Meriden wants state guarantee there's funding for bridge projects after FEMA paused money
MERIDEN — The city is seeking confirmation from the
state Federal
Emergency Management Agency office that its funding to replace a
bridge won't be cancelled.
"If the grant got cut off, we would have to find
additional money to finish Phase I," City Manager Brian Daniels
recently told members of the Senior Center Building Committee. "We
have sent a letter to FEMA asking them to confirm we are not going to get
cancelled."
FEMA closed down its federal
funding stream in April leaving the city scrambling to complete the
work on two bridges.
"We are halfway through that project," Daniels
said. "We have to finish that bridge replacement."
The city was set to receive Building Resilient
Infrastructure and Communities monies for the Cedar Street and Center Street
bridges. But FEMA eliminated the BRICs program in April and put several other
emergency programs on life support.
BRIC funding is used in municipalities across Connecticut to
mitigate the impact of potentially disastrous floods.
Connecticut and 19 other states are filing
suit in federal court over the loss of funding through the program,
state Attorney General William Tong said during a recent news conference in
Stamford.
“For more than 30 years, states and municipalities have
depended on BRIC funding, and Connecticut is no different,” Tong said at the
press conference. “And now $84 million has been cut, starting in April.”
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., was recently joined
by Meriden Mayor Kevin Scarpati, who said during a Hartford news conference
that Meriden had spent the past decade working with federal and state
governments to address its flooding issues, primarily with Harbor Brook in the
city center.
Scarpati said these projects are making the city more
resilient and attractive for people to move to and open businesses who might
not have done so before because of the flooding.
"We have a project that is going on right now that is
in jeopardy of coming to fruition and finishing," he said at the news
conference. "We literally have shovels in the ground today. We have
excavators on site for two bridges that need to be torn down, widened and
rebuilt."
He said one of those bridges is already down and has to be
rebuilt.
"We are relying on funds from FEMA — these funds to
continue this project, funds we've already been awarded," Scarpati
said.
Scarpati said it's a two-year project that started seven
months ago and now told the city has to finish next month. He said if they
don't get the FEMA money, the city will have to go to the city's taxpayers to
cover the cost of that project and the two or three flood control projects that
go with it.
Daniels told building committee members after the recent
press conferences that the city is working with contractor LaRosa
Construction to ensure money doesn't interfere with finishing Phase I, even if
that means putting it into the city's capital improvement budget in the future.
Phase I isn't expected to be finished until late 2026, early 2027.
"We're going to have to see how it plays out,"
Daniels said. "We can't get any more money, we have gotten our entire
grant money for the project."
The city still has a grant application in to the state to
pay to deepen and widen the channels but has not learned its status, as of last
week.
Eventually, the city hopes to truck the dirt onto
116 Cook Ave. to raise the lot elevation. A new senior center is
planned for the site, but design and construction work can't begin until the
channel and dredging work are complete.
The city initially planned to build a new
health department with the senior center at 116 Cook Ave., but
officials agreed to separate the two projects and renovate the existing health
department at 165 Miller St.
About 20 prospective architectural bidders recently walked
through the two-story Health and Human Services building to assess the project.
The city will select an architect by Aug. 15 to recommend to the state.
The chosen architect will work on design plans that will accompany a Community
Investment Fund grant application before a Dec. 5 deadline.
The Board of Education intends to relocate its Success
Academy alternative high school program on the second level which would
translate into a 70% reimbursement on that part of the overall project.
Health and Human Services Director Lea Crown drafted a
public survey asking residents to describe their expectations for a health
department building.
The survey questions were based on specifics included in the
grant application, Crown said. They will be distributed by staff and posted on
the city's website and other places in early August.
Crown said that unlike the Senior Center, where people
gather for long periods of time, the health department consists of offices,
conference space and a clinic.
$20M Waterbury train station renovation will begin in September, DOT says
WATERBURY — Work is expected to start in September on a $20
million renovation of the Waterbury train station, including construction
of a new indoor waiting room in the former
Republican-American building next to the Metro-North Railroad
platform.
The renovations to Waterbury Union Station are part of a
larger project the state Department of Transportation is undertaking
to upgrade all six train stations along the 28.5-mile Waterbury branch of
Metro-North's New Haven Line.
The work at Waterbury Union Station includes replacement of
the existing platform, construction of a new indoor waiting room on the south
end of the former Republican-American building, and installation of a new
ticket kiosk, upgraded security systems and elevator. The project budget is $20
million.
DOT spokesman Josh Morgan said Friday construction of the
waiting room is anticipated to kick off the project in September, and the
platform work is expected to start by the end of the year.
The platform replacement is expected to temporarily halt
train service. Morgan said substitute bus service will be
provided during this period of disruption. He said DOT officials
anticipate bus service starting in the spring of 2026, but the exact dates and
duration have not been set at this time.
The new waiting room will be approximately 1,570 square feet
and feature 21 seats, restrooms, water fountains and customer information
displays. A staircase will lead to private offices for Metro-North and DOT. A
new elevator will be installed to connect all three floors, but will not be
accessible to the public. The basement will house dedicated spaces for elevator
control, and DOT and Metro-North telecommunications and security equipment.
