First offshore wind farm to power CT homes wins final approval; will be south of Block Island

EDMUND H. MAHONY

Revolution Wind, an offshore wind project to provide electricity to Connecticut and Rhode island and one of the relatively few in the northeast to emerge intact from a flurry of economic setbacks, has received final, government approval to begin construction.

It will be the first utility scale offshore wind farm serving the two states and is on track to be the second in the northeast. The project is designed to deliver 400 megawatts of electricity to Rhode Island another 304 to Connecticut, powering the equivalent of 350,000 homes and helping both states meet their aggressive carbon reduction goals.

The final approval by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is a rare, recent win for the capital intensive offshore wind industry, which has been nearly sunk over the last two years by a combination of inflation, rising interest rates and supply chain failures.

Revolution Wind, which will soon rise over a windy stretch of ocean south of Block Island, is a joint project of regional utility Eversource and the Danish multinational Orsted. Unlike other offshore developers, the partners locked in costs for Revolution Wind and two other projects planned for the same area — Sunrise and Southfork Wind — before inflation and interest rates shot up and the war in Ukraine created global supply chain problems.

Several other projects across the northeast have become money losers as construction and finance costs outstrip the projected profit in energy contracts drawn after power auctions by state regulators.

Spanish energy giant Avangrid has closed projects and faces cancellation penalties in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Orsted’s stock has plunged 75 percent from its 2021 high in part because of its cancellation of New Jersey- based projects. Projects are at risk in New York and Massachusetts. And Eversource has said it is selling out of the offshore wind business.

Revolution Wind is a bright spot in an otherwise bleak picture. It and the other two Eversource-Orsted projects will be built and supplied from the newly rebuilt State Pier in New London, where Orsted has been stockpiling the enormous blades, turbines and blades since early last summer.

The Eversource-Orsted partnership picked about a third of the approximately $300 million pier rebuild cost and it is committed to paying another $20 million to lease the pier as an offshore support base for the next decade.

“Today’s final federal approval from the Biden Administration clears the way for the first direct infusion of carbon-free energy via offshore wind into Connecticut and the region,” said U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, whose second district includes New London. “The Revolution Wind project will create hundreds of good-paying jobs at the State Pier in New London.”

Gov. Ned Lamont said, “This is yet another positive development that gets us closer to Connecticut’s first offshore wind farm. Wind power remains a key part of our clean energy strategy and ensuring we provide families and businesses with clean, reliable and affordable power.”

Orsted has said that Revolution Wind will create thousands of direct and indirect jobs, as well as permanent operations and maintenance jobs across both states.

The 300-foot tall towers will be shipped from New London to a government-approved location about 30 miles south of Rhode Island. They will sit on 40-foot high, 120-ton concrete foundations fabricated in Rhode Island.

Revolution Wind’s energy will reach the New England electric grid by cable to Quonset Point, Rhode Island.

Connecticut State Building Trades Council Statement on Proposed Electric Vehicles Regulation

November 20, 2023 – The Connecticut State Building Trades Council (CSBTC) releases this statement to clarify their position on the Lamont administration’s proposed regulation regarding the sale of electric vehicles.

On August 5, 2021, President Biden signed an executive order declaring that by 2030 half of all passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. will be electric. At his announcement ceremony, President Biden said, “we’re going to put Americans to work modernizing our roads, our highways, our ports, our airports, rail and transit systems. That includes putting IBEW members and other union workers to work installing a national network of 500,000 charging stations along our roads and highways and at our homes and our apartments.”

“Our frustration lies in the fact that President Biden’s vision for this just transition including good union jobs simply hasn’t come to fruition here in Connecticut,” said CSBTC President Keith Brothers.

A non-union Massachusetts based company is currently installing EV charging stations at the service plazas along our I-95 corridor.

“This isn’t about placing blame. We have strong partners and allies in the administration and on both sides of the aisle in the legislature,” said CSBTC Executive Director Joe Toner. “At the very least, these projects should be awarded to responsible in-state companies who provide family-sustaining wages and access to apprenticeship and job training opportunities.”

CSBTC President Keith Brothers added, “Should the Regulation Review Committee adopt the EV regulation, we hope it’s a first step in addressing President Biden’s call for the creation of union jobs. Our members should be building the infrastructure to support the clean energy transition.”

The CSBTC represents approximately 30,000 men and women in Connecticut’s unionized construction industry. 

At $6.5 billion, Connecticut rail projects reach an 'astronomical' sum, even for supporters

John Moritz

MILFORD — Underneath the backdrop of sleek passenger trains inching across the Devon Railroad Bridge, state and federal rail officials on Monday sought to show-off the necessity of investing billions in Connecticut’s aging railroads. 

The movable bridge — which a succession of speakers noted dates to the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt — is a notorious bottleneck along the nation’s Northeast Corridor, forcing trains to slow down to 30 mph as they cross over the Housatonic River, slow enough that they’re easily passed by cars traveling along the parallel stretch of I-95. 

When the bridge gets stuck, as it did in 2015, it can create a cascade of delays impacting thousands of riders as far away as Boston and Washington, D.C. 

To fix the problem, officials have come up with a plan to spend nearly $150 million making interim repairs to the bridge over the five years, before embarking on a decade-long, $2.2 billion replacement of the rusting structure.

The result? Trains may one day be able to reach speeds of 70 mph on the bridge, reducing travel times by around two minutes while avoiding the risk of longer delays. 

“It didn’t just dawn on us that a bridge like this needed to be replaced,” said Amtrak CEO Steven Gardner. “We’ve been trying to do this for decades.” 

Similar problems with costly solutions are impacting rail travel throughout Connecticut, officials say, including a pair of aging bridges in Norwalk and Old Saybrook that are in line for their own billion-dollar replacement projects. Throw in a few hundred million for track repairs, power upgrades, capacity studies and realignments, and one begins to get a sense of the scope of the work ahead.

Altogether, the list of rail infrastructure projects under development in Connecticut is expected to cost $6.5 billion — a “dizzying” and “astronomical” sum even in the words of project supporters.

“This is one of our renaissance periods,” said Gov. Ned Lamont, describing the investment as an end to the “long pause” in the construction of major transportation projects dating back to the completion of Connecticut’s interstate highways in the 1950s.

“That pause is right now over, we’re going to be able to get you home faster to see your kids and do it safely,” the governor continued. 

In addition to the creation of tens of thousands of jobs, Lamont said the projects are necessary to fulfill his commitment to shave 25 minutes off of a commuter trip between New Haven and New York City by 2035. Amtrak trains, which utilize the same tracks, will see a similar boost in travel times. 

Critics, however, have painted the federal grants for the Northeast Corridor as an example of wasteful spending and part of a perceived bias by President Joe Biden’s administration for projects benefiting major metro areas.

In Connecticut, the cause of bringing the state's railroads up to a state of good repair has attracted bipartisan support, with lawmakers warning of other potential consequences for continuing to delay necessary upgrades. 

"Think Mianus River Bridge," said U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, referring to the 1983 collapse of a corroded section of interstate highway in Greenwich that killed three people and snarled traffic for months.

While the bulk of the funding for the Northeast Corridor projects is coming from the federal government, in Connecticut they are largely being overseen by the state’s Department of Transportation, which owns the rail lines west of New Haven. 

Among the explanations officials have given for the eye-popping price tags on projects such as the replacement of the Devon Bridge include the need to pain-stakingly schedule construction to avoid disrupting the roughly 175 trains that utilize the corridor every day.

Cheaper alternatives, such as constructing an immovable bridge that would block river traffic, were deemed too controversial and unlikely to gain Congressional approval, according to DOT Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto.

“You cannot shut down the river here,” Eucalitto said. “To do this project, while keeping the bridge active… it’s a very complicated project.”

Beyond Connecticut, the federal investments in rail infrastructure include multi-billion projects to build new tunnels in New York and Baltimore, as well as the replacement of bridges in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland — all of them representing major bottlenecks along the 457-mile Northeast Corridor.

By the end of the current phase of construction, officials plan on being able to introduce more service, to new stations and with quicker speeds, though introducing fully high-speed service to the corridor remains a more distant vision. 

New London project will remove lead pipes from water service lines connected to homes VIDEO

NEW LONDON, Conn. (WTNH) — The City of New London is working on becoming the first municipality in the state to have lead-free water service lines that lead to homes.

“What is so awesome about this project is that it is for our children. It is for the future,” said Reonna Dyess, the New London City Council president and director of the Drop-In Learning Center in New London.

She has seen the effects of lead poisoning and praised the city’s effort to get the lead out.

“It causes stomach aches, headaches, long-term learning disability if you have chronic exposure over time,” Connecticut Department of Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani said.

