February 12, 2019

CT Construction Digest Tuesday February 12, 2019

Busy Southington intersection will get turning lane
Jesse Buchanan
SOUTHINGTON – The Town Council on Monday night  approved a contract to add another lane to a busy West Street intersection.
The work will add a northbound turning lane for drivers heading off West Street and onto Jude Lane.
“You get one person turning left, and it blocks traffic up,” said Public Works Director Keith Hayden. “This will allow a protected lane with a green arrow and improve the operation of that intersection quite dramatically.”
While the additional lane will cost more than $700,000 to design and build, Town Council Chairman Chris Palmieri said it will not come out of the town’s budget because Southington was able to get a state grant to cover the cost.
Hayden said his department is always on the hunt for grants and other ways to fund work without drawing on town funds.
“We’re very aggressive in applying for these funds,” he said.
Hayden expects work to begin in the spring.
The council approved a contract with Paramount Construction of Newington for the additional lane. The cost of the contract is $676,000.

Lisbon landowner fears Eversource project is bothering beavers
John Barry
LISBON — Travelers heading south on Interstate 395 may have noticed in the past few months that land has been cleared on the side of the highway and a gravel road has been built just south of Exit 21.
The clearing and the road are part of a maintenance project being done by Eversource Energy, replacing 121 wooden poles carrying electrical transmission lines with new ones made of steel. The new poles are up to 85 feet tall, but are limited to being no more than 10 feet taller than the wooden ones they’re replacing.
The transmission lines run roughly north from Preston through Lisbon, Canterbury, Plainfield, Brooklyn and Killingly, according to an Oct. 2 filing with the Connecticut Siting Council.
“This line is part of an integrated grid that serves New England,” Eversource spokesman Frank Poirot said.
Randy Wildowsky, a dairy farmer who owns land in Lisbon on both sides of I-395 that Eversource’s lines run across, is complaining that the utility has caused damage to wetlands there that won’t be easily fixed.
Brush has been cleared to make the gravel road off I-395, which goes down a hill on the east side of the highway and into and through a swampy area. A 30-yard-long “swamp mat” — a sort of bridge made of wooden beams laid side by side on the ground — has been made crossing an area that Wildowsky said has been flooded by a beaver dam.
“Anything that irritates the beavers bothers me,” Wildowsky said.
More timbers have been used to prop up and gravel fill dumped in to build what Eversource calls a work pad near one of its new poles.
Stuart Norman, a Griswold attorney who is Wildowsky’s cousin, said that private landowners wouldn’t be allowed to make such an extensive development in a wetlands. “You or I, we’d be in big trouble.”
“They bust me if I lose a wheelbarrow of manure in the road,” Wildowsky said.
To help protect the wetlands, Eversource workers also installed devices to reduce the amount the soil that will wash into them.
On the west side of I-395, Eversource workers are currently building an access road to two of its poles from Mell Road near Wildowsky’s dairy. In its petition, Eversource said it would temporarily disturb about 4,000 square feet of wetlands and 4,700 square feet of a pond.
Wildowsky said that Eversource has gone outside its right of way in several places. “They don’t have much regard for the environment,” he said. “They do what they want to do.”
He said at times during the work, state troopers have been stationed at the intersection of Mell Road and Nygren Road, which he thinks has discouraged customers from visiting his dairy’s store.
The Siting Council approved the project in March 2017, ruling that “this proposal would not have a substantial adverse environmental effect.” The state agency is responsible for overseeing the construction and operation of power plants and transmission lines throughout the state.Eversource is required to bring its electrical transmission lines into compliance with new higher standards, Siting Council Executive Director Melanie Bachman said.
She said Eversource notified officials in all the towns the transmission lines run through as well as property owners such as Wildowsky.
In its application to replace the poles, Eversource said all the work was being done in its right-of-ways — which in some cases have existed since the 1920s — using new or existing access roads. Building the new roads and improving existing ones would disturb 77,400 square feet of wetlands, equal to about 1.7 acres.
The project is expected to be completed by October, Poirot said.
Eversource received permission from the state Department of Transportation to put its access road off I-395 because going from Route 169 would disturb too much wetlands, Poirot said.
Wildowsky has a different explanation. “Eversource told them I was being defiant, and that’s why they gave them the permit,” he said.
Eversource has promised that when the work is done, “all disturbed/exposed areas would be stabilized and revegetated.”
As for the road off I-395, Poirot said it may end up staying if it’s the easiest access to its poles.