State Pier wind project gets public hearing
Greg Smith
New London — State environmental officials will conduct a virtual public hearing Tuesday afternoon on a permit application for work at State Pier, the proposed site of an estimated $200 million project that will initially accommodate the offshore wind industry.
The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection issued a tentative approval of the application in December following a monthslong review of a project first submitted in 2019 by the Connecticut Port Authority. Tuesday’s public hearing is another step in the process that continues March 30 with an evidentiary hearing. A timeline for a final decision by the commissioner is unclear, but the start of the major work on the project is contingent on this approval.
The application is a request to conduct work that will include maintenance dredging of berthing areas and installation of a sheet pile bulkhead between State Pier and the adjacent Central Vermont Railroad Pier. If approved, about 7 acres of water between the piers will be filled in to accommodate construction of one larger pier.
Tuesday’s public hearing begins at 3 p.m. and will include a brief presentation from the Connecticut Port Authority and DEEP staff before the hearing is open for public comment. The application is available online at https://statepiernewlondon.com/documents.
The proposed project is the result of an investment by the state and a partnership between Danish offshore wind company Ørsted and utility company Eversource. An agreement has them sharing the costs of what had been a $157 million project. Updated estimates put the project closer to $200 million, though a final plan has not been finalized.
The pier is expected to be used as a staging area with the ability to handle heavy cargo and dock larger vessels being used to transport wind turbine components to proposed offshore wind farms.
While Ørsted has several offshore wind farms planned, its only constructed project in the U.S. is the five turbines off Block Island, which became operational in 2016.
DEEP has been accepting comments about the project since last year.
Advocates of the project see it as an opportunity for the state to meet its renewable energy goals, modernize the port and provide an economic boost for the region. Opponents have criticized the use of the pier exclusively for the offshore wind industry. They say it has displaced previous State Pier tenants and filling in a large portion of the Thames River has the potential to hurt the environment.
Ørsted and Eversource issued a joint statement in support of the project.
“For decades, the State Pier has been underutilized. The proposed redevelopment plan will expand the capability of the State Pier to support larger, more impactful projects, including but not limited to offshore wind turbine staging. In addition, this project will bring a modernized port facility to southeast Connecticut and dramatically expand the economic and job opportunities available to the state. Furthermore, the proposed improvements will complement and present opportunities to expand the existing local high-tech maritime economy.”
In a letter submitted to DEEP in January, project opponent Patti Harrison voiced the concerns of many critics.
“At a minimum we need to stop the fill in and allow the local business to continue to use the port and to prevent a monopoly on the ports. Best would be to stop the wind project,” Harrison wrote. “For the amount of money and destruction going into this fiasco I don't see an equivalent true payoff for our environment. Damaging the existing environment for an overpriced project that doesn't really produce enough electricity is just not common sense.”
The Connecticut Port Authority is working to find a suitable alternate location for the two commercial fishing operations based at Central Vermont Pier.
New London has obtained intervening party status for the project, which allows it to submit testimony and participate in the evidentiary hearing. The city initially submitted testimony criticizing the project, saying it would not financially benefit the city. New London Mayor Michael Passero has since signed a host community agreement that ensures the city will receive at least $5.2 million over seven years with the possibility for more revenue if the state agrees to buy more offshore wind power.
DRVN Enterprises owner Steven Farrelly has a pending request with DEEP to become an intervening party in the case. DRVN’s road salt distribution business is being displaced by the project.
White House prepares $3 trillion infrastructure, jobs bill for highways, bridges, schools
Jeff Stein and Tyler Pager Washington Post
WASHINGTON - White House officials are preparing to present President Joe Biden with a roughly $3 trillion infrastructure and jobs package that includes high-profile domestic policy priorities such as free community college and universal prekindergarten, according to three people familiar with internal discussions.
After completing the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package this month, Biden administration officials are piecing together the next major legislative priority. Although no final announcement has been made, the White House is expected to push a multitrillion jobs and infrastructure plan as the centerpiece of the president's "Build Back Better" agenda.
That effort is expected to be broken into two parts - one focused on infrastructure, and the other focused on other domestic priorities such as growing the newly expanded child tax credit for several years. The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, stressed that planning was preliminary and subject to change. Some aides said the package's final price tag remains unclear.
Although still in the works, the sprawling legislative package follows weeks of uncertainty about Biden's second big legislative effort and confusion among congressional lawmakers about the administration's top priority.
The infrastructure and jobs bill is poised to further define Biden's presidency. He has faced intense pressure, including from some Democrats, to scale back his domestic policy ambitions and work with congressional Republicans on more incremental legislation after his $1.9 trillion pandemic relief plan, which every Republican voted against.
