Recent increases in state funding for municipal road and bridge repair haven’t been enough to reverse decades of shrinking assistance, or to prevent the steady deterioration of local infrastructure, the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities reported Thursday. In its latest state campaign season position paper, the chief lobby group for Connecticut’s 169 cities and towns, said skyrocketing maintenance costs threaten local taxpayers across the state. “The passage of time and the slow recovery from an historic recession have created a perfect storm for the deterioration of Connecticut’s local roads and bridges,” said CCM President Matthew Galligan, South Windsor’s town manager. “While the state has made strides to increase investments to improve and maintain the state and local transportation network, the additional funding has not kept pace with the declining state of our transportation infrastructure.” The CCM report cites an American Society of Civil Engineers estimate that about 73 percent of Connecticut’s roads are in poor or mediocre condition. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Push is on for next phase of construction at Platt
MERIDEN — With students and staff now occupying the new wing at Platt High School, a project official at Thursday’s School Building Committee meeting said the push is on to start the next phase of reconstruction. David Cravanzola, project manager for the Torrington-based O&G Industries, Inc., said that crews would be working two shifts daily and “probably overtime” to get foundations poured for the second phase of the $111.8 million reconstruction project at the high school. We need to get those foundations in before the cold weather sets in,” Cravanzola said. The area in question affects a section of the current building that needs to be demolished before building up a new section. Until late last month, students and staff still occupied that portion of the school while completion of a new wing wrapped up. Delays in setting up utilities to the new wing of the school and establishing permanent power there set the construction behind this summer. The roughly six-week demolition process has already begun now that the wing is vacant. Cravanzola said the initial phase of removing hazardous materials from the two floors of the wing is 55 percent complete on the first floor and 65 percent on the second floor. This phase of the school will be a 45,000 square-foot vocational technical education building that will include an auto shop, wood shop and drafting room, as well as fitness and weight rooms, a locker room, custodial area, kitchen, and cafeteria. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Crews putting finishing touches on Depaolo Middle School
SOUTHINGTON — Construction crews were putting some final touches on a new section of DePaolo Middle School Thursday as the area is being prepared to open next month.
“The final clean and inspection will begin next week,” said Dave Giardini, who works for Newfield Construction and heads the project at DePaolo. “Everything is brand new, the floors, the walls, everything.” New stoves, sinks, dishwashing equipment, a cooler system, and more were scattered about the kitchen on Thursday. When it opens, lunches will be cooked at DePaolo for the first time since June. Meals for DePaolo are prepared at Hatton School, and meals for Kennedy Middle School, which is also undergoing renovations, are cooked at South End School. Middle school cafeteria workers are helping out at the elementary schools. The construction is part of the ongoing $89.7 million renovation of the middle schools. Work is expected to be finished in the fall of 2015.
Mike Quinn, an electrician with Ferguson Electrical Contractors in Plainville, was rigging the control panel for the kitchen while Peter Vecchitto, of Meriden-based James T. Kay Company, was working on a new garbage disposal. Significant progress has been made on both schools, said Chris Palmieri, vice chair of the Middle School Building Committee and assistant principal at DePaolo. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
GLASTONBURY — The state Department of Transportation's $33 million renovation of the William Putnam Memorial Bridge is slightly behind schedule, but still on track for completion in the spring, officials said. The project was set back about a month from its original May 2015 completition date when asbestos was discovered in a conduit running along the frame that had to be removed, said DOT spokesman Kevin Nursick. Construction on the 56-year-old bridge, which takes Route 3 across the Connecticut River between Wethersfield and Glastonbury, began in 2012. "You are talking about a bridge that needed a ton of work, but it has gone well and very smoothly," Nursick said. The renovation is designed to address deterioration of the steel superstructure and other structural deficiencies. Nursick said the department expected to have to close down one side of the bridge or the other during construction, but so far has been able to do the work using only temporary lane closures. He said the DOT may resort to closures during final paving next spring, but that would be the earliest it would have to. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
The Left Coast Lifter, which has a boom that extends to about 328 ft. (100 m), can hoist big chunks of bridge that will be built at a factory and floated to the site, greatly reducing the time and cost of construction, said Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who marked the arrival with U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey and other dignitaries. The floating crane can lift 1,900 tons (1,723 t), or 12 times the weight of the Statue of Liberty. Without it, crews would have to load smaller sections using a series of smaller cranes.
“I've never had a deep emotional connection to a crane before. But I want you to know that I truly am in love with this crane,'' the governor gushed aboard a boat in the middle of the Hudson River. “Any crane that saved the state of New York over a billion dollars, I love.'' The new $3.9 billion bridge between Rockland and Westchester counties is slated to open in 2018. It's about 24 percent complete and about 65 percent of the piling has been installed, officials said. The existing bridge north of New York City, which carries about 140,000 vehicles daily, opened in 1955 and will be torn down.
The Left Coast Lifter, nicknamed “I Lift New York,'' had been berthed in Jersey City, N.J., since January. It previously underwent a 6,000-mi. journey, while shrink-wrapped for protection, from San Francisco and through the Panama Canal, where it paid a reported $70,000 in tolls.
The $50 million Lifter was built in 2009 with a specific task in mind — replacing the earthquake-damaged section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. While in San Francisco Bay, the crane also lifted an old sunken tugboat from the bay bottom, helping to end an oil spill.