NEW MILFORD — Mayor David Gronbach has withdrawn a proposal to build a natural-gas burning power plant on the former site of the Century Brass Mill, citing strong opposition from the community and Town Council.
Dallas-based Panda Power Funds had proposed to buy the mill site for $2.8 million to build a 550-megawatt plant, suggesting it would become the town’s largest taxpayer, create hundreds of jobs during construction, and create about 30 permanent jobs once it was complete. But in contentious public informational meetings in recent weeks, community members expressed strong concern about possible air pollution, effects on property values and other issues.
In a press release announcing the withdrawal Monday afternoon, Gronbach cited this heated opposition as the main reason for the withdrawal and said he didn’t want to split the town:
“Some information sessions have involved shouting, accusations of collusion, blatant misinformation and scare tactics, threats and intimidation of people, including Town employees,” Gronbach wrote. “To those that shouted down honest questions and answers, called my female staff ‘bitch’ and ‘liar,’ accused me of being a ‘Nazi,’ and generally behaved without civility and decorum, I know that you do not represent the people in my town or even in the opposition. Nothing about my decision today diminishes my continued and forceful opposition to such poisoning of our town and the political process.
Because I know there are members of the community that support this proposal, I recently suggested a bipartisan committee to review it and provide a neutral forum for questions and answers to be presented. But it is clear to me now that such a Committee would simply nurture the opposition’s feeling that its government is not listening to them and prolong a rejection for which the die has been cast. That is not why I ran for office.”
Bill Pentak, the vice president of investor relations and public affairs for Panda, declined to comment further.
“The mayor’s letter speaks for itself, and we have nothing to add,” Pentak wrote in an email.
Gronbach also posted the announcement to his Facebook page, where it received dozens of comments from residents thanking him for withdrawing the proposal. Some comments also expressed a desire to work with town officials to find another use for the site.
The mill site has sat vacant for 30 years. During the presentations, Economic Development Director Kevin Bielmeier stressed the need to develop the site and add it back on the tax rolls. He said the difficult access to the site made it difficult to attract a new industry. He also said it was important to develop the site to show the state and federal governments the town was using the money invested in the revitalization of the site well, which will help the town receive more grants for other projects in town.
The brass mill, which sits on the corner of Aspetuck Ridge Road and Housatonic Avenue, was built in 1959 and closed in 1986. The town acquired it in 1999 and has since been removing PCBs from the property. The town received approval from the Environmental Protection Agency last month to demolish the building, which is expected to be completed soon.
Nothing has been said yet about another proposal for the 70-acre site.
On Monday, Bielmeier said he supports the mayor’s decision to withdraw the proposal based on the public’s opposition to the project at the recent forums. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
State ponders Trump’s infrastructure promises
On its face, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s trillion-dollar plan for nationwide infrastructure improvements is good news, even for Democrats such as Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.
Connecticut’s deteriorating highways and bridges could certainly benefit from additional funding. A report this year by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association found that 357 of the tstate’s bridges were structurally deficient and another 1,087 were seen as obsolete.
“We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none,” Trump said in New York after his narrow victory over Hillary Clinton. “And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it.”
The state Department of Transportation currently gets about $632 million a year from the federal government, while the state borrows about $700 million a year for transit-related projects.
“I want to see an infrastructure infusion that would be beneficial to our state,” Malloy told reporters last week. “I hope that’s going to be part of incoming-President Trump’s financial policies.”
Malloy last year put forth plans for a 30-year, $100-billion rebuilding of state infrastructure.
But Trump’s campaign promise to invest $1 trillion without raising federal spending is troubling for Connecticut union officials who are concerned that the higher wages contractors must pay here would be thrown out the window by a Trump administration.
Trade union worries
It’s happened before, says Lori Pelletier, president of the 200,000-member state AFL-CIO. She recalled that federal projects under the previous Republican president, George W. Bush, did not require contractors to pay employees the region’s so-called prevailing wage for federally financed projects.