Doing so would require Biden to jettison many of his most consequential 2020 presidential campaign promises while frustrating much of his base and Democratic Party leadership. Introducing a new $3 trillion package, which is expected to include tax increases to offset spending, is sure to frustrate Republicans, setting up another acrimonious legislative fight. But it gives the president a chance to solidify a domestic policy agenda beyond the emergency response to the pandemic.
"The country has not had a real infrastructure bill since Dwight Eisenhower set up the highway system," said former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democratic proponent of infrastructure spending. "This could do more for American manufacturing and blue-collar jobs than anything else. It's crucial not just for Biden's legacy but for the legacy of the American government in the next decade. It's a seminal moment for the country."
Crucial decisions have not been made about how the administration seeks to advance the measure. Congressional Republicans probably will not support trillions more in additional spending, or the tax increases that the White House is eyeing to fund these initiatives. It's unclear what the appetite could be, even among congressional Democrats, to use reconciliation - the budgetary procedure Democrats used to pass the pandemic bill with 51 votes in the Senate.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement that the administration had not decided on its next step. "President Biden and his team are considering a range of potential options for how to invest in working families and reform our tax code so it rewards work, not wealth," Psaki said. "Those conversations are ongoing, so any speculation about future economic proposals is premature and not a reflection of the White House's thinking."
Congressional Republicans have talked about supporting infrastructure spending but have largely rejected Democratic proposals for doing so, particularly those that include investments in cleaner energy sources in an effort to curb climate change. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Monday warned on the Senate floor against a "so-called infrastructure proposal that may actually be a Trojan horse for massive tax hikes and other job-killing left-wing policies."
Biden's proposal is expected to center on infrastructure spending, with hundreds of billions of dollars to repair the nation's roads, bridges, waterways and rails. It also includes funding for retrofitting buildings, safety improvements, schools infrastructure, and low-income and tribal groups, as well as $100 billion for schools and education infrastructure.
The infrastructure component is expected to include $400 billion in spending to combat climate change, including $60 billion for infrastructure related to green transit and $46 billion for climate-related research and development. The plan also would aim to make electric-vehicle charging stations available across the country. The measure would also include $200 billion for housing infrastructure, including $100 billion to expand the supply of housing for low-income people.
The second component of the effort would include many of Biden's other domestic priorities. Those include universal prekindergarten and free community college tuition. The package also would significantly expand spending on child care, and extend for several years the expansion of the child tax credit recently signed into law for one year as part of the stimulus plan.
Biden has previously touted these initiatives as necessary parts of the "caregiving economy."
The new legislation would extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, as well as free and reduced tuition at historically Black colleges and universities.
Biden is expected to be presented with a menu of tax options by Treasury Department officials to fund the plan. Biden campaigned on raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, as well as increasing taxes on wealthy investors. It was not immediately clear which of his tax plans would be included in the final legislation.
"Anybody making more than $400,000 will see a small to a significant tax increase," Biden said last week on ABC's "Good Morning America."
White House officials plan to include a measure to force pharmaceutical companies to lower their prices or pay a steep penalty. The White House's efforts probably will be similar to the prescription drug bill announced by House Democrats in 2019, which aimed to respond to voter frustration over the rising costs of prescription drugs across the country, the people aware of the internal discussions said.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the House Democrats' bill would save the government about $450 billion over the next decade. By lowering the cost of prescription drugs, the government would spend significantly less on Medicare and other public health programs.
Many details of the plan were first reported by The New York Times.
The emerging proposal comes amid an extensive debate among Democratic policymakers about the next steps for the Biden administration. The Democrats' left flank is clamoring for the party to use its hold on power in Washington to approve long-held policy goals, from an expansion of health care to action on climate change. Democrats' centrist wing, however, has expressed repeated unease about the party-line vote over pandemic relief, and it has pushed for a return to bipartisan policymaking.
Republicans in particular are expected to oppose Biden's tax increases on businesses and rich people. That could complicate passage, particularly through the Senate, of any major Biden infrastructure package.
"The GOP won't vote for these tax hikes," said Brian Riedl, a former aide to Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who now works at the libertarian-leaning think tank Manhattan Institute. "Why should they be the tax collectors for Biden's spending spree?"
Others point out that what Biden has proposed may not be sufficient to meet the challenge of climate change and a warming planet.
"If $3 trillion is what Biden's team lands on, they'll be neglecting what's politically and publicly popular, and what's quite frankly vital for the future of our society and our planet," said Ellen Sciales, national press secretary for the youth-led Sunrise Movement.
