More asbestos found during Wethersfield High School construction
WETHERSFIELD -- Asbestos removal costs for the high school renovation project continue to climb, as workers keep discovering more of the hazardous material in the building. The town council this week approved an additional $380,000 for monitoring and removal after asbestos was unexpectedly found beneath a four-inch concrete floor, above ceiling tiles and behind walls. Town manager Jeff Bridges predicted more asbestos would turn up and costs would continue to rise. "I would anticipate additional requests for abatement," Bridges said. The project's $85 million budget still contains about $2.8 million for contingency, which should be enough to cover additional clean up costs, building committee chairwoman Christine Fortunato said. The asbestos poses no danger to students and staff, who continue to use the building as it's renovated, she said. Fortunato emphasized that the project remains on budget and on time. "That's what contingency is for," she said of the unexpected asbestos removal costs. "We knew that asbestos is a concern. We have the funding, and we're doing our due diligence to find and address it." Unexpected amounts of hazardous materials have plagued the project almost from the start. Town officials were forced to secure an additional $10 million in state funding earlier this year in large part to cover the cost of removing unanticipated PCBs. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
The CT Trees of Honor Memorial in Middletown is nearing the end of its first phase
IDDLETOWN — The Connecticut Trees of Honor Memorial's first phase is nearly complete, with a few finishing touches left this week in preparation for a private ceremony Saturday.
The memorial includes a tree and a granite plaque in honor of each of the 65 Connecticut soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002. On Tuesday, workers were installing the granite posts and plaques in front of each tree, and holes were being dug for three flag poles. The memorial is a part of Veterans Memorial Park, off of Route 66 between Newfield Street and Old Mill Road.
The second phase of the project, installation of bricks for the walkway through the memorial, will be done next year. "It's quite a memorial. You can't look at it as individual monuments, it's really a memorial for all of the soldiers," said Jon Miller, the construction manager on the project. "There's nothing else like it in Connecticut that I know of." Miller's son, Army Sgt. Jason Lantieri, died in October 2007 in Iraq. After the memorial had been planned, Miller and his wife Kathy originally planned just to help out for a few days. But Miller, owner of OnSite Services, took the project on as his own. Organizers said Tuesday they have been moved by the number of volunteers and donors. The memorial committee received a state grant, but financial support and donations of equipment and materials have pushed it ahead. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Planners, West Haven residents meet to hash out transit-oriented development
WEST HAVEN >> Not everyone agreed that more multi-family housing is what West Haven needs as part of any transit-oriented development for the area around the city’s still relatively new Metro-North railroad station. Not everyone among the 80 or so West Haveners in the audience Tuesday night at First Congregational Church on the Green was enticed by one consultant’s repeated references to how they created walkable streets and cohesive neighborhoods in other places. But one thing that was accomplished by an open house “charette” hosted by West Haven and Robert Orr & Associates, the company drawing up a master plan for future transit-oriented commercial and residential development of the area, was this: It got people talking about what they might want to see someday in the area. And that’s what Orr, based in New Haven, and the team he assembled — which, as he said afterward, works fast and will present a full-blown plan in the same church at 1 Church St. at 7 p.m. Thursday — really were shooting for. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE