A contractor who claimed that his firm was blackballed by Trumbull First Selectman Tim Herbst as part of a political vendetta has won a $20,000 settlement from the town.
College President Janet Steinmayer and Centerbrook Architects and Planners will present a proposed master plan to the public at 9:30 a.m. Saturday at the Mitchell College Weller Center, and are encouraging the public to attend, see the plan, hear about the school's vision and offer comments.
Among the proposed highlights would be building a science and sailing center with a dock into the Thames River, adjacent to the Mitchell College beach; converting the red barn at Michael's Dairy to a black box theater; and creating green space along much of what is now DeBiasi Drive on the upper campus, where dormitories and the athletic center are located.
The college would also enlarge its playing fields and move roads on both the lower and upper campuses to the perimeter of its property.
Relocating roads on the lower campus, between Pequot and Montauk avenues, would open space for development of a campus center — an oval where small, New England-style administrative and academic buildings could be centered around the relocated Umbrella House.
Since July 2014 Steinmayer has been president of the 75-year-old liberal arts college, which currently has 750 students, about two-thirds of whom live on the campus. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Real Trout Brook Battle Is Man Vs. Nature — Again
Public outcry over the deforestation and dredging of Trout Brook in West Hartford is a small skirmish in a broader conflict escalating throughout Greater Hartford. A conflict rooted in not knowing how the Earth works, and in particular flood plains.
They are not flat areas next to rivers. They are parts of rivers, no more and no less integral than channels and banks. Claiming, draining and diking flood plains initiates a chain of consequences we must learn to live with.
Of course I'm sympathetic to West Hartford residents. Snarling chain saws and wood chippers are removing a riparian ecosystem they've gotten used to. Soon, heavy equipment will excavate an estimated 25,000 cubic yards of sediment, some of which is likely to be contaminated. Thousands of truckloads of wet mud will rumble through residential neighborhoods. Finally, the community will behold the ugly trapezoidal concrete channels put there in the late 1960s as part of a vast flood-control project that was supposed to improve the local quality of life.
Opposing residents in this war of words is the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Its task is to return Trout Brook to its engineered 1960s condition. Otherwise, they'll lose federal funding for flood management and risk sky-high insurance premiums for homeowners. Sadly, the agency in charge is the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is hopelessly in love with artificial channels.This skirmish is courtesy of two mid-20th-century policy decisions, both misguided retaliations against perfectly natural flood events. Here's the abridged version. West Hartford and the state allowed the hegemony of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the blundering of the U.S. Soil Conservation Service to ruin a network of streams so lovely they helped entice Mark Twain to become the area's most famous historic resident. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Study Proposes Overhaul Of State Railroads
WASHINGTON — To tackle congestion in the Northeast Corridor, the Federal Railroad Administration has released an environmental study on ambitious proposals to overhaul Connecticut's railroad system — possibly adding new routes, high-speed rails and a rail tunnel under Long Island Sound.
The study will help determine which of several options will lead to the Northeast Corridor of the future, or NEC FUTURE, a multi-million dollar federal effort to define and prioritize future investments in the rail system from Boston to Washington, D.C.
The FRA says the 457-mile NEC and its connecting rail corridors is the most heavily used rail network in the United States and among the busiest in the world, moving more than 750,000 passengers every day on 2,200 trains.
"By 2040, continued population and employment growth in the Study Area is expected to create increasing demand for travel options across the passenger transportation system — rail, air, auto, transit, and intercity bus. Yet the aging infrastructure and capacity limitations of the NEC already result in congestion and delays for daily commuters and for regional and interregional traveler," the report said.In its study, the FRA has come up with several alternatives to doing nothing and hoping the railroads keep their commitments to the existing lines.
The first alternative is the most modest, keeping most of the existing routes from Washington, D.C., to Boston, while adding a new line near New London, a new New London-Mystic station and other lines that would circle Baltimore and New York.
Alternative Two would be more ambitious, with the hopes of making rail travel the dominant mode of transportation for intercity travelers and commuters in the Northeast. It would upgrade existing rail lines and provide a second track along much of the NEC "spine," that is the Washington, D.C., to Boston route. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Shelton’s loss of manufacturer Stihl a banner day for Oxford
Stihl, the privately-held German manufacturer of outdoor power equipment, has acquired 24 acres in a business park near Waterbury-Oxford Airport and will relocate the company’s northeast distribution center there from Shelton next fall.
Construction of a new 120,000-square-foot distribution center for Stihl in the Patriot Industrial Park got underway last month. Stihl purchased 24 acres in the nearly 36-acre business park from 589 Investments, an Oxford-based limited liability company that is the owner of the industrial park, for $1.71 million, according to land records.
Online records from the Connecticut secretary of the state’s office list Mark Oczkowski as a principal in 589 Investments. Oczkowski is founder and president of Earthworks Excavating & Landscaping, an excavating and earth moving company located in Oxford.
George Temple, Oxford’s first selectman, called last month’s ground-breaking for the new Stihl facility “a banner for Oxford’s economic development.” CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE