DOT in dark on 2nd Bridgeport station
BRIDGEPORT -- Surprise! You're building a new train station! That wasn't exactly how Gov. Dannel P. Malloy broke the news to transportation officials last month that he was spending $2.75 million to design a second Metro-North station in Bridgeport. ut the decision to prioritize the possibly $75 million project and aim for a 2018 opening was met with a collective "Huh?" by some key staff in the state Department of Transportation. This was something of a surprise to us," Judd Everhart, the DOT's head of communications, wrote in a July 16 email to his counterpart at Metro-North, attaching the draft press release prepared ahead of Malloy's visit to the Park City that same day. hose and other emails obtained by Hearst Connecticut Media help support critics' theory that Malloy's decision was politically calculated -- a big, sloppy, election year kiss to a Democratic city he badly needs to win in November. CLICK TITE TO CONTINUE
CCSU receives grant to aide in safety training, education for miners
NEW BRITAIN — Central Connecticut State University has received a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor that will help assure the miners in Connecticut and Rhode Island are being provided with proper health and safety training.
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration announced this week that it has allocated $8.3 million in health and safety training grants for 47 states and the Navajo Nation in fiscal year 2014. Of that money, more than $545,000 in state grant funding will go toward programs in the Northeast. CCSU’s share is in the amount of $54,094. “We’ve been receiving this grant for many years now,” CCSU Spokeswoman Janice Palmer said. “Prof. Stuart Barnett has led this health and safety initiative for a long time.” Grantees will use the funds to provide federally mandated training to miners. The grants cover training and retraining of miners working at surface and underground coal and metal and nonmetal mines, including miners engaged in shell dredging or employed at surface stone, sand and gravel mining operations. CLICK TITE TO CONTINUE
Making a pitch for women in hardhats
NEW YORK (AP) — Janice Moreno graduated from college with a degree in English literature, but never landed a job paying more than $12 an hour. Now, at 36, she's back in the classroom — in safety glasses and a T-shirt — learning how to be a carpenter. "I believe it's going to pay off," she said amid instruction in sawing techniques. If Moreno's six-week training program in New York City leads to a full-time job, she'll have bucked long odds. On this Labor Day weekend, ponder the latest federal data: About 7.1 million Americans were employed in construction-related occupations last year — and only 2.6 percent were women. That percentage has scarcely budged since the 1970s, while women have made gains since then in many other fields. Why the low numbers, in an industry abounding with high-paying jobs that don't require college degrees? Reasons include a dearth of recruitment efforts aimed at women and hard-to-quash stereotypes that construction work doesn't suit them. Another factor, according to a recent report by the National Women's Law Center, is pervasive sexual harassment of women at work sites. "It's not surprising that the construction trades are sometimes called `the industry that time forgot,"' said Fatima Goss Graves, the center's vice president for education and employment. "It's time for this industry to enter the modern era — to expand apprenticeships and training opportunities for women, hire qualified female workers and enforce a zero tolerance policy against sexual harassment." Efforts to accomplish those goals are more advanced in New York than in many parts of the country, with pledges by unions, employers and city officials to boost women's share of construction jobs. One key player is Nontraditional Employment for Women, or NEW, a nonprofit which offers training programs such as the one taken by Moreno.
The organization has arrangements with several unions to take women directly into their multiyear apprenticeships — at a starting wage of around $17, plus benefits — once they complete the program. After four or five years, they can attain journeyman status, with hourly pay of $40 or more.
Kathleen Culhane, NEW's interim president, said more than 1,000 graduates have obtained apprenticeships since 2005, and 12 to 15 percent of the apprentices with some leading unions are women. CLICK TITE TO CONTINUE
Reclaiming the river
The federal government awarded $7 million in "natural resource damages" in Connecticut as compensation for PCB pollution of the Housatonic River. An update on where 34 grant-funded projects stand: 1. Salisbury: The first soil the Housatonic River touches in Connecticut belongs to Shady Maple Farm, where the Bottass family raises corn and cattle along Weatogue Road. The 77-acre farm, home to eagles and hawks, will remain undeveloped partly thanks to a $557,810 grant. Secured by the Nature Conservancy, the grant helped to finance a conservation easement. Other money came from Salisbury Land Trust and the Trustees of Reservations, which operates Bartholomew's Cobble immediately upstream in Massachusetts. The grant also paid for an easement on the 20-acre Grossman farm on Weatogue Road, and there is money left to protect other properties. The Nature Conservancy hopes to wrap up talks with other landowners by March. 2. Salisbury: Salmon Creek meanders through lush, green hills and fields of grazing cows. Therein lies the rub: It's too tranquil. "For good habitat, you need deeper pools and a diversity of flow," said Tracy Brown, Northeast restoration coordinator for Trout Unlimited. Dead trees and limbs produce that flow when they fall into the water and create logjams. But the hayfields and pastures that paint this bucolic scene deprive the stream of a natural canopy. A $617,260 grant will fund the building and installation of wood structures that will mimic natural logjams to make the creek more hospitable to native brook and wild brown trout. Working with 11 landowners, Trout Unlimited has identified 24 areas for imitation logjams along six miles. The project also will replace invasive vegetation with native plants and repair erosion damage. Brown expects work on the $1.2 million project to begin this month.
3. Canaan: A proposal to breach an old dam and build a fish bypass on the Blackberry River in East Canaan was abandoned after the state determined an old bridge used to reach the site was incapable of handling heavy equipment required for the job. The $650,000 grant was returned to the pool.
4. Sharon: Open water created by beaver dams lure other wildlife, especially ducks and bitterns that call the Elaine Miles Wildlife Sanctuary home.
But the lodges on Carse Brook can also cause problems, including submerging a section of hiking trail at the 1,000-acre sanctuary. A $36,000 grant paid for a system of pipes, called water levelers, through the dam to control flooding. CLICK TITE TO CONTINUE