Mayor Paul K. Pernerewski Jr. highlighted the coming start
of the Waterbury Union Station project in a Facebook post Wednesday.
"This project isn't just about trains. It is part of a
broader vision for a more walkable, vibrant downtown and a stronger, more
connected Waterbury," he wrote. "The work happening at the station is
a symbol of the city's momentum and a clear sign of what's ahead."
Built in 1909, Waterbury Union Station was designed by famed
New York City architectural firm McKim, Mead & White. The Pape family, who
took ownership of the Republican-American in 1901, bought the building in 1952
and converted it into the newspaper's headquarters.
The former Republican-American building is now being
marketed for sale and redevelopment by owner American-Republican Inc. The
family-owned company sold the Republican-American newspaper to Hearst
Connecticut Media Group in February. HCMG had been leasing space in the
building, but the
lease ended this month after American-Republican Inc. decided to
terminate the lease in May.
Morgan said the September start date of the Waterbury Union
Station project is independent of the Republican-American’s recent
departure from the site.
The Waterbury branch line carried 269,352 passengers last
year, up from 257,076 in 2023, according to DOT figures.
Ridership had declined during the COVID-19 pandemic but has
rebounded in recent years. It fell from 243,671 in 2019 to 108,199 in 2020, and
then started climb back to 127,378 in 2021 and 197,392 in 2022.
Unpredictable, inconsistent and unfriendly are some of the
more benign words that business leaders and credit rating agencies have used to
describe Connecticut’s Byzantine regulatory approach.
Connecticut consistently ranks poorly in national business climate studies when
it comes to the cost of doing business and the complexity of its regulations.
In recent years, investment bank UBS and Regulatory Research
Associates, a unit of Standard & Poor’s, have placed Connecticut into their
bottom-tier utilities regulatory environment rankings.
Connecticut’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA)
is facing fierce criticism from utility companies Eversource Energy and Avangrid
Inc. for recent decisions that have roiled investors and crippled the
utilities’ ability to recover capital expenses.
In June, Moody’s Ratings downgraded the credit ratings of
Eversource subsidiary Connecticut Light and Power Co., calling Connecticut “the
least credit supportive utility regulatory environment in the U.S.”
Meantime, CNBC’s 2025 “America’s Top States for Business”
index recently ranked Connecticut 28th overall, an improvement from No. 32 in
2024. However, the state ranked worse — No. 32 — in the business-friendliness
category.
According to a 2021 report by George Mason University’s
Mercatus Center, greater regulatory burdens are correlated with regressive
effects: increased poverty rates, higher levels of income inequality, reduced
entrepreneurship and increased consumer prices.
The report cites research that found, between 1997 and 2015,
the effective federal regulatory burden in Connecticut increased by 56%,
contributing to a 14% rise in the state’s poverty rate.
Also, between 1999 and 2015, industry-level federal
regulatory restrictions increased by an average of 3.78%, according to the
study. Based on that average, Connecticut lost about 110 small firms and 1,541
jobs annually as a result of regulatory hurdles, the researchers found.
Cumbersome regulations have been accumulating for decades,
not just in Connecticut, but across the country.
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader’s crusade for stronger
consumer protections in the 1960s and 1970s led to a wave of landmark
regulations, including in Connecticut, where the 91-year-old lawyer and
political activist resides.
But the robust regulatory environment that enhanced consumer
protections also contributed, in the eyes of critics, to an overabundance of
red tape that some view as burdensome for businesses and the economy.
The regulatory environment covers everything from labor and
health insurance mandates to the lawsuit/liability climate, industry oversight,
permitting and overall bureaucracy.
Now, many business leaders and some state officials —
including Democrats — believe the pendulum has swung too far in favor of
government regulations, and they are seeking to undo some of the bureaucratic
constraints.
“I think there was a period of time where we promulgated a
lot of regulations in order to protect the environment, protect health, protect
lots of different things,” said Christopher Davis, vice president of
public policy at the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA).
“I think that over time, those things sort of build up and calcify. … Sometimes
they’re redundant, sometimes they’re unnecessary, sometimes they’re no longer
relevant. And it takes a concerted effort to look back and say which things are
still relevant, and which ones are not.”
The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP)
is one of the most notorious regulatory agencies in Connecticut — it oversees
125 state and federally mandated permitting processes.
The morass of red tape has created an opportunity for
improvement, which DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes has made a hallmark
of her tenure at the agency.
“I hear just as much from developers as from our own staff
about how important it is to make these processes work better for our goals,”
Dykes said. “Because when permitting works effectively, it means that someone
who wants to invest in the state is getting an answer faster with less
friction.”
When Gov. Ned Lamont tapped Dykes to lead the
agency in 2019, he asked her to make DEEP more efficient, she recalled.
“He said he’d been on the campaign trail … and he heard from
lots of businesses that DEEP was a black box and that it took too long to get
answers, that it was really difficult to know how to navigate the process,”
Dykes said.
“I think some of that was a bit misplaced,” she continued,
“but we rolled up our sleeves and got to work.”
Dykes launched an effort to streamline DEEP’s permitting
processes through an initiative she calls 20BY26. The project outlines 20
performance goals that DEEP plans to achieve by the end of 2026, with the aim
of improving the transparency, efficiency and predictability of its permitting.
Uniquely complex
As a densely populated state with an industrial legacy,
Connecticut has particularly complex permitting needs, Dykes said.
“As we think about new infrastructure projects, new
developments coming into the state, folks are often working with parcels that
have been previously disturbed,” she said. “We may be looking at a brownfield.
We may be looking at a location that’s close to a lot of population centers.”
Those factors not only make permitting processes more
involved, but underscore their necessity to “accommodate the next generation of
investments while also protecting human health and the environment,” she
explained.
A key component of 20BY26 was establishing a business
concierge service, or a “one-stop shop” for applicants, stakeholders,
municipalities and developers to obtain information and status updates about
applications.
The concierge service debuted in 2021.
“That provides a lot of benefits for the applicant in terms
of having clear communication and someone that they can call all the way
through the process to help them navigate the different programs within the
department,” Dykes said. “It also provides a lot of benefits to our DEEP staff,
so that our technical staff, our permit writers, can conserve and focus their
time on processing permits.”
During an internal review, DEEP discovered that about 40% of
staff time was being taken up with back-and-forth correspondence with
applicants about their incomplete applications, Dykes said.
DEEP’s reforms also involve guiding developers toward
properties where they will face the least amount of environmental hurdles. The
agency has created an online database of endangered and threatened species,
which developers can use to find out if a property will trigger an endangered
species review, Dykes said.
Also, the newly created Community Renewable Energy Siting
Tool helps solar developers find the least environmentally conflicted sites for
developing solar facilities.
Further, DEEP has undertaken a wide-ranging review of its
125 permitting processes to determine the reasonable amount of time that it
should take to issue a decision for an application for each one.
“I’m really proud to say that over the several years that
we’ve been implementing this, we are achieving about 90% on-time completion
rates for the 55 different types of permits that we expect to take about three
months,” Dykes said.
She said DEEP has made adjustments by repositioning staff
resources to where they’re most needed.
In addition to reducing timeframes, DEEP obtained
legislative approval during the recent session to consolidate multiple permit
types into a single general permit category, simplifying the review process for
certain regulated activities.
For example, activities under individual permits from DEEP’s
pesticides division were combined into one general permit.
“It’s obviously a faster process for applicants, but also it
helps conserve our staff time and our staff resources,” Dykes said.
Transfer Act sunset
The crown jewel of the 20BY26 initiative was developing new
and less burdensome regulations to replace the antiquated and unpopular
Transfer Act.
The Transfer Act requires property owners to conduct
site-wide environmental investigations and, if necessary, remediation whenever
certain types of properties are sold. The system has been criticized for being
overly broad, costly and a major obstacle to real estate transactions and
economic development, especially brownfield sites.
The Transfer Act will be fully phased out on March 1, 2026,
and replaced by new release-based cleanup regulations, which trigger cleanup
requirements by the actual discovery of a hazardous release — not by the
transfer of a property or business.
The new system, which has been in the works for years and
was green-lighted by the legislature’s Regulations Review Committee in April,
is expected to reduce costs, speed up cleanups, and encourage redevelopment of
blighted or underused properties.
Connecticut was one of just two states operating under the
Transfer Act system.
Dykes said she hopes the changes will help shift people’s
perceptions about Connecticut.
“I feel like Connecticut often has this problem of we’re
just kind of negative on ourselves,” Dykes said. “We don’t tell our story very
well, and focus on those negatives. … We’ve been making these improvements. Now
we need to get the perception to change as a result of it.”
CBIA applauded DEEP’s efforts to optimize its permitting
processes, but says disparities between the ease of permitting in other states
and Connecticut remain.
“When we talk to employers who have operations in multiple
states, there are certain permits, environmental permits, that are more
difficult in Connecticut, but also in terms of the clarity around permits,”
said Dustin Nord, director of the CBIA Foundation for Economic Growth and
Opportunity, the business group’s nonprofit think tank. “To the credit of the
state, I think that this has been a point of focus for DEEP in terms of making
certain permit timelines more clear and trying to speed up permitting overall.
But it’s still a challenge for a lot of businesses.”
Some argue that regulatory reforms within DEEP need to go
beyond just speeding up permitting processes.
She said lawmakers must also have greater oversight over how
agencies are implementing public policy.
“Without the proper accountability, PURA and DEEP have been
able to implement flawed policies, mostly expensive and stringent green energy
mandates, which have driven up energy costs for ratepayers,” Liebau said,
noting that Connecticut has among the highest electricity prices in the
country.
“… Regulators justify their existence by regulating,” she
added. “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
State lawmakers did consider a bill this past legislative
session that would have mandated closer scrutiny on existing regulations.
The bill passed the state House of Representatives, but was
not voted on by the Senate.
The CBIA said it will lobby for the legislation again in
2026.
More to be done
While Connecticut is working to improve its environmental
permitting processes, the reality is, the state’s broader regulatory apparatus
affects a much wider range of industries, and impacts businesses and the
economy in many ways.
The state, for example, has been known to have one of
highest number of health benefit mandates that insurance companies are required
to cover, which increases the costs of individual and employer-sponsored health
insurance — a major issue for small and midsize companies.
A 2014 study by UConn
Health’s Center for Public Health and Health Policy noted Connecticut had
46 health benefit mandates at the time, among the most in the nation. A more
recent analysis by the state’s nonpartisan Office of Legislative Research
outlined more than 70 health benefit mandates that were in effect as of Jan. 1,
2024.
The report noted recently adopted coverage mandates for
infertility diagnosis and treatment, and in-home hospice services.
There is also an annual fight in the legislature over new
labor mandates. In recent years, Connecticut has adopted a Paid Family and
Medical Leave program and expanded its paid sick leave law. Lawmakers have also
expanded prevailing wage requirements and fought for things like eliminating
the tipped minimum wage and extending unemployment benefits to striking
workers.
CBIA has identified areas in which Connecticut can improve
the regulatory strain on businesses, particularly in the manufacturing and
construction industries.
“Manufacturers, especially, face a heavy burden on
regulations, whether it be environmental regulations or labor mandates, things
that really make it difficult for them to compete, both nationally and, quite
frankly, for a lot of these manufacturers, internationally,” Davis said.
The CATO Institute, a conservative think tank, consistently
ranks Connecticut among the worst states in the country for land-use
regulations.
Because zoning requirements can vary widely from one town to
another, existing Connecticut businesses face obstacles even when expanding
within the state, Davis said.
However, efforts by the General Assembly to ease land-use
regulations in local communities often face political backlash.
In June, Lamont vetoed House Bill 5002, a major piece of
legislation that aimed to address the state’s ongoing housing shortage. The
bill would have required towns to plan and zone for a set number of affordable
housing units, using a “fair share” formula to distribute housing needs across
municipalities.
Lamont, a Democrat, broke with his own party in quashing the
legislation, citing opposition centered around fears that the bill would
undermine local zoning control.
“I think sort of a comprehensive attempt to look at
regulatory structure would be immensely beneficial, and it could help make us
much more competitive,” Carstensen said. “… And you’ve got to do this at the
granular level. You got to do it, look at each of these things closely, and you
have to do it all the time.”
HBJ Staff Writer Michael Juliano contributed to this story.
Coming to a CT suburb: 440 housing units, shopping plaza, hotel. What to know.
Contractors are in the late stages of building the biggest
mixed-use development in the town’s history, which is bringing about 140,000
square feet of new retail, 300 luxury apartments and 140 upscale townhouses
to the I-691 and I-84 area.
Stonebridge Crossing is transforming a little more than 100
acres of former farmland, fields and trees in Cheshire into one of Greater
Waterbury’s biggest combination commercial and retail developments in decades.
Most of the heavy construction is done for The
Shops at Stone Bridge, a shopping center anchored by Whole Foods and
expected to include a Barnes & Noble store, T.J. Maxx, Shake Shack and
others. Florida-based Regency Centers, a major national retail developer, is
heading that project.
Several of the apartment buildings at the Riverpointe
apartment complex are completed, the first wave of tenants has begun moving in,
and additional units are leasing from $2,100 for studios to as high as $3,600
for three-bedroom units. Fairfield-based
Eastpointe LLC is the developer.
And as of midweek, 108 of the townhouses and carriage homes
at the Reserve at Stonebridge Crossing have been sold.
“We’re crushing it. We’ll probably be sold out by the end of
this year or early in the first quarter of next year,” said Matthew Gilchrist, president
of EG Home, which is building the townhouses that start at $494,000 and the
carriage homes that begin at $669,000.
Still to come is a four-story, 117-room Homewood Suites
that’s planned on about 4 acres of the site.
At a time when the nation’s bricks-and-mortar retail segment
is largely stagnant or contracting, the prospect of an all-new shopping plaza
might seem unlikely.
But Assistant Town Manager Andrew Martelli noted that the
plaza and its components are significantly smaller than the big box stores and
malls that were popular decades ago.
“The retail market was underserved here; Cheshire hasn’t
built a retail shopping area since the 1970s. And the biggest building here is
going to be 40,000 square feet. Big boxes aren’t the wave of the future,” he
said Thursday. “Even the Barnes & Noble here will be 18,000.”
Whole Foods has a regional distribution center in Cheshire,
and its new retail outlet will be its only store between Waterbury and Milford,
Martelli said.
Decades ago, Cheshire and Southington were trying to build
the Apple Valley Mall around the location of Stone Bridge Crossing. That deal
never came together, and was abandoned after Waterbury put up its Brass Mill
Center. As recently as 10 years ago, the Tanger chain was eying Cheshire
for an outlet store center of more than 500,000 square feet, but scrapped that
plan in favor of building at Foxwoods.
Some longtime Cheshire residents are pleased with how it all
turned out, since malls and numerous outlet centers have been suffering
financially. The Stonebridge Crossing project is a bit closer in nature to The
Shops at Evergreen Walk, an upscale retail center in South Windsor where
developers have been adding apartments within walking distance.
Gilchrist said the Stonebridge Crossing model’s commercial
element offers another feature to residential buyers.
“Cheshire is a desirable town and it’s an easy commute with
future access to great retail,” he said.
The company’s marketing pitch emphasizes that, saying “A
convenient location offers endless restaurants nearby, myriad shopping options
and easy commuting routes.”
Developers are setting aside some acreage as open space, and
will be putting in community walking paths.
Gilchrist said most townhouses there sell for under
$600,000, while the carriage homes go for $775,000 to $850,000. Solar panels
installed in roofs will help constrain the homeower association fees, he said.
Buyers range from empty-nesters to young professionals, according to the
company.
“The secret for us is we’re production builders You do well
what you do often; we have extremely well thought-out homes and we build them
over and over agin,” he said. “But we never build the same house twice: Buyers
choose their cabinets, their floors, their doorknobs.”
CT has as many as 8,000 lead service lines used in public water systems. In a wealthy town too.
Andrew Brown | CT Mirror, Renata
Daou, Shahrzad Rasekh
When Jarvis Parker was looking to buy a house in Waterbury
in late 2019, he had several basic criteria.
He wanted to avoid properties with leaking roofs and flooded
basements. And he needed a place with enough space for himself, his daughter
and his now 4-year-old grandson.
The modest two-bedroom home that Parker eventually purchased
in Waterbury’s East End checked all of those boxes.
Five years later, however, he’s confronting a problem he
never saw coming: a potentially toxic water line. Waterbury’s East End
Parker was informed this year that a small pipe known as a
service line, which connects his house to the larger water main that runs under
the street, could be made of lead.
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The news stunned Parker, a disabled military veteran. He was
so concerned about the water line and what it could do to his family’s health
that he stopped using the tap water until he could purchase a filter to install
on his kitchen sink.
“I got things going on that the doctors can’t even figure
out,” Parker said. “And now you tell me that I’ve got bad water, lead water
coming in?”
“That right there really scared me,” he added.
Home builders and water utilities were banned in the
mid-1980s from using lead plumbing in order to prevent the toxic metal from
leaching into tap water and poisoning children and adults.
But as Parker and thousands of people across Connecticut
recently learned, there are a significant number of lead service lines
installed before 1986 still supplying homes, apartments and other properties in
the state.
New data obtained by The Connecticut Mirror shows there
could be as many as 8,000 lead service lines still in use in public water
systems throughout the state — though that number is likely to change as water
utilities continue to inspect basements, unearth pipes and comb through
century-old records to verify how much lead remains in the ground.
The data provides the first public look at how many people
in Connecticut could be consuming water that travels through lead lines. And it
highlights how that aging infrastructure is not distributed equally throughout
the state.
A majority of the suspected lead lines are located in
lower-income neighborhoods in Bridgeport, Willimantic, Middletown, New London
and Waterbury, places that have significant Black and Hispanic populations and
are designated by the state as environmental justice communities.
Still, Connecticut’s wealthier suburbs were not spared
entirely. More than 1,500 lead lines are also suspected in Greenwich, one of
the state’s wealthiest enclaves.
The push to identify lead service lines in Connecticut is
the result of a new federal regulation implemented in the aftermath of
the Flint
water crisis.
That federal rule, which was finalized in late 2024,
requires public water utilities across the country — both large and small — to
create an inventory of every lead service line in their systems and to replace
all of those pipes within the next decade.
The success of that mission, however, could depend on
whether the new federal regulation can survive a legal challenge filed by
the country’s largest water utility association and
possible efforts by President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans
to roll back the new rule.
A team of CT Mirror reporters spent more than six months
reviewing records, analyzing data, knocking on doors and talking to residents
and experts in order to understand the scope of the problem in Connecticut.
While it is not yet known how Connecticut compares to other
parts of the country, the numbers clearly show the state has a lot of work to
do before all of the aging lead pipes are out of the ground.
The data on the lead lines was contained in hundreds of
reports assembled by the state’s water utilities and submitted to the Connecticut Department of Public Health, which
regulates drinking water safety.
The properties flagged in that data include a variety of
locations that serve young children, who are at the greatest risk of
developmental delays from lead poisoning.
The CT Mirror found examples where in-home daycares, a local
Boys and Girls Club and older elementary schools were listed among the
properties with suspected lead lines. That includes Waterbury’s Margaret
M. Generali and Frank Regan elementary schools, which predominantly
serve students of color.
The number of lead lines located in minority communities was
expected. In fact, officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
predicted much of the country’s leftover lead plumbing would be found in
lower-income and minority neighborhoods, where there is older housing stock and
a lack of investment.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal referenced that reality during
a press conference in New London last year, arguing that the state and federal
government had a “moral obligation” to remove every remaining lead service
line.
“There is a real environmental justice issue here. It’s the
dark side of this problem,” Blumenthal said while brandishing a lead pipe that
had just been pulled from a home. “Much of this danger is determined by the ZIP
code where a child lives, and all too often it’s a ZIP code that affects
children of color.”
Questions and concerns
The leaders of some of Connecticut’s largest water utilities
said that further inspections and investigations will be required before they
can get a true count of how many lead service lines remain in their systems.
They also emphasized that they treat their water with what
are known as corrosion inhibitors — compounds that help prevent service lines
and older plumbing from leaching significant amounts of lead into people’s
drinking water.
Even so, several engineers and former regulators interviewed
for this story warned that the aging lines pose a risk to people’s health. And
they noted that treating the water supply does not guarantee that lead from
older service lines won’t end up in the tap water. That’s especially true if
the pipes are disturbed during sidewalk and road repairs or when the water in a
building isn’t used every day, like in the cases of schools and daycares.
“Corrosion control does help reduce the amount of lead that
gets into water. It does not prevent lead from getting into water,” said Elin
Betanzo, a professional engineer who helped uncover the Flint water crisis in
2014, which set off a public reckoning over lead contamination in drinking
water.
You can’t see, taste or smell lead in water. So the best way
to ensure lead service lines aren’t poisoning people, Betanzo said, is to
remove the pipes from the ground.
That’s exactly what the new federal drinking water
regulations, which were enacted under President Joe Biden’s administration, are
expected to do.
The EPA set a deadline late last year that requires any
water utility serving at least 25 people to identify and remove every lead
service line within the next 10 years — a monumental undertaking that
is expected to cost tens of billions of dollars.
In the meantime, utilities in Connecticut are sending out
notices advising customers with confirmed or suspected lead lines to purchase
water filters or to flush their sinks for several minutes before consuming the
water.
Those notices have ignited concerns and sowed confusion
among some Connecticut residents, like Parker. The Waterbury resident doesn’t
understand why he is just learning that the water line for his home is
potentially made of lead.
“How can you give certain people lead-filled water and not
even come and test the water or do nothing?” Parker asked.
“Who’s checking? Who’s doing rounds and telling us?” he
added.
Gaps in communication
The CT Mirror spent months knocking on doors at properties
with suspected lead service lines, and the reactions from residents at those
locations varied from town to town and street to street.
Some said they’d recently been notified that their service
line might need to be replaced, while others said they’ve known for years that
their property was supplied by a lead service line.
Bill Flaherty, a Willimantic resident, said he learned about
the lead line supplying his house in the southeast end of town after utility
crews unearthed it during a water main replacement years ago. But he said
utility officials repeatedly told him not to worry about it because the water
was being treated to prevent corrosion.
Flaherty said he began to question that, however, after he
received a notice in the mail last year informing him that utility officials
wanted to replace his service line and the more than 300 other lead lines that
remained in town.
Denise Deleon, a 48-year-old Waterbury resident, said
she did not receive a notice that her apartment had a suspected lead service
line, and she would remember seeing that type of information, since she has a
history of dealing with lead exposure.
Years ago, while she was living in New York City, Deleon
said her daughter began struggling to concentrate in school, and doctors found
elevated levels of lead in her blood. As a result, Deleon said her family moved
out of their home in the Bronx to prevent her daughter from being further
exposed.
While her daughter is now grown, Deleon was troubled to
learn that her community may be home to hundreds of lead water lines. She
worries what effect those lines could have on the kids she sees playing in her
neighborhood.
“I see a lot of children around here, and I’m concerned
because I went through that,” said Deleon. “I think about the children around
here and if it’s going to affect them the same way it affected my daughter.”
The gaps in communication surrounding lead service lines did
not surprise Arthur Denze Sr., a lifelong Waterbury resident. People in
Waterbury, he said, have been dealing with environmental hazards for decades,
including concerns about air pollution and other contamination from old
industrial sites.
“Years ago, we fought tooth and nail against a lot of
companies coming in and polluting the area,” said Denze, 87, head of a council
that represents the city’s neighborhood associations. “I used to get out of
work at night, and a smokestack was sending plumes up. You could see it all the
way down the valley. We probably have some of the
highest asthma rates in the state.”
He said the city’s water department could be more proactive
in informing residents about lead lines and potential health risks that come
along with them.
“That should be discussed within the city. It’s a big item.
God knows how much they used [lead lines] years ago,” Denze said.
Bradley Malay, the superintendent of Waterbury’s Water
Department, said the city sent out notices to properties with suspected lead
lines earlier this year. It also provided information about lead service lines
to every
water customer in the utility’s most recent water quality report.
Malay emphasized that the city is in the very early stages
of identifying potential lead service lines, and he said it was largely relying
on historical records, which can sometimes be unreliable or out of date.
The city, Malay added, is currently developing a multi-year
plan for how to replace the lead lines it finds, and he said the city intends
to prioritize line replacements at schools and similar locations first.
‘What do we have to do to protect ourselves?’
Many of the properties that CT Mirror reporters visited for
this story were older, three-story walkup apartments and brick duplexes built
in the early 1900s — places where tenants are also at heightened risk of
exposure to lead paint.
The EPA published research in recent years that found census
tracts where lead service lines are located often have higher percentages
of renters, low-income residents and people of color.
Federal officials also produced studies that suggest the
owners of rental properties are not always as engaged in the
conversations and activities surrounding lead service line replacements, partly
because they are not the ones drinking the water.
Aquarion Water Co of CT-Greenwich lead service lines.
Source: Department of Public Health, The Lead and Copper Rule Revisions • Map:
Renata Daou | CT Mirror
That has not been a problem in Greenwich, however, where
most of the suspected lead lines are supplying single-family homes.
The news that hundreds of properties in Greenwich could
contain a lead service line drew significant attention in the town, where the
median household income is $180,000 per year and more than 60% of the housing
is owner-occupied.
Jill Boullin, a homeowner in Greenwich’s southwest corner,
said she was surprised by the letter she received from Aquarion Water late last
year identifying her home as one the properties with a suspected lead line.
“The next thought was, what do we have to do to protect
ourselves?” said Boullin, who has two young children, ages 2 and 5.
Bouillin, who closed on her house in 2024, said she quickly
contacted the town’s state-certified laboratory to purchase a water testing
kit. But by that point, she said, the lab had already been swamped by other
homeowners who were seeking to verify that their water was safe to drink.
“They were overrun with the amount of people calling,” said
Bouillin, who is now weighing whether to purchase a water filtration system for
her and her family.
Warnings
Many of the lead service lines flagged in Connecticut have
been in place for more than a century.
The data collected by water utilities shows many were
installed between the 1870s and early 1930s, long before the federal ban on
lead plumbing.
Lead was used during that time frame because it’s pliable,
which made it ideal for snaking under sidewalks and into basements. It is also
durable, which is why the federal government estimates there are still
between 6 million to 10 million lead service lines in the ground
nationwide.
“Lead service lines and lead bearing plumbing have basically
been forced on people,” said Yanna Lambrinidou, a co-founder of the national
nonprofit Campaign for
Lead Free Water. “People did not go to the store and choose lead service
lines.”
“Lead lines in many cases were imposed through local
plumbing codes and local laws that made them mandatory, or that made them at
least one of the acceptable materials until they were banned,” she added.
“People were never really told what the health risks would be in essentially
using a lead straw to pull in water to drink and cook with.”
Public health officials and advocates warned for decades
about the threat those forgotten lead lines could pose to human health. There
were high-profile examples over the years, including in Washington, D.C.,
that highlighted the damage that can be done to children and communities when
lead service lines are allowed to corrode and poison people’s drinking water.
But it wasn’t until after the Flint water crisis that
federal officials acted by requiring utilities to identify and replace all of
the remaining lead service lines in the country.
Flint was a worst-case scenario. Tens of thousands of
children and adults were exposed to high levels of lead after the city switched
the source of its drinking water to the Flint River and failed to properly
treat the water to prevent corrosion in lead service lines and other plumbing.
In the end, the crisis resulted in a massive spike in
the number of children in Flint with elevated levels of lead in their blood.
Betanzo, who now runs a company that consults on drinking
water safety, said Flint is a dramatic example, but it is also an indicator of
what can happen in any community where lead service lines are allowed to remain
in the ground.
“Every time there’s lead in the pipes, there is a risk of
lead in the water,” Betanzo said. “There is no need for anyone to drink lead in
their water.”
“The issue in Flint is that we used children as our warning
system,” she added. “And once you test it in children, it’s too late.”
A quiet threat
Lead is not like iron and zinc, which people need trace
amounts of. There is no safe level of lead in the human body.
In adults, lead can affect kidney function and can
contribute to cardiovascular problems. And in children, elevated lead levels
can cause developmental delays, learning difficulties and behavioral problems.
When someone swallows lead particles, the metal accumulates
in the body. It gets stored over time in the blood, bones and organs.
Lead-based paint, which was widely used on homes built
before the late 1970s, is the biggest contributor to lead poisoning in children
throughout the United States.
More than 66,000 children in Connecticut were tested for
lead in 2023, the most recent year that data is available. And more than
1,600 of them had lead in their blood above 3.5 micrograms per deciliter, which
is the new reference level for when cases get flagged.
Local health officials also performed inspections on 96
different properties that year in an attempt to identify the source of the lead
poisoning cases. None of those cases was attributed to lead in water.
But public health experts said lead service lines represent
another potential source of lead exposure, and the EPA estimates that drinking
water can make up 20% or more of a person’s total exposure to lead.
Dr. Carl Baum, a pediatrician who has treated lead poisoning
cases in Connecticut for more than 20 years, said infants who are consuming
baby formula that is mixed with tap water are at the greatest risk from lead
water lines. Another vulnerable population is pregnant women.
Baum, the director of the lead poisoning treatment center at
Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital, said the only foolproof way to protect
infants and other people from lead service lines is to eliminate the source of
potential exposure.
Lead exposure, Baum explained, is often a silent disease,
meaning parents and doctors don’t realize there is a problem until lab testing
finds elevated levels of lead in a child’s blood. In Connecticut, the state has
a universal testing requirement.
All children between nine months and 35 months must
be tested annually for lead in their blood. There are further
testing requirements for children who are at heightened risk.
“Unfortunately, we use kids as biological monitors,” Baum
said. “We are allowing kids to go into homes where there is a probability that
there is lead either in the water or in the paint and we wait until they get a
lead level checked and then we say, ‘Oh, this kid is lead poisoned.’”
David Cash, the former regional administrator for the EPA in
New England, said the quiet threat that lead poses to children is why the Biden
administration adopted regulations that require lead service lines to be
removed within the next decade.
“If we care about children’s health and neurological
development and success in school, then we should care very much about this,”
Cash said.
“You know, having a kid who grows up with full mental and
neurological abilities is great for that kid and great for their family,” he
said. “But it’s also great for the community, great for the economy.”
‘We saw the writing on the wall’
Connecticut’s
community water systems, which collectively serve more than
three quarters of the state’s population, are at varying stages of pinpointing
and eliminating their lead service lines.
In New London, contractors are already in the process of
ripping out and replacing more than 500 lead service lines identified in the
city. The city was celebrated in recent years — including at an event at
the Biden White House — as one of the most proactive municipalities in the
country when it comes to addressing its aging lead lines.
“We saw the writing on the wall after Flint that this was
going to become a major problem,” said Joseph Lanzafame, New London’s Director
of Public Utilities.
Other utilities, however, are just beginning to research how
much lead remains in their systems.
Some of the state’s water systems told state regulators late
last year that they were not sure what most of their service lines are made of.
The Southington Water Department, for instance, classified
89% of its service lines as “lead status unknown.” The Manchester Water
Department listed 81% of its service lines in the same category. And in
Meriden, the city’s water division, said it was uncertain about 84% of its
roughly 20,000 service lines.
Dr. Manisha Juthani, Connecticut’s public health
commissioner, said those cases highlight the difficulty many utilities are
facing, especially when there isn’t historical documentation about each service
line.
“For some, it’s very challenging,” Juthani said. “They’re
going back to records — literally, paper cards and things — from the 1800s.”
William Norton, Meriden’s director of public utilities, said
his team recently asked property owners to help document what their water lines
are made of by taking photographs of the pipes where they enter people’s homes.
And the utility’s employees are excavating several hundred service lines this
year to confirm whether they contain lead.
Many utilities are also using computer modeling and machine
learning to help predict where lead service lines are located, based on the age
of a home or whether other properties on that street have a confirmed lead
line.
Officials with the Metropolitan
District Commission and Regional Water Authority, which provide
drinking water to more than 800,000 people in and around Hartford and New
Haven, said they do not expect to find a large number of lead lines in their
systems based on the modeling they’ve done up to this point.
The MDC, which serves the Hartford region, told state
regulators that it was confident that roughly 86% of its service lines were
lead free. And the Regional Water Authority, which covers all of New Haven,
similarly reported that at least 93% of its more than 125,000 service lines did
not contain lead.
Meanwhile, Aquarion Water, which serves a large portion of
Fairfield County, is estimating it could find nearly 4,000 lead lines in
Bridgeport and surrounding towns, based on its current projections.
A financial burden
Identifying the lead lines is difficult enough, but utility
officials said replacing all those pipes is likely to be an even bigger feat.
In many systems, water customers own at least part of the
service lines — meaning utilities need permission from each property owner
before they can begin pulling lead from the ground.
Utility officials said tracking down hundreds or thousands
of property owners is an enormous challenge, especially in cities where there
are a substantial number of rental properties and absentee landlords.
But the biggest impediment to replacing all of Connecticut’s
lead service lines is likely to be money. The EPA estimated in 2019 that it
could cost roughly $4,700 on average to replace a single service
line.
Lanzafame, who is overseeing New London’s lead service line
program, said the price has been even higher in his experience.
Part of the cost of replacing lead lines in New London is
being covered by a $6.9 million federal loan, a portion of which will be
forgiven. Without that assistance, Lanzafame said, it would be far more
difficult for the city to complete the work.
“It is a big financial burden. I think that is one of the
biggest challenges, especially being a distressed community,” Lanzafame said.
“Without the grants and the funding that we’re getting from the federal
government, we wouldn’t be able to carry out this project.”
Federal lawmakers and the Biden administration set aside
more than $15 billion through the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
to help utilities across the country to identify and replace lead service
lines. Connecticut received $99 million from that pot of money over the past
three years, which the state is making available to water utilities through
grants and low-interest loans.
But some groups are estimating the price tag for replacing
every lead line nationwide could be up to $45 billion or even
$90 billion — meaning some replacement projects may not receive federal
support.
Lambrinidou, of the Campaign for Lead Free Water, said
utilities cannot rely on individual property owners to pay out-of-pocket for
the cost of replacing their service lines. If they do, she said, those lead
lines will likely remain in the ground.
Many Connecticut utilities told CT Mirror they intend to
cover the entire cost of replacement, but in order to do so, they may need to
raise utility rates. The Connecticut legislature passed a bill this
session that would allow investor-owned utilities, like Aquarion and the
Connecticut Water Company, to create a surcharge on people’s water bills to
cover the cost of lead removal projects.
Lambrinidou, an affiliate faculty member at Virginia
Tech’s Department of Science, Technology and Society, said that is
also problematic. It would be far more equitable for the federal government to
pick up the tab for service line replacements, she said.
“In many communities, it’s going to be the people — the
victims — who are going to be required to pay, at least partially,” Lambrindou
said. “If that’s not an environmental injustice, I don’t know what is.”