Fresh off a recent victory in southeastern Connecticut, activists and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal have begun organizing opposition to a second federally proposed rail segment. This time, the fight is in lower Fairfield County.
The Federal Railroad Administration is recommending a new rail segment for high-speed trains between New Rochelle, N.Y., and Greens Farms in Westport to speed up service between New York and Boston. Opponents are calling it a "Fairfield County bypass."
Federal officials pitched the idea as part of their final plan for NEC Future, a sweeping vision for reshaping rail service from Boston to Washington, D.C. – the Northeast Corridor – as it braces for an increase ridership expected in the coming decades. The plan is meant to guide state and federal investments in the years to come.
The state has the final say on any new route. Funding would be split between the federal government, which would pick up most of the cost, and the state.
The Fairfield County route had received little attention from public officials and activists until recently, as much of the effort in the past year focused on defeating a proposed bypass from Old Saybrook to Kenyon, R.I.
Opponents of the Kenyon bypass said it would run through historic and cultural sites in southeastern Connecticut – with Old Lyme's historic district being the hardest hit – and cause environmental damage. It prompted numerous public hearings attended by hundreds of concerned residents.
The FRA opted last month not to include the Kenyon bypass in NEC Future's Record of Decision — the agency's final word on the project — but kept the Fairfield County changes in the plan.
The exact path of the new segment and how much it deviates from the present route remain unclear. While high-quality maps of the Kenyon bypass proposal became available through Freedom of Information requests last year, federal officials have yet to respond to FOI requests that activists made in April 2016 for high-quality maps of the Fairfield County segment.
State Department of Transportation Commissioner James P. Redeker said he believes the FRA has developed a map for the route, but the only information publicly available so far consists of three sentences included in the Record of Decision:
"The new segment beginning in New Rochelle, N.Y., extends through Greenwich, Stamford, and Norwalk to Greens Farms. Additional high-speed track capacity is necessary to achieve the service frequency and travel time objectives between New York City and New Haven. The specific routing, location, construction type, and other design elements of this segment will be the subject of a subsequent Tier 2 environmental process." CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Northeast Rockbusters Play In The Dirt
t was history moving mountains Aug. 4-6 at Mark Gluck's farm in Plainfield, as dozens of vintage construction vehicles leveled a plot of land for a new hay field.
Plying the site were early steam shovels, bulldozers, dump trucks, and other antique vehicles, going through their paces for the enjoyment of spectators.
"It's old men playing in a big sandbox," said exhibitor Ted Valpy, as he showed off his 1927 Ford Model T dump truck.
Built with the same transmission and front end as the Model T automobile, the rear had been lengthened to accommodate the truck bed, which had to be hand-cranked to dump its load.
The show was organized by Northeast Rockbusters, the New England regional chapter of the Historical Construction Equipment Association.
Kevin Maguire, the Rockbusters' president, said that the chapter boasts about 440 members, "mostly old guys having fun. Some guys like golf, I like playing with equipment."Approximately 1,200 spectators were expected to come through the gates, he said.
The three-day event was a noisy, working show, with the equipment busily engaged in moving dirt and leveling what used to be part of a gravel bank, said farm owner and fellow organizer Gluck.
"There's not too many shows with a job, where you do a finished product," he said. "When this is done, it'll all be field. What we're standing on is what we did last year. It's kind of fun, taking a mess and making something out of it."
A pair of machines on display of more recent vintage – 1960s-era Simplicity garden tractors –had been brought back into working order by Scott Selkic and his 12-year-old son, Chance, both of West Granby."We had to take the engine apart and put a magneto in it," Chance explained.
It was a learning process, but a bonding one as well, said Scott. Garden tractor engines are "very, very basic, so it's a good way for someone his age to learn this stuff. That's how I learned, sitting on the fender with my father," he said.
Steve Champagne, of Jewett City, was also doing his part to pass on a love for things mechanical to the next generation. Surrounded by his array of metal construction vehicle toys, he handed a toy scraper to Hailey, who immediately launched into using it to excavate and scrape a nearby kid-sized sand pile.
"The kids today, everything's plastic. They don't know what metal toys look like till they come here," said Champagne.
He buys and sells classic Tonka trucks and other pint-sized equipment for aspiring drivers both young and old. He estimated that he has approximately 5,000 of the toys in stock.
"I retired from driving the big ones a little over a year ago. Now, I play with the little ones. I used to have Matchbox [vehicles] when I was a kid, but I graduated," he said. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Is Safety at Millstone Getting Enough Attention?
As nuclear power plant after nuclear power plant in New England closes or announces a closing date, there’s an uncertain future for Connecticut’s only operating plant, the Millstone facility in Waterford.
The plant’s owner, Dominion Energy, stated in June that it may choose to exit the New England market “for economic reasons” and started a “strategic review” to decide whether to continue operating the plant, which sits next to Long Island Sound on about 500 acres of land about 3 miles southwest of New London and 40 miles southeast of Hartford. The review began after the state legislature didn’t pass a bill this year that would have maintained or boosted Millstone’s profitability.
The two sides of the debate have made their voices loud and clear. Millstone’s proponents argue that the power plant, which opened in 1970 and was named for the former granite quarry that produced millstones where the plant now sits, is vital to the energy future of Connecticut and New England. Opponents of legislative action to help Millstone contend it will stifle the growth of renewable energy in the state and would mean higher prices for electric ratepayers.
The voices of safety advocates, however, have largely gone unheard. They fear that the facility’s spent-fuel pools and security issues — like at other nuclear plants — endanger the lives, the land and the water for many miles outside the plant.
Low natural gas prices and depressed wholesale electricity prices have made it difficult for New England nuclear plants to remain competitive in recent years, and only two, Millstone and New Hampshire’s Seabrook, are operating and haven’t announced a closure date. The Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is scheduled to close in May 2019; Vermont Yankee in Vernon, Vermont, closed in 2014; Haddam Neck in Haddam shut down in 1996 for safety and economic reasons; Maine Yankee in Wiscasset, Maine, stopped operating in 1996 after safety problems became too expensive to correct; and Yankee Rowe in Rowe, Massachusetts, shut down in 1992 after safety and economic problems.
Purchased by Dominion Energy from Northeast Utilities for about $1.3 billion in cash in 2000, Millstone produces 2,100 megawatts of electricity — enough to power about 2.1 million homes. None or very little of the plant’s electricity, however, is sold directly to Connecticut, Dominion Energy spokesman Kenneth Holt says. The plant’s electricity is sold in the futures market, where third parties buy it and then resell the power to electric utilities. Millstone is responsible for about $1.6 billion in economic impact in Connecticut each year, according to a 2016 analysis by Chmura, a consultant contracted by Dominion. The facility employs about 1,100 full-time workers and 400 full-time contractors, Holt says. It has two operating nuclear reactors, Units 2 and 3. During month-long refueling outages, which occur every 18 months on each reactor, 800-1,000 additional workers are brought in. A third reactor, Unit 1, was permanently shut down by Northeast Utilities in 1998. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE