Plainfield calls for public hearings on trash-to-energy plant
Alison Cross
Plainfield — The town is petitioning the Department of
Energy and Environmental Protection to provide two public hearings on SMART
Technology Systems LLC’s widely
opposed proposal to build a trash-to-energy plant in town.
The requests for a public hearing in town and another in
Hartford list First Selectman Kevin Cunningham as the point person for
discussions regarding SMART Technology Systems, LLC’s application for the plant
that would process 1,800 tons of solid waste per day on an 81-acre parcel at
the intersection of Norwich Road and Black Hill Road.
As the town moves forward in the process, Cunningham said
fighting SMART Technology Systems could cost the town up to $250,000 or more in
legal fees, an expenditure that residents would need to authorize in a vote at
a town meeting.
On Tuesday, residents and members of the Sierra Club of
Connecticut and the CT Zero Waste Coalition joined a virtual presentation and
question-and-answer session with the Department of Energy and Environmental
Protection Bureau of Air Management to learn more about the air permitting
process and opportunities for public participation.
Many residents asked questions about how the DEEP evaluates
applicants against state and federal emissions standards and how the agency
performs its cost-benefit analysis to decide whether a project will move
forward.
“To those of us who live up here, who are seeing this
enormous building being plunked down into the middle of the town, it doesn’t
feel like a benefit,” Amelia Parcinski said.
Jaimeson Sinclair, the division director of air engineering
at DEEP, said the rules on performing the cost-benefit analysis are
“unfortunately … not very prescriptive.” However, as a state-recognized
environmental justice community, Sinclair said the town could seek a Community
Environmental Benefits Agreement to ensure that the developer provides
“tangible benefits to the local environment” if the project moves forward.
“It is essentially an agreement that says, ‘If you get your
permits and get to build, you will provide the following things to us, the
town, to offset the impact that you’re creating,’” Sinclair said.
Sinclair stressed that any permits granted by DEEP are
living documents that require continuous compliance and monitoring
requirements. However, their dynamic status also makes permitting requirements
vulnerable to changes in federal standards.
“To the extent that the limitation is not one for which we
have specific discretion, there have been instances where EPA has lowered a
requirement, and DEEP has reduced the stringency of the permit accordingly,”
Sinclair said. “However, with respect to those things for which we do have
discretion, we do hold fast.”
Sinclair explained that DEEP would maintain discretion over
the Lowest Achievable Emission Rate Review, which essentially requires that the
plant “be no dirtier than the cleanest version that is operating anywhere.”
SMART Technology Systems has billed its trash-to-energy
plant as a “first-in-the-country, next-generation Municipal Solid Waste
management, recycling and power generation complex,” that converts trash into
power using a gasification technology modeled after a facility in
Finland.
According to Sinclair, “there is a similar facility
operating outside of Miami, Florida.” However, according to local news reports,
while Miami-Dade County commissioners voted last month to approve plans for a
waste-to-energy plant, the location of the proposed facility has yet to be
decided.
Sinclair said SMART Technology Systems would be evaluated
against the facilities in Florida and Europe. He said that typically, DEEP only
requires applicants to meet the emissions limits for comparable U.S. facilities
because or the different units and rates used by international standards.
Along the Connecticut River and near the Hartford Line, a developer plans 318 apartments
An Avon developer is proposing
to build 318 apartments just a few blocks from the Connecticut River,
a project that could become one of the biggest residential developments in East
Windsor in recent memory.
The River Pointe project off Bridge Street would
include six four-story apartment buildings, each one totalling just under
62,000 square feet.
In addition, developer Robert Trigg’s NRT Realty LLC plans
about 11,000 square feet of new retail space, including a roughly
2,500-square-foot restaurant.
“I’ve always been very up on East Windsor, it’s a great
area. And this is something good for the municipality, something the
municipality needs,” Trigg told The Courant on Tuesday. “I’d like to start this
in the spring if not sooner.”
The site is less than a mile from where the state
transportation department is building the new Windsor Locks station for the
Hartford Line, so tenants would have easy access to Hartford and communities to
the south as well as Springfield, Mass.
If the plans are approved, River Pointe would be built on
more than 30 acres of former farm space. The property is on the south side of
Bridge Street west of I-91.
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Trigg filed plans at town hall on Monday, and the local
wetlands board is scheduled to review drainage data and related reports next
week. The planning and zoning commission is likely to take up the proposal in
the fall.
When NRT Realty presented a conceptual plan in the winter,
its consultants said the buildings would be built in phases and leased in
phases. Specifics on the schedule wouldn’t be locked down until close to
construction, the consultants said.
East Windsor a few years ago adopted the Warehouse Point
Design District zoning rules to encourage pedestrian-friendly development in
its town center. Trigg’s plan would bring relatively high-density housing as
well as new retail, and the walking route to the CT Rail station will have
sidewalks.
Trigg has not disclosed projected rents, but East Windsor
already has more than 10% affordable housing and thus isn’t affected by the
state’s 8-30g law.
Plans show a dog park, 3,300-square foot clubhouse, a bike
storge area, tenant storage space, and a swimming pool. A separate mail
building and a trash building are also planned. The plans show a village center
with walkways leading to the clubhouse and pool.
Floor plans indicate a heavy emphasis on two-bedroom units,
with eight on each floor. They’d range from 1,020 to 1,328 square feet. Each
floor of each building would have one-bedroom units listed at 749 to 839 square
feet, and a handful of studios are each listed at 656 square feet.
J.B. Russo & Associates is doing the engineering work
for NRT Realty.
Damaged Stamford hurricane barrier gets federal funds for repair, but work won't start for years
STAMFORD — Repairs are coming to Stamford's hurricane barrier, but work won't begin until at least 2027.
The New England district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced this week that federal dollars were secured to maintain and repair the barrier, which was built in the 1960s and is located between the South End and Shippan neighborhoods, according to the Army Corps' website.
The corps maintains the navigation gate at the barrier, while the city is responsible for maintaining the rest, the site says.
Sheandra Sterling, public affairs specialist for the New England district of the Corps of Engineers, wrote in an emailed message that an inspection in 2022 found that the gate at the barrier was misaligned, "making it difficult to open and close." More specifically, one of the gate's four hinges was bent, causing the issue.
The federal government has provided $22.5 million for the work, Sterling wrote. However, that is not the final budget for the work, she said, as that number will be determined once the design process is completed.
The proposed work includes replacing other mechanical components of the gate and updates to the gate control system, Sterling wrote.
She said there is no exact timeline for the repair, but that the Army Corps expects to award a construction contract in 2027.
A press release from the Army Corps of Engineers stated that work on the barrier may require the temporary closure of the harbor.
"Any construction plans will seek to minimize disruption to the community," Sterling wrote. "We are committed to transparency during this process and will continue to meet regularly with state and city officials to share information."
A press release from the office of Mayor Caroline Simmons last year announced that repairs on the barrier would begin in 2026. It is unclear why the project has been delayed, but city spokesperson Laura Meyer said the project is largely being directed by the Army Corps and Stamford's involvement is minimal.
According to the Army Corps' website, the hurricane barrier provides protection for roughly 600 acres, which includes manufacturing plants, a commercial district and residential sections. The barrier is activated 15 times a year on average, Sterling wrote, with January being the most active month for closures.
Sterling said the last time the gate was used to combat a tidal surge was on Nov. 14 and 15 of last year.
UI is building a series of floodwalls to protect its coastal substations
When Superstorm Sandy sent a nearly 10-foot storm surge into Bridgeport’s South End in 2012, workers at United Illuminating’s Singer substation watched as the floodwaters crept down Atlantic Street before arriving at the base of the plant.
Had waters risen much higher, those workers would have had to cut off the flow of electricity to protect the station’s critical infrastructure — potentially disrupting power for tens of thousands of people across the region.
“The water level got to under the door and we had people stay here, getting ready to open up circuits,” said Ben Acampora, a construction chief for the utility.
It was not the first time that the substation, which sits in a coastal floodplain, was threatened by a storm surge. A year before, the neighborhood was similarly inundated by Hurricane Irene.
Luckily, neither storm caused much damage to the substation, even as they ravaged other parts of Connecticut. But to avoid more serious consequences from future storms, United Illuminating recently began construction of a 16-foot-high steel floodwall around the substation to keep the waters at bay.
The Singer project — which is expected to be completed in 2027 at a cost of $47 million — is one of three similar floodwalls that the Orange-based utility has either constructed or is planning to build to protect coastal substations.
Last year, UI finished construction of its first floodwall around the Congress Street Substation, also in Bridgeport. The final project, a wall protecting the Grand Ave./Mill River Substation in New Haven, is due to be completed in 2028, officials said.
The combined cost of all three projects is expected to be $146 million, according to a UI spokeswoman.
Utilities such as United Illuminating generally operate two types of substations: transmission stations, which send bulk electricity from power plants long distances over high-voltage transmission lines, and distribution stations which take that electricity, lower the voltage and feed it into the local distribution system where it arrives at homes and businesses.
Renni Pavolini, the unit manager of substation projects at UI, said the consequences of flood damage to a transmission station such as Singer could potentially be “catastrophic” for parts of the New England power grid.
“We will have to shut down the substation, and depending on the damage… it could take days, or it could be just hours,” to restore power, Pavolini said. “Our system, the grid, it’s done in a way that if this [station] is down, we probably could feel it with other substations.”
Connecticut’s other major electric utility, Eversource, is also in the process of adding a layer of protection to its network of substations.
Since 2019, Eversource has spent $9.5 million completing flood mitigation projects at five of its distribution substations around the state, and two more have been scheduled for upgrades. In addition, three substations in the coastal towns of Guilford, Branford and Madison have been removed from service due to the risk of flooding, according to a spokeswoman for the utility.
Elli Ntakou, Eversource’s manager of system resilience and reliability, said the utility recently completed a climate vulnerability assessment to determine which substations or other infrastructure were vulnerable to sea level rise, inland flooding or other climate threats such as drought and extreme heat.
‘We have a granular analysis so we understand the impact to specific assets,” Ntakou said. “The specific stations that we think are higher risk, that’s where we target our mitigations so we make it cost efficient.
The risk that climate changes poses to electric infrastructure is not confined to either utility’s service areas, Connecticut or even coastal regions in general.
Power outages, which can be costly for both utilities and their customers, are growing in frequency across the country due to extreme weather, according to the most recent National Climate Assessment. The same report found that climate change could push expenditures on electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure up an additional 25% by 2090.
The report, released in 2023 under the Biden administration, was removed from government websites after President Donald Trump took office earlier this year.
Locally, the threat floodwaters pose to electric infrastructure is especially concentrated in and around Bridgeport Harbor with its network of substations, transmission lines and power plants.
An ongoing project to build a flood protection system around the city’s South End, known as Resilient Bridgeport, was slated to receive more than $47 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s pre-disaster grant program before the latest round of awards were cut off by the Trump administration earlier this year. (In response, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong joined a lawsuit last month seeking to order the
UI’s Singer Station project, meanwhile, is not reliant on federal funding. Like the utility’s other floodwall projects, it is being paid for by UI customers through transmission and distribution rates within their utility bills.
The Singer floodwall is being built to withstand FEMA’s estimates for a 100-year flood event, plus an additional three feet of water, Pavolini said.
In the first phase of construction, crews drove a series of 57 king pile beams into the bedrock below the substation, with their exposed tops forming the skeleton of the wall. From there, steel sheet piles are currently being installed between the beams to form the protective layer around the facility. Two gates allowing access to the substation will be able to be sealed in the event of a storm.
As a last step, the wall will covered with a layer of concrete so that it blends in aesthetically with the rest of the building, before being topped with a security fence.
In addition to the building of walls, UI recently completed construction on its brand new $142 million Pequonnock Substation in Bridgeport. The new substation, which is located on higher ground further back from the Pequonnock River, replaced an older facility that was vulnerable to coastal flooding.
Be ‘in tune’ with workers to assess their well-being, presenters say
ORLANDO, Fla. — Workplace safety experts have long been focused not just on workers’ physical wellbeing but their mental health as well. That rang true at the American Society of Safety Professionals 2025 Expo and Conference in July.
“It definitely is [our responsibility],” said Wesley Wheeler, executive director of safety for the National Electric Contractors Association. “We are the eyes and ears of our contractors.”
Wheeler’s comments came during a panel discussion, but it was far from the only event at the conference where worker mental health was brought up.
Panelists also discussed the need to remove the “macho” stigma in industries like construction that can negatively impact men in particular and how to spot the warning signs of someone struggling with mental health issues.
Those indicators include workers who don’t regularly maintain their hygiene, have a sudden rapid drop in productivity or increasingly keep to themselves when they may have otherwise been social.
“You will notice these things if you are in tune with your workers,” said Georgia Bryce-Hutchinson, mental health consultant for Exton, Pennsylvania-based healthcare provider Carebridge.
Construction’s long hours, demanding physical labor and tough-guy mentality can contribute to mental health issues, said Chris Trahan Cain, executive director of Silver Spring, Maryland-based CPWR — The Center for Construction Research and Training.
“A growing number of deaths are not from falls or electrocutions. They’re from suicide on the job or drug overdose on the job,” Cain said.
Conference organizers handed out ASSP poker chips with 988 on the back — the national suicide hotline number — before and after the panel. Wheeler said that the poker chip can be used as a tool in a personal or group setting to open pathways to conversation around mental health.
Cain suggested that a safety manager give a chip to a worker they are concerned about with no further discussion, highlighting the option for a subtle nudge rather than an immediate discussion, which might not be comfortable.
Language, literally
At another presentation, two speakers stressed the importance of language as a factor in worker mental health and suicide prevention.
Sonya Bohmann, executive director of the Frankfort, Illinois-based Construction Industry Alliance for Suicide Prevention and Loretta Mulberry, a Spanish-to-English interpreter and industry advocate, discussed the importance of the vocabulary used to talk about mental health issues.
For example, Bohmann and Mulberry encouraged attendees to use the term “die by suicide” rather than “commit” as well as describing someone as “having” a mental illness, rather than “being mentally ill.”
Doing so, Bohmann said, can underscore that mental health is part of a greater health issue, and thereby make it easier to talk about.
It’s not just the verbiage on the jobsite, but the actual dialect used to communicate that can have a profound effect on worker mental health.
About one-fourth of people employed in construction overall are Hispanic, Mulberry said, but Hispanic people make up about half of all laborers. Many workers report low confidence in their ability to speak English, and rely on one leader to interpret, Mulberry said. That can also increase risk for hazards on the jobsite.
It also has an impact on worker mental health, Mulberry said, as those who speak a different language can feel more isolated and be even less likely to speak up about an issue.
The rate of Hispanic people in the U.S. dying by suicide grew from 5.7 per 100,000 in 2011 to 7.5 in 2020, according to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, a faster increase than the overall population experienced during that time period.
“There is simply not enough being done to bridge those language cultural gaps,” Mulberry said.
Too often, Mulberry said she hears firms indicate they will prioritize a safety program using multiple languages, but she rarely sees any sense of urgency.
“I would like to impress upon people that people’s lives are on the line everyday,” Mulberry said.
Connecticut DOT Selects HNTB for Major Upgrades Along Waterbury Branch Line
HARTFORD, CT — The Connecticut Department of Transportation (CTDOT) has selected HNTB to provide construction engineering and inspection (CEI) services for a series of station improvements along the Waterbury Branch Line, a 28.5-mile segment of Metro-North Railroad’s New Haven Line serving the Naugatuck River Valley.
The project includes major facility and operational upgrades at five stations — Derby, Ansonia, Seymour, Beacon Falls, and Waterbury — aimed at modernizing infrastructure, enhancing the commuter experience, and improving overall system performance.
HNTB will oversee the construction of new platforms, ramps, and canopies; realignment of railroad tracks; improvements to parking and drainage systems; installation of electric vehicle charging stations; and relocation of a railroad signal hut. In addition, the firm will manage the renovation of the historic Derby Station and build a new passenger waiting room inside the Republican-American building at Waterbury Station.
“We are excited to support our client with this opportunity to enhance rail service and infrastructure for communities along the Waterbury Branch Line,” said Jake Argiro, PE, HNTB’s Connecticut Office Leader and Vice President. “By bringing in top-tier talents in CEI and integrated project controls capabilities, we’re ready to support the state’s most complex infrastructure projects with innovative, efficient, and cost-effective solutions.”
HNTB recently expanded its regional construction services team, adding professionals with backgrounds in construction and alternative delivery, as well as expertise in public outreach, risk management, cost forecasting, and schedule control on large-scale infrastructure initiatives across the region.
“The Waterbury Branch Line upgrades have been a long-standing priority for CTDOT,” said David Speerli, PE, HNTB Senior Resident Engineer and Project Manager. “As part of its commitment to modernizing the line, CTDOT has already acquired new coach cars, which will be in service upon project completion, further enhancing the quality, frequency, and reliability of service for passengers. These upgrades will align Waterbury Branch stations with the standards of other Metro-North lines, supporting long-term growth and mobility in the region.”
In Connecticut, HNTB has played key roles on the WALK Bridge Program, the Gold Star Memorial Bridge rehabilitation, and the TIME 4 project — a 5-mile stretch of the TIME program that includes design of the SAGA Bridge, a movable bridge, over the Saugatuck River in Westport, Connecticut.
Project completion across all stations is anticipated by fall 2027.