The city wants to prevent those long-lasting effects of lead and has become the first in the state to start a program to remove lead service lines leading into more than 2,400 homes in New London.

“It’s good cause you know babies that drink the water, you don’t want them to get sick,” New London resident Holly Parkes said.

The city said some of those service lines are 100 years old.

“Roughly 100 years old, absolutely, yup,” said Anthony DiVirgilio, the contracts manager for Burns Construction, which will be performing the lead pipe replacement work.

City leaders said as much as 75% of the three-year project could be funded through state and federal funding, possibly through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, which aims to help distressed communities.

The project is expected to cost $36 million.

Torrington school building committee seeks $5.6 million grant

Emily M. Olson

TORRINGTON — Those involved with Torrington's middle-high school building project, now under construction on Besse Drive, would like to enhance fitness opportunities there for the rest of the city, and are seeking a grant from the state. 

A grant from the state's Community Investment Fund, a highly competitive program, was first discussed in June with the City Council. At that time, committee co-chairmen Ed Arum and Mario Longobucco explained that they wanted to further improve what was already approved in 2021, with a scoreboard, improved fields and tennis courts at the school campus. These will provide space for softball leagues and other community sports.

""We're trying to take what will be a very good facility and improve upon it," Longobucco said.

The co-chairmen brought an updated application to the council Nov. 13, which includes a request for $5.6 million. Arum said the first round of grants for 2023 was allocated to larger towns and cities.

"The government had $875,000 going out for grants, and the first round went to larger towns," Arum said. "We learned that a number of them are coming back for more money, and we were told to reapply; the Community Investment Fund doesn't want those who got money to reapply."

The funding, according to a grant committee working with the building committee, will be used for "an enhanced state of the art Fitness Complex with turf covered Baseball, Softball and Multipurpose Fields ... Along with this durable low maintenance player friendly surface located at the school campus, two energy efficient powered scoreboards and field lights will help to increase field usage after hours."

The added lighting, Arum and Longobucco explained, will provide compliance for softball games. In addition, concrete field sidewalks made with a recycled glass component will help reduce this projects’ carbon footprint by 20 percent; the pathways will also be more accessible and compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

"This shovel ready project will benefit from a partially funded local match that will support sidewalks, an additional solar powered scoreboard & two tennis courts," the committee said in its statement. 

"We're putting lights on the softball field and doing scoreboards," Arum said. "We're trying to get our fair share. People have said we shouldn't go to the state for money, but we're allowed to do it. Why should this be different from other grants?"

Council members Anne Ruwet and Paul Cavagnero objected to the grant application in June, and again on Monday night. Both consider the grant application an addition to the cost of the schools project, which is $179 million. Torrington is receiving 85 percent reimbursement for the schools project, meaning the city is paying, through taxes, about $28 million of the total cost. 

In 2020, residents approved building a new 310,000-square-foot middle-high school with central offices, replacing the older building on the city-owned property with a state-of-the-art facility and outdoor upgrades. The initial cost was under $159 million; in 2022, the school building committee returned to the City Council, requesting to bond another $20 million based on increased material and construction costs. Voters approved that amount in January 2022. 

"The voters had two referendums for this project, and everything should have been included in the last vote," Ruwet said. "This brings the project to $185 million."

Ruwet also said she was concerned about using turf fields, based on reports that show the fields cause more injuries. "I don't know why we're not reconsidering having turf fields at all," she said. 

The committee has reasoned that turf fields last much longer than grass, and because the high school's athletic fields are used by students as well as outside groups, turf would be a better option.

Longobucco and Arum said the $5.6 million grant has nothing to do with the cost of the project. 

"If we turn down the funding, another district might take it instead," Arum said. "It helps both the city and the kids. If you don't want to approve this, I think it would be a mistake. We've been working on this for five years, because people use this area all the time."

Mayor Elinor Carbone reiterated the grant application process as being "highly competitive."

"There's no guarantee this will even be approved," she said. "It was denied last time."

The council voted to apply to the Community Investment Fund for the grant, with Ruwet and Cavagnero voting no, and Armand Miniccia, David Oliver and Keri Hohne voting yes. 

Bridgeport schools to use $2M in COVID aid to replace Curiale School's aging HVAC system

Richard Chumney

BRIDGEPORT — Bridgeport Public Schools plans to tap nearly $2 million in federal COVID-related aid to replace the aging air conditioning and heating system at James J. Curiale School. 

The new HVAC system will be installed over the summer and is expected to serve the K-8 school in the city’s West End for at least for the next two decades, according to Jorge Garcia, a district official who oversees school facilities. 

In a recent school board meeting, Garcia said the existing air conditioning system at Curiale has become so outdated that maintenance officials have struggled to locate and purchase new parts to replace damaged ones.  

“The units that are currently in place are actually old units that we salvaged from the old Roosevelt School,” Garcia said, referring to a building that was demolished more than a decade ago. “They're well past a useful life. We've been having issues.”  

The upgrades are part of a renewed focus around improving cooling and heating systems in school buildings across the district, many of which were built decades ago and lack up-to-date equipment. Air conditioning is considered a crucial tool that allows schools to stay open during dangerous heat waves. 

School leaders last year announced plans to install A/C units at Wilbur Cross and Columbus schools, and federal officials over the summer awarded the city $3 million for upgrades to the heating and cooling system and other infrastructure at Geraldine Johnson and Luis Munoz Marin schools. 

Garcia said the HVAC replacement at Curiale will impact the entire school, which serves around 500 students. He described it as a state-of-the-art system that will include a new chiller, ductwork and environmental controls accessible by administrators. 

The school board voted unanimously during a special meeting to approve the project. Garcia said the district plans to contract Southington-based Sav-Mor Cooling & Heating, Inc., the only company that bid on the project, to conduct the installation. He said the school system has previously worked with the company and is confident they can complete the task. 

“Right now there's so much work in the state that bidding is kind of tight, so we're lucky we had a respondent on this bid,” Garcia said. 

Garcia said school officials are aiming to install the new system when crews replace Curiale’s roof this summer, which he said will help the district save money on construction costs. He noted the new A/C units will be located inside the building’s “penthouse” to protect the equipment from the elements. 

To fund the project, the district will use nearly $2 million in COVID aid. The last round of the about $150 million in federal pandemic relief awarded to the district is set to expire early next fall, but Garcia said the installation is scheduled to be complete by that deadline.  

The aid program, known as the federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER, was created in 2020 to help schools across the country address the impact of  COVID-19. In Bridgeport, the funds have been used to cover the cost of after school programs, new technology and other items.  

Improperly installed basins lead to repair work on Jefferson Avenue

John Penney

New London ― Construction crews on Monday were putting the finishing touches on a Jefferson Avenue repair project that became necessary after new catch basins on the busy street were installed incorrectly.

The drainage basins were originally added months ago as part of a $3.9 million state- funded project paid with Local Transportation Capital Improvement Program, or LOCIP, funds administered through the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments.

The initial work meant digging up and rebuilding roughly 2,500 linear square feet of Jefferson Avenue and construction of a “three-legged” roundabout near the high school, with new sidewalks, crosswalks, lighting and curbing.

But several weeks ago, after paving was completed, an inspection showed undulations in the road in the areas of the basins, Director of Public Works Brian Sear said.

“If you drove over them, you’d notice a wobble with some areas worse than others,” he said. “In the field, the elevation of a water main under the road wasn’t properly taken into account, which involved just fractions of inches, but meant the elevation of those basins were too high.”

Sear said he met with state Department of Transportation and SECCOG officials about three weeks ago to brainstorm a solution that wouldn’t violate LOCIP spending guidelines.

“This is a municipally administered project, but the state does audit the work,” he said. “The project language required this road to have a life of between 20 to 30 years, which it wouldn’t if we left the basins as they were.”

Kate Rattan, SECCOG’s transportation program manager, said the basin issue arose from a combination of “utility conflicts” found on and under the road, including a bicycle lane with a different slope elevation than adjacent road gutter.

“These things happen out in the field,” she said. “Luckily, we can lean on the expertise of DOT and were able to coordinate a solution. And the good news is the repairs will not mean any additional expense to the town.”

Ultimately, the tops of 12 basins were lowered by about three inches using a combination of more compactable concrete and flatter basin tops. Final sealing work on the repair job was being conducted Monday morning.That work was paid for with a pool of contingency funding included in the original funding package.

Sear praised DOT and SECCOG officials for working with the city on the repair plans.

“There’s no bad guy in this scenario,” he said. “The paving itself was excellent.”

The roundabout portion of the work was largely completed in August, though several aesthetic pieces on the center island, including a sail-shaped flag and landscaping, have not yet been placed. Final crosswalk striping of the roundabout is expected to be finished by the end of the year.