Work on sewer project to close Route 34 in Derby
Jim Shay
DERBY - A section of Route 34 will be closed one weekend this month for work on the Roosevelt Drive wastewater pumping station.
The precast concrete structures that make up the station will be delivered to the site beginning at 8 p.m.on Friday Aug. 16.
“In order to deliver and install the large concrete structures in a safe and expeditious manner, Roosevelt Drive will be closed. Work will proceed continuously over the weekend until the structures are installed,” the Water Pollution Control Authority has announced.
Route 34 will be closed to all traffic between the intersections of Olivia Street and North Avenue, beginning
at 8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 16 and ending at 5 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 19.
Traffic traveling east should follow detour signs, turn right onto Route 111 south, turn left onto Route 110 east and left onto Bridge Street.
Traffic traveling west should follow detour signs, turn left onto Bridge Street, turn right onto Route 110 west and turn right onto Route 111 north.
Local traffic will be permitted along Route 34, between the intersections of Olivia Street and North Avenue.
In 2014 referendum, voters approved a $31.2 million sewage treatment improvement project.According to the
WPCA, the Roosevelt Drive pumping station will cost more than $7 million to build.
Holzner Construction, the firm building the facility, cleared the site last year and built permanent sheeting on the river side. This spring it completed the drilling of caissons and began construction of the deep excavation needed for the installation of the pumping station and wetwell.
The project is slated for completion in in the fall.
Derby’s sewage system includes four pump stations owned and operated by the WPCA. Those stations are located at Patty Ann Terrace, South Division Street, Burtville Avenue and Roosevelt Drive. All wastewater flows into the main treatment facility at 1 Caroline St.
Governor: No XL Center casino discussed
Emilie Munson
The governor’s office has had no discussions about opening a casino at Hartford’s XL Center with the arena’s owners or the state’s Native American tribes, a spokesman said Monday.
The
Hartford Courant reported the state was considered a sale of the aging 16,000-seat arena to the Mohegan and Mashantucket Pequots tribes, owners of Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods casinos.
“There has been nothing remotely formal,” said Max Reiss, communications director for Gov. Ned Lamont. “[Lamont] finds it to be an interesting idea.”
The concept of an XL Center casino arose nearly a week after lawmakers unveiled proposed
legislation to authorize a $100 million casino in Bridgeport last week, as well as other gambling expansions.
The XL idea was floated to replace the construction of Tribal Winds casino in East Windsor, which lawmakers authorized in 2017, but a joint venture of the tribes has failed to open yet. The tribes have remained firm in their backing of their Tribal Winds project, however. A spokesman for the tribes was not immediately available for comment.
The arena is owned by the Capital Region Development Authority, a quasi-public agency. CRDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
The authority has previously tried to sell the arena. The venue needs $100 million in renovations, but Lamont did not allocate funding for improvements in his budget, nor did lawmakers back the idea. A sale of the property to the tribes could save taxpayers from footing the bill for those improvements.
University of Connecticut basketball and ice hockey is played at the arena. The Hartford Wolfpack, an American Hockey League team, plays at the venue and concerts are held there.
Negotiations over legalizing sports betting and authorizing a Bridgeport casino stalled this spring between the governor’s office and the tribes, who have exclusive rights to casino gambling in the state due to a two-decades old compact. Lawmakers restarted negotiations in late May.
Last week, Lamont criticized the efforts of Bridgeport and eastern and northern Connecticut lawmakers to draft gambling legislation without them. He dismissed the plan for a $100 million casino in the Park City as insufficient because it authorized, but not required a “meaningful” project in Bridgeport. But Lamont remains open to more gambling talks, Reiss said.
“He’s not going to say flat out ‘no’ to anything,” Reiss said. “What he wants is there to be a comprehensive gambling solution for Connecticut that includes everything: the Lottery, sports betting, what does brick and mortar look like.”
In negotiations this winter, Lamont supported the tribes
abandoning their East Windsor plans in favor of a Bridgeport casino. The governor is not “that firm” on stopping East Windsor, but he is worried about the development — or lack there of.
“Governor Lamont is incredibly concerned that there has been no movement on East Windsor,” Reiss said. “The fact that the groundbreaking occurred in 2017 and it is in the same condition it was then is deeply concerning. It raises concerns about the veracity of the project.”
The East Windsor casino is intended to cut off traffic to MGM Resorts International’s $1 billion casino that recently opened in Springfield, Mass. Removing MGM’s East Windsor competition might be one way to avoid a lawsuit from MGM, which has also lobbied to open a Bridgeport facility.
Environmental activists plan protest of Killingly power plant’s approval
John Barry
HARTFORD - Envirnmental activists plan to protest the June 6 approval by state regulators of a natural gas power plant in Killingly.
Members of the Sierra Club, 350 CT and other activists are planning to march at 11 a.m. on Wednesday in front of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection at 79 Elm St. in Hartford, according to a press release from the Sierra Club.
The 650-megawatt Killingly Energy Center was approved on June 6 by the Connecticut Siting Council. It is permitted to emit as much as 2.2 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year it operates. Killingly will be the third new gas plant in the state since 2018, the press release said.
“The (state’s) Global Warming Solutions Act requires a 45% reduction from 2001 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and an 80% reduction by 2050, but DEEP, the agency in charge of environmental protection and keeping Connecticut on track to meet these targets, continues to support new fossil fuel plants, and refused to incorporate enforceable greenhouse gas limits into the air permit for the Killingly plant,” the press release said.
According to NTE Energy Chief Executive Officer Seth Shortlidge, however, the Killingly Energy Center will support the state’s compliance with the act. Beyond this, NTE has committed to retiring the facility in 2050 or otherwise operating it with zero net greenhouse gas emissions, Shortlidge said in June.
Protesters seek a moratorium on all new gas and oil infrastructure while DEEP develops a plan to achieve the 2030 and 2050 climate goals set out in the Global Warming Solution Act, the press release said.
Mark Pazniokas and
Keith M. PhaneufConnecticut’s two federally recognized tribes have doubled down on their commitment to jointly develop a casino in East Windsor to compete with MGM Springfield, once again rejecting Gov. Ned Lamont’s pitch for a grand bargain that would legalize sports betting and place a tribal-owned casino in Bridgeport without litigation from MGM.
“They are not willing to walk away from the Tribal Winds Casino in East Windsor, a project where they’ve invested nearly $20 million,” said Andrew Doba, a spokesman for MMCT, a joint venture of the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribal nations.
The statement came in response to
a Hartford Courant story saying that Lamont, who has pressed the tribes to abandon East Windsor in favor of Bridgeport, was now trying to entice the them to take ownership of the aging the XL Center in downtown Hartford and establish “casino-style gambling” in the capital city.
Ryan Drajewicz, the governor’s chief of staff, said the status of the XL Center was in no way part of talks with the tribes over sports betting or casino expansion in East Windsor or Bridgeport.
“This is a totally separate, unrelated issue from the ongoing negotiations with the tribes on Connecticut’s gaming future,” Drajewicz said.
The tribes and the administration are at a crossroads.
Talks over how to simultaneously resolve a series of interrelated gambling issues broke down in May, with the tribes declining to give up plans for the East Windsor casino — a stumbling block, in the administration’s view, to heading off a new round of litigation by MGM.
Negotiations are tentatively scheduled to resume later this week, with the initial decision in the hands of the governor: Is he willing to pursue sports betting, while letting MGM and the tribes to fight in court over East Windsor? “We’ve had ongoing conversations with the tribes since the first day I came into office, either me or my staff doing this,” Lamont told reporters. “Look, let’s face it: the gambling, the internet gambling, the sports betting, that’s all been stuck for many years in the state, and I’m looking around at the rest of the country, I’m looking at our neighboring states and they’re beginning to move ahead. So I’ve got to find a solution that allows us to move ahead.”
Separately, the governor has explored means other than state bonding to finance improvements to the XL Center, which is owned and operated by the quasi-public Capital Region Development Authority. He has scaled back the scope of state investment that had been planned by the previous administration, while not giving up on modernization.
“I’ve got a priority to fix the XL Center and make that what it should be, as a center for this growing city of Hartford,” Lamont said. “And I’ve reached out to a number of different groups as we think about a public-private partnership, which is the best way for us to do it. It’s not simply a matter of the taxpayers throwing money at the XL Center, but working with a strong partner so it could be as vibrant as it could be.”
The tribes have shown no interest in buying the 1970s-era XL Center, which requires significant investment to keep open as a venue for concerts, minor league hockey and UConn basketball and hockey games. In fact, the tribal casinos have become competitors to the XL Center for major concert acts.
But the tribes have been politically astute, broadening their political support by suggesting an openness to engaging in other entertainment activities in Hartford and other cities.
Doba, the MMCT spokesman, noted a gambling expansion bill filed last week by tribal ally Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, already calls for an “entertainment zone” in Hartford and two other unspecified locales.
Osten said “entertainment zone” is not synonymous with casino gambling.
“It’s essentially a higher end sports gambling venue, a little bit more than a sports bar,” said Osten, whose eastern Connecticut district benefits from employment at the tribal casinos, Foxwoods Resort and Mohegan Sun. “As of this moment, it doesn’t include table games or slots. It’s to entice the millennial crew to come out.”
The
bill filed last week by Osten would grant the tribes exclusive rights to online sports betting in Connecticut, authorize them to jointly operate a casino in Bridgeport and open sports-betting “entertainment zones” in Hartford and two other unspecified communities. It also would allow the Connecticut Lottery to sell lottery tickets online.
The tribes say they already have exclusive rights to sports betting in Connecticut, should it be legalized in any form here. They consider sports betting a casino game, and the state promised them exclusive rights to casino gambling a quarter century ago in return for a slots revenue sharing deal that has produced $8 billion for the state.
The state could play hardball, keeping the tribes from sports betting by refusing to renegotiate its gambling compacts with the Pequots and Mohegans to cover gambling on sports.
Lamont has offered the tribes the rights to sports betting and online gaming if they abandon East Windsor for Bridgeport. The tribes say East Windsor would take customers from MGM Springfield, while a Bridgeport casino would cannibalize the tribes’ own clientele, drawing its Fairfield County and metro-New York customers.
The Osten bill leaves intact the tribes’ right to build in East Windsor.
The General Assembly passed legislation in 2017 that authorizes MMCT to build a casino on a hillside overlooking I-91 in East Windsor, a location chosen to draw amblers who might drive north to Springfield. MGM sued before the bill passed, claiming it would violate the equal protection and commerce clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
A federal court dismissed the suit as premature. MGM has yet to file a new version.
The state’s approval of the East Windsor casino was contingent on federal acceptance of changes to Connecticut’s longstanding gambling agreements with its two federally recognized tribes. The Department of the Interior blocked construction for nearly two years, refusing to take final action on the gambling amendments until March 2019.
The tribes have yet to obtain financing for the $300 million project, and they still are fighting local zoning appeals that they say are financed by MGM.Rodney Butler, the chairman of the Mashantucket Pequots, said in an interview last week that the zoning fights and a need to reassemble a design and construction team after the long delay have slowed construction, but he hoped work would begin in the fall.
The delay in construction should not be interpreted as the tribes ever considering abandoning the project as part of a negotiation with the administration over sports betting.
“I just want to kill any speculation that delay was over the negotiations,” Butler said.
Both tribes have outstanding debts of $1.8 billion.
Public filings show the Mohegans, which have diversified with casinos in Pennsylvania, Canada and South Korea, having ready access to nearly $200 million in revolving credit, while the Pequots have struggled. They defaulted in 2009, restructured their debt in 2013 and fell into technical default again in 2014. For the past five years, the Pequots have operated under a forbearance agreement with its creditors.