“Even in states like ours where there is prevailing wage, it didn’t necessarily cover that work because it was federal dollars,” Pelletier recalled. “If Donald Trump is trying to bring back public-private partnerships we’re going to be going down a path that has problems.”
Pelletier recalled that in Indiana, a new toll road was leased to hedge-fund managers and investors, who took the proceeds but wanted no actual responsibility.
“What happened is there were problems like accidents on the road and the private investors want immunity from lawsuits,” Pelletier said. “So there have been hiccups.”
David Roche, president of the Connecticut Building Trades Union, said he is concerned that Trump, with a reputation for hiring non-union workers for his own high-profile real estate projects, would attack trade unions when he reaches the White House in January. Union builders make substantially more than those in so-called right-to-work states such as Georgia or Tennessee. The cost of living is high in Connecticut, as well. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Murphy optimistic Trump will support funding transportation projects
wallingford >> U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy said Monday he is optimistic that President-elect Donald Trump will continue to support funding transportation projects such as the Hartford Line commuter rail project between New Haven and Springfield, Massachusetts, that will begin service in January 2018.
“It seems like he is willing to spend money on infrastructure,” Murphy, D-Conn., said while inspecting the progress of the Track Construction Machine that is being used to double-track the rail line. “This project is going to bring jobs up and down the Interstate 91 corridor.”Department of Transportation Project Manager John Bernick told Murphy the $701 million project will be finished on time and within budget. We have $43 million in contingency and a lot of big risk factors are behind us,” Bernick said, adding that $387.49 million already has been spent on the project. “Going in, we were uncertain about what we’d find when reinforcing the bridges along the route. But our experience has been good so far.” Reinforcing the bridge that carries trains over Route 150 near the town’s border with Meriden necessitated detouring traffic from the underpass for a month, he said. The new train platforms being built in Wallingford and Meriden for the commuter rail service will be complete next May, Bernick said. But increased commuter service, which will start out with 17 trips per day from Hartford to New Haven and another 12 trips between Connecticut’s capital and Springfield won’t begin for another eight months after the platforms are completed, he said.
Bernick said initial estimates of ridership on the commuter line put it at 700,000 riders per year. Those numbers are being revised, he said, but Bernick would not say whether the refinement of the data would be upward or downward.“This is going to be a game changer for the towns along this route,” he said.
Meriden-based SRC Construction pays $250,000 fine for filing false tax return
MERIDEN — SRC Construction was ordered Monday to pay a $250,000 fine for filing a false tax return.
The company pleaded guilty in federal court in July to one count of filing a false tax return and was also ordered to pay about $112,000 in back taxes, according to U.S. Attorney Deirdre M. Daly. The company has paid the fine and the back taxes, she said in a statement Monday. “The company also itemized for the court the various accounting and other internal changes made as a result of the investigation that are intended to ensure future tax and accounting compliance,” she said.
State records list the company’s president as Salvatore R. Carabetta and its secretary as Joseph F. Carabetta Jr.
A real estate development and construction firm, SRC employed an internal accounting department that managed the general ledger, journal entries and bank accounts for the company, Daly said. At least one person employed by SRC oversaw and coordinated business and financial matters for the company’s owner. That person and others reviewed company payments made to employees and vendors and also instructed how the items were to be expensed.
The employee, who was not identified, directed that invoices be paid out of company funds, including several expenses that were knowingly not deductible business expenses. The person, who provided the company’s outside accountants information to prepare audited financial statements and tax returns, also provided accountants several non-deductible expenses knowing they were not business related.
In February 2006, the company made and subscribed a false tax return that overstated expenses for the fiscal year ending April 30, 2005, Daly said. The company did not report corporate income totaling almost $300,000, resulting in a tax loss of about $110,000.
In 2010, the government began investigating issues involving SRC’s vendors and other third parties, Dominic Aprile, an attorney representing SRC, previously told the Record-Journal. In June 2011, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Division raided SRC, as well as Carabetta Management Co., Carabetta Enterprises and the office of Carabetta accountant Michael Fiondella, at 200 Pratt St.
In a statement released Monday, SRC said it was pleased that the case has been resolved. “The U.S. Attorney has acknowledged our company’s complete and full cooperation in this matter, and has further noted that we have already taken steps to address the identified accounting deficiencies,” the statement said. “This matter is now behind us.”
Quantum Biopower's digester has been under development for three years and is the first facility to be built in Connecticut. Once up and running, the facility will divert 40,000 tons per year of food waste from the waste stream for more environmentally responsible management through recycling. Each year, Connecticut manages more than two million tons of trash, 25% (500,000 tons) of which is food waste. The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection worked with Quantum from the beginning to complete permitting process and both parties are pleased that this day has finally arrived.
"Bringing this facility on-line is consistent with a key focus on the state's new Comprehensive Materials Management Strategy - diverting organic material from our waste stream. With the help of this first-in-the-state facility we are paving the way for a 21st century approach to management of our trash by turning waste food into affordable energy," said DEEP Commissioner Robert Klee. "This is a 'win' for both our efforts to reduce costs of trash disposal and our focus on developing new sources of power."
Quantum received a $2 million low interest loan from the Connecticut Green Bank toward the $14 million state-of-the-art project. The Town of Southington has also partnered in the project by agreeing to purchase the energy produced by the facility to supply various government buildings in town through the virtual net metering program. The facility has been anticipated for some time and has the vast majority of its feedstock under contract with area food waste generators, such as Shop Rite, the Aqua Turf and the Farmington Club. The ribbon cutting event will take place on Tuesday, November 15th, 2015 at Quantum Biopower in Southington. Tours will be offered to invited guests, including state and local officials. The facility is planned to begin operations by the end of the year. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Larson’s tunnels: Big plan, even bigger challenge
Not everyone is thrilled with U.S. Rep. John Larson’s proposal to build massive highway tunnels under Hartford, but Daniel Burnham might be, were he still with us. It was Burnham, the great Chicago architect and planner, who said, “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.”
Larson’s is anything but a little plan; it is breathtaking in scope. It has stirred the blood of some public officials and business leaders. But the concept is so vast, complex and potentially expensive – it would be longer than Boston’s “Big Dig” tunnels – that many doubt it could be realized.
Mr. Larson calls the proposal a “100-year solution” that would reduce traffic congestion on both I-84 and I-91, recapture large swaths of downtown land for much-needed development, reconnect northern neighborhoods to the rest of the city and even provide fill to repair the aging dikes on the Connecticut River.
Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin praised it for those reasons, as has State Rep. Tony Guerrera, co-chair of the General Assembly’s transportation committee. CT News Junkie blogger Susan Bigelow called the idea “brilliant and necessary.”
Others see it, as a Hartford Courant letter writer put it, as “the mother of all pipe dreams.”
University of Connecticut geology professor Robert Thorson, while applauding the conceptual benefits of a tunnel, can’t get his arms around this one. “It is beyond anything I could conceive. I see it as a fantasy,” he said. “It could be achieved, but at what expense?”
For the Larson plan to be realized:
- It must be drilled through a challenging subterranean environment of soft and hard rock – shale, sandstone, basalt – with fractures and faults. “It’s complicated down there,” said Thorson, who served as a consultant to the Adriaen’s Landing development along the Connecticut River. The challenge to tunnelers: “You never know what’s ahead of you.” He also observed that tunnels leak. “If you invest in one, you make a permanent commitment to pumping.”
- It would have to be paid for. Larson put a figure of $10 billion on the project when he announced it, but that is little more than an educated guess based on conversations with engineers – a “placeholder,” one advisor called it. There won’t be a real number until there’s an engineering study.
- The premise must be validated. The idea is that the tunnels will carry through traffic, leaving city portions of the highway to local traffic, thus reducing congestion on them. But there is as yet no traffic study showing there is enough through traffic, especially at rush hours, to make a difference and warrant the investment.
These challenges do not dissuade Larson from pushing ahead, at least to have the idea studied. “If people think it’s crazy, then we’re back where we were. Let’s solve the problem,” he said in a recent interview. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE