bridge blends in with its surroundings to maintain Westport’s character.

The project is expected to cost about $2.3 million, 80 percent of which will be paid with federal funds and 20 percent with town money.

“We are looking forward to a successful bridge replacement project with the town of Fairfield,” Westport Town Engineer Keith Wilberg said.

Fairfield’s engineer was also on Tuesday’s call.

Shepard said all coordination with emergency vehicles or buses will be verified with the town to ensure that there are not any delays or conflicts.

Wilberg said he had coordinated with the police and fire department regarding the detours.

One resident asked if all westbound traffic on Greens Farms Road will be diverted to Bulkley Avenue once construction starts, which is anticipated to begin in spring of 2023.

Shepard said the planned detour does include Bulkey. The current detour is 1.2 miles and should take a total of four minutes.

Another resident also asked if there will be time restrictions so that the neighbors surrounding the bridge will not be woken by construction.

“There are statues and everything in place to make sure that we work with the town to make sure the public is aware of everything that is going on and are obviously not affected by any noise restraints or any thing like that,” Shepard said.

Wilberg said that Westport does have a noise ordinance that doesn’t allow construction before 7 a.m. or go any later than 8 p.m. on a weekday.

“We definitely enforce that,” he said.

The construction for the bridge replacement is estimated to be about eight months. For now, the DOT and the town will continue to take public comments into consideration as they continue to plan for the project.

Renovating Fairfield’s Gould Manor Park will now cost $1.4 million, officials say

Josh LaBella

FAIRFIELD — The cost of renovating Gould Manor Park went up this week, and some of that expense is related to the fill pile cleanup, officials says.

In meetings this week, the boards of selectman and finance approved increasing bond appropriations for the cleanup by $450,000 to a total of nearly $1.4 million. Officials said the remediation work there is now done, though the park’s renovations are not.

Town boards originally approved $945,000 in June, and work began in August. The park is one of 40 or so contaminated sites around Fairfield connected to the fill pile scandal that has cost the towns millions of dollars in cleanup expenses.

An investigation into possible contamination on the site began in August 2019 after reports of potential asbestos that may have come from the fill pile managed by Julian Enterprises. Fill and topsoil from the fill pile on Richard White Way were used in renovations of the sidewalk in 2013 and 2014.

Arsenic, lead and asbestos were all confirmed to be along the sidewalk shortly after the investigation started. More tests followed, along with the creation of a remediation plan.

In a Board of Finance meeting Tuesday, Chief Administrative Officer Tom Bremer said the remediation cost has gone up, but not all of it is directly related to contaminated soil.

“Why is that? Well, when they were taking off the three to four inches of topsoil and redoing the fields, we recognized that the field closest to the point... was basically improperly built when they built it almost ten years ago,” Bremer said, going on to add that parts of the layer of rubble under the topsoil was contaminated.

When he visited the site, Bremer said, he saw incorrect material was used under the field, causing to it drain improperly. He said the town could have let it be and just replaced the few inches of top soil, but decided against that.

“We thought it was much more beneficial to build it correctly,” he said. “So, we removed that lower level material.”

Bremer said $220,000 of the increase was related to that material replacement, which he said officials would not have been able to anticipate until the sod was removed from the field.

Board of Finance member John Mitola said that field was originally built by Fairfield American Little League, and has been rebuilt before.

Bremer said the issue with the prior builds is that others were controlling it, and “the town had very little oversight on what was being done.”

According to town documents, $130,000 of the increase is going to perimeter fencing and a public bathroom at the park.

Bremer said the park’s bathroom “doesn’t look very good” and was scheduled to be redone by the town a few years from now.

“But, really we thought that if we really want to make this field, which has been closed for years, really look good come the spring, we felt the public bathroom really needs a face lift on the outside,” he said, adding the interior would also get renovations.

The $75,000 associated with the public bathroom renovation is an estimate from Public Works, Bremer said, and the project should be done before April. The $55,000 in fencing, he said, is because the current fencing is in bad shape.

“These are things that are going to have to be done,” he said. “We’d rather do it while we’re there.”

He said the only item that might be impacted by the timeline of finishing by spring 2022 is the bathrooms, as it will require an outside contractor, but it should not require him to come back to the boards.

Member Sheila Marmion questioned renovating the bathrooms at the park, especially as Parks and Recreation puts together a strategic spending plan.

“I’m not sure now is the time to be renovating the bathrooms, given that we might need to add bathrooms at other fields,” she said.

The added costs also include additional irrigation, temporary fencing, score boards and increased costs for the pickleball and basketball court, which are set to cost another combined $90,000.

Mitola asked why the work had already started.

“My concern is you kind of put the cart before the horse, it seems like,” he said. “Why didn’t we know about this two months ago or a month ago before you started this work?”

Bremer said the town did not want to pause the work and then start again after it got funding approval.

“The thought is, we have to remediate,” he said. “It’s not a question of ‘Should we or shouldn’t we?’ We are faced with contaminated stuff and obviously the field wasn’t built properly. We made a decision that we needed to go ahead with this.”

Bremer said the costs associated with the work at Gould Manor Park were still under the original $945,000 approved for it. Although the remediation work has been done, he said other park improvements have not been started or finished yet.

South Windsor PZC rejects warehouse proposal

Joseph Villanova

SOUTH WINDSOR — The Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously voted against an application for a 360,000 square-foot warehouse along Governor’s Highway and Talbot Lane at its meeting Tuesday night.

Six members voted, with PZC member Robert Vetere absent and alternate Paul Bernstein seated in the absence of member Stephanie Dexter.

One of the main zoning regulations cited in the decision was the town’s definition for the industrial zone, which allows uses that are “well-planned, functional, and aesthetically pleasing environments” that “by design, are compatible with abutting zones and uses.”

PZC Chairman Bart Pacekonis said the application would raise a number of issues for abutting zones — namely the neighboring residences.

“The plan as presented does not meet the ‘by design, are compatible with abutting zones and uses,’” Pacekonis said.

Pacekonis said that the proposed berm would do “little to nothing” to mitigate the noise and visual impact of the site, and that it was not demonstrated that the on-site queuing would prevent trucks from lining up on the street.

PZC member Michael LeBlanc agreed with Pacekonis, citing the “litany of issues” with the application.

“That whole concept of this is hanging on that very last sentence,” LeBlanc said of the industrial zone definition.

PZC Secretary Stephen Wagner listed a number of problems he had with the application, including tractor trailer emissions and idling, noise, and potential uses of the site, and proposed a number of conditions on the application to address these.

Wagner said he would still vote against the application, however, because it required four parcels to be combined into one. He said construction of the proposed warehouse would be impossible without joining the parcels, and past PZC members chose to keep the properties divided that way.

“The current PZC is obligated to review and consider the same impacts,” Wagner said, adding that a subdivision application allows for the consideration of noise, odor, and other impacts that a simple site plan does not.

PZC alternate Paul Bernstein said he had trouble taking the applicant’s stated use of the site at face value, questioning their ability to predict traffic at the site without a named tenant.

“I struggle to understand how you can know what that volume is,” Bernstein said.

He added that in reviewing the applicant’s document comparing distribution centers and truck terminals in town, the proposed warehouse had 50 percent more loading bays than the average distribution center on the list, and only 37 percent less than that of the freight terminals.

“One could conclude that (the proposal) is closer to a truck terminal than a warehouse,” Bernstein said.

Before rejecting the application, the PZC voted 3-3 on the intervener petitions filed by four neighbors, effectively nullifying them. Wagner clarified that the petitions were to present evidence that the proposal would have caused unreasonable pollution to state environmental resources.

Cavagnaro, Bernstein, and member Kevin Foley voted in favor, and Pacekonis, Wagner, and LeBlanc voted against the petitions.

Pacekonis said he felt the public trust would be damaged by the warehouse application, but that the interveners may not have presented enough hard evidence.

“Is there adequate information in the record to support my feelings? That’s the issue I’m having,” Pacekonis said.

Cavagnaro said he has expressed concerns with the possible effects on public health consistently “ever since November” that were not addressed by the applicant, and that it would be enough to support the interveners.

Wagner said whether the warehouse application showed a freight terminal or a distribution center, he felt it was a “fairly typical example” of one of the two, and that he had trouble seeing the site causing unreasonable issues, as per the text of the petitions submitted by the neighbors.