OP-ED | Can Joe Biden Rebuild America?
Susan Bigelow
A group called Hartford400, which is focused on transforming the capital
city in time for its 400th birthday in 2035, released a new plan this week to erase the sins of the
midcentury highway-building boom and knit the city back together. I won’t lie,
it looks seriously cool. But this is the sort of thing we can’t pay for on our
own; we’d need heaps of federal money to do the job, and Washington has been
too broken to do anything this big and useful for decades … Right?
Let me take a moment to geek out about this plan. It not only moves the misery that is the interchange
between I-84 and I-91 to two separate locations north and south of downtown
Hartford, but also it puts both highways underground for significant portions
of their path through the city. It would remove the sprawling interchange with
Route 2 in East Hartford, turn the I-91 corridor above ground into something
called the River Road, build new neighborhoods where I-84 and the mixmaster
used to be, and create a walking and biking path connecting Bloomfield to
downtown Hartford.
I mean, wow. This is the transport plan of dreams. If we
have to have big highways, which we do, they need to do as little damage to the
fragile human fabric of our cities and towns as possible. Burying them is the
right thing to do. Underground highways in Boston have been a wonder for that
city, and as memories of the mismanaged Big Dig recede, it’s hard to see any
real downside. Boston is better for having buried its highways, and Hartford
will be the same.
The Hartford400 plan is optimistic, forward-thinking, and
urbanist in the best way possible. I love it not just because it allows me to
imagine a brighter future, but because I’ve been looking at the past. I’ve had
occasion recently to look through planning and marketing documents from
Hartford from the 1950s and 1960s, the era when the Front Street neighborhood
and a huge swath bisecting the city were razed to build I-84, I-91, and
Constitution Plaza. The loss was incalculable and Hartford has never recovered.
The one thing that struck me reading through all those old
documents was just how sure of themselves those mid-century planners were. They
thought they were doing a huge public service by clearing away what they saw as
decaying, blighted neighborhoods in order to make Hartford a futuristic city of
featureless skyscrapers and wide ribbons of highway. The arrogance is
breathtaking.
In the years since, we’ve learned a lot about how to
mitigate and reverse that damage, but the one thing we’ve always lacked is
something the 1950s and 1960s had in abundance: federal infrastructure
money.
Joe Biden and the Democratic majorities in the House and
Senate have been talking
up a big, new infrastructure plan with an emphasis on transit and the
environment lately, and I can’t help but feel a sense of déja vu. The Bushes
and Clinton let America’s transportation rot, the Obama infrastructure plan
wasn’t nearly as big or as transformative as it could have been, and Trump’s
turned into nothing but a painful joke about an “infrastructure week” that
never came, so it’s been a long, long time since we’ve seen a big
transportation plan succeed. We need it, too. Our highways, roads, bridges, and
rails are all in bad shape. We lag behind the rest of the developed world,
especially when it comes to railways, and it’s both embarrassing and dangerous.
That’s why it’s so hard to hope that this time will be
different. Congress hasn’t acted to radically remake infrastructure since the
heady days of the 1950s and 1960s: why should we expect them to do anything
remotely like that now?
Oddly enough, I’m cautiously optimistic. Maybe it’s because
Democrats actually seem more interested in getting things done than the folly
of trying to work with Republicans who loathe them. Maybe it’s because the big
COVID-19 relief package that passed this month is a staggering achievement, and
proof that Congress actually can do big things after all.
Or maybe I’m just getting high off the barest whiff of
competence and humility here in the Biden era. I don’t know.
Can Joe Biden rebuild a country that desperately needs it?
Maybe. It’s the best answer we’ve had in decades. And it’s a hope, for once,
that the pie-in-the-sky transportation plans we’ve seen for Hartford for a long
time might finally come to be.
Susan Bigelow is an award-winning columnist and the founder
of CTLocalPolitics. She lives in Enfield with her wife and their cats.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh is confirmed to be labor secretary
Eli Rosenberg
WASHINGTON - Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a Democrat, was
confirmed Monday by the Senate to be the secretary of labor, set to take the
reins of an agency that is central to President Joe Biden's worker-friendly
agenda.
Walsh, a friend of the president's who was a favored
candidate of organized labor groups such as the AFL-CIO, is the first labor
secretary to come from a union background in nearly 50 years.
He rose to prominence in Boston through the building trades
unions after dropping out of college to work in construction. He also served in
the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
Walsh's nomination was relatively uncontroversial. He was
approved on a 68-to-29 vote.
During a mostly amicable confirmation hearing, he was asked
repeatedly by senators on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee
about disparities for women and people of color on issues such as unemployment
during the coronavirus pandemic, on wages and earnings, and on health care.
"We are dealing with a system of systemic racism that
we have to continue to address," Walsh said at the hearing. "It's not
simply just throwing fancy words out there, but in policies, it's actually
doing the work, rolling up our sleeves."
Walsh, 53, has supported labor policies including the PRO
Act, a proposal to update labor laws and give workers more ability to organize
at work that the House passed last year. He also has supported efforts to raise
the minimum wage.
Walsh will lead a Labor Department navigating a complicated
economic and public health crisis, with an estimated 18 million people
collecting unemployment benefits and others who have left the workforce since
last year. He will oversee agency decisions about the proper level of safety
compliance necessary for workplaces during the pandemic. Walsh also will face
other challenges that predate the pandemic, such as how to regulate contract
and gig work.
Under President Donald Trump, the agency passed rules that
exempted a large number of workers from the paid sick leave requirements in the
Families First Coronavirus Response Act and issued guidelines for unemployment
insurance payouts to gig and self-employed workers that labor advocates and
workers considered restrictive.
Its workplace safety division, the Occupational Safety and
Health Administration, has drawn ire for doing little to enforce safety
standards for workplaces during the early days of the pandemic.
Carrier Construction signs letter of intent for commercial, residential development in city
Susan Corica BRISTOL – Carrier Construction Inc. has signed a letter of intent to move ahead with plans for commercial and residential development of four parcels in Centre Square downtown, totaling 4.39 acres.
Carrier had originally planned to acquire three parcels but then decided on the fourth as well, causing the City Council to postpone its approval for a month. Gino Carrier then signed a letter of intent for his company to buy Parcels 5, 6, 7 and 8 for $219,500.
The area encompasses the majority of the northern portions of Centre Square adjacent to McDonald’s and across the street from the police department and the post office on North Main Street, according to a memo from Justin Malley, the city’s economic and community development executive director.
Carrier’s plan is to build at least three mixed use buildings, with associated parking, that combined would offer about 90 market rate apartments on the upper floors and 12,000 square feet of retail/office/commercial space on the ground floors, with frontage on North Main Street.
“We have been very excited about this proposal,” said Mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu. “This represents one of the largest pieces of putting together this downtown development.”
The buildings, across North Main from City Hall, will have lots of green space and adequate parking.
Zoppo-Sassu said she and Malley have heard from a well known entity interested in Parcels 1, 2, and 3. With that it could possibly only leave Parcel 4 as the remaining piece.
Zoppo-Sassu praised the quality of the townhouses Carrier recently built on Main Street across from the Bristol Public Library.
“We expect that will be the same for downtown and I think that it will definitely bring people based on the quality of that project,” said Zoppo-Sassu. “The townhouses are drawing a wide range of people to Bristol,” she said.
Councilwoman Brittany Barney said she is looking forward to the development. Ever since the now defunct Renaissance Downtown project, “the idea of having mixed space with retail combined with residential apartment living is the key to having downtown thrive.”
“Any good downtown has that mixture,” Barney said. “I think the businesses that are on the ground floor already on Main Street and North Main Street will be really excited to have approximately 90 apartments at least filled with people looking to enjoy a beer at Better Half Brewing or walking down to the Thai restaurant to have a bite to eat.”
Councilman Gregory Hahn said he is excited that the development will bring “multitudes of people” to events at the Rockwell Theater, which is being renovated at the planned Memorial Boulevard Intradistrict Arts Magnet School nearby.
State wants to sell vacant Capitol Ave. property for potential mixed-use development
Greg Bordonaro
The $35 million conversion of the former Hartford Office Supply Co. building at 390 Capitol Ave., into 112 apartments was a key win for the city of Hartford and Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA), which provided a $7 million loan for the project.
Those apartments — developed by Massachusetts-based Dakota Partners LLC — debuted in 2017 and have seen recent occupancy above 90%, according to CRDA. Now the state is hoping to leverage the Capitol Lofts’ success into another potential nearby apartment development.
The Department of Administrative Services recently issued a request for proposals for a buyer interested in purchasing state-owned property at 340 Capitol Ave.
The vacant 1.25 acre site, which sits in the shadow of the Capitol Lofts and State Armory, is currently being used as a parking lot, but could be developed into a mixed-use commercial and multifamily residential development, according to DRS’ RFP.
The property is in an Opportunity Zone and in walking distance to the state Capitol, Legislative Office Building and The Bushnell. It’s on the outskirts of the central business district, but is only about a mile from the XL Center.
The RFP is open through June 11.