Eversource Energy officials said during an earnings call Thursday morning that the utility company plans to cut its capital expenditures in Connecticut by nearly $100 million in 2024, and by $500 million over the next five years, as a result of the state’s “uncertain” regulatory environment. John Moreira, Eversource’s executive vice president, CFO and treasurer, said the reductions will continue “until we see Connecticut’s regulatory decisions come back into alignment with law and state policy.” Eversource President and CEO Joe Nolan added that he has “serious concerns” about the company’s ability to implement clean energy technologies, and to reduce carbon emissions, in light of the ongoing dispute over cost recovery.

Eversource plans to cut investment in CT by $500M over 5 years due to regulatory ‘uncertainty’

A tractor-trailer fire has closed Interstate 95 and caused massive delays on the Merritt Parkway, Post Road and other local roads on Thursday. All I-95 lanes in the area remain closed Thursday afternoon due to the crash that occurred between exits 16 and 14 around 5:30 a.m., according to Connecticut’s Department of Transportation’s website. Josh Morgan, a DOT spokesperson, said southbound traffic was being diverted off the highway at Exit 16. Northbound traffic was diverting off at Exit 13. In a message to the community, officials said Norwalk Public Schools will be closed on Friday because of ongoing traffic concerns and delays. They said the district will allow athletic games, drama performances and proms to take place, but all practices are canceled through the weekend.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/norwalk-i-95-closed-tractor-trailer-fire-19434923.php

The City Council voted 8-4 to reject a proposal Monday to add $25 million to the city’s capital improvement plan to fund a new senior center and health department. The ultimate rejection of the proposed senior center and health department funding followed an hour-long debate over the city’s debt load and whether the $25 million would increase or decrease the city’s ability to secure grants to cover the price tag of the finished project. The proposal had the strong backing of unaffiliated Mayor Kevin Scarpati, who drew a comparison to the recently completed library renovation project which began with $10 million in bonding and ended with a $13 million project. The senior center project is estimated to cost $44 million to $48 million but councilors want to see lower-cost options.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/recordjournal/article/meriden-senior-center-capital-improvement-19433290.php

Plans for Eversource to place transmission lines under Norwalk Harbor as part of the $1 billion project to replace the Walk train bridge are prompting concerns over the future of the city’s public docks. Eversource plans to place two existing overhead transmission lines underground by microtunneling from the Norwalk Police Station, under the Norwalk River, to East Norwalk on Fort Point Street, according to the project’s webpage. However, the tunnel’s path crosses in front of Norwalk’s boat ramp off Veterans Memorial Park. The tunnel’s path through the river concerns the Norwalk Harbor Management Commission, which has petitioned the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to further investigate the project’s impacts on the harbor and the future of the public dock. Microtunneling is a construction method in which a pit is dug to the desired depth, then sections of the tunnel are incrementally pushed into the earth horizontally while the machine at the tip of the tube breaks up and evacuates the soil.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/eversource-norwalk-harbor-walk-bridge-dock-19433207.php

The Rolldock Storm, a heavy-load carrier registered in the Netherlands, carried the first offshore wind components for the Revolution Wind project to State Pier on Wednesday. The turbine sections were the first pieces of a 65-turbine project set to be staged and assembled in New London for an Ørsted and Eversource wind farm that will be built off the coast of Rhode Island. The 704-megawatt project will be the first to deliver power to Connecticut. The state is expected to receive 300-megawatts of electricity from the project. State Pier was previously used to assemble and ship components for South Fork Wind, a 12-turbine project that became the first utility-scale offshore wind project in the country and is now supplying renewable power to the Long Island grid.

https://www.theday.com/local-news/20240501/first-revolution-wind-components-arrive-at-new-londons-state-pier/

Forty-seven truckloads of concrete were delivered to Pomperaug High School on Tuesday as part of the ongoing reconstruction of the school’s five tennis courts, which have been closed and unplayable for nearly a decade. The $1.4 million project was approved by voters in Middlebury and Southbury last year as part of an $11 million bond package for various districtwide upgrades. R.S. Site and Sports of Oxford is the contractor for the tennis court project. School officials said the new courts have been built using state-of-the art underground cabling to provide just the right amount of tension to ensure no cracking occurs. The new courts will be made of concrete rather than asphalt. Tuesday’s pouring of 470 square yards of concrete was provided by Concrete LLC of Oxford.

https://www.rep-am.com/localnews/2024/04/30/concrete-arrives-for-pomperaug-highs-tennis-courts/

The construction work to replace the Merryall Road bridge began Monday with the removal of the existing 20-foot-long bridge that had been classified as in “poor condition.” The bridge, which spans the West Aspetuck River near West Meetinghouse Road, was identified as one of the five worst bridges in Litchfield County. The new bridge has been approved by the state Department of Transportation, the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Healy said. The cost of construction is $4.3 million, with the cost split 50-50 by the state and the town. Watertown-based Dayton Construction Co. was awarded the contract and is expected to finish work by Nov. 30, according to Healy. WMC said the bridge replacement project would take seven months, starting April 1, 2023, and running through Nov. 30, 2023.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/newmilford/article/new-milford-merryall-road-bridge-replacement-19431326.php

The planned replacement of the deck on the northbound Gold Star Memorial Bridge will require shifting two northbound lanes of traffic to the southbound span in two years. At a public forum on Tuesday, the state Department of Transportation unveiled the planned configuration and details of the next phase of construction on the northbound span that will fix the bridge and make it so oversized trucks can cross. Brais said Tuesday that since the state DOT is planning another project to strengthen the steel on the southbound side from the summer of 2025 to the summer 2026, the crossover of the lanes won’t start until 2026. Currently, for the first phase of the project, crews are strengthening the steel on the truss spans, which are the main spans over the Thames River, Brais said. The first phase began in 2022 and is anticipated to be completed in June 2025.

https://www.theday.com/local-news/20240430/next-phase-of-gold-star-bridge-construction-to-involve-major-lane-changes/

New Haven is poised to have a record number of new apartments come online in 2024 from several high-profile projects. More than 1,000 new units will be available for rent in 2024, marking one of the city’s largest single-year residential expansions in the past two-plus decades, according to economic development officials. Since 2014, the city of New Haven has added at least 3,500 new affordable and market rate apartments. There’s another 3,500 units in the works for the next few years, not including the 1,000 apartments expected to debut in 2024. Developers working in the city say new builds are seeing lease-up times cut in half, down to around three or six months now as opposed to roughly nine months to a year about a decade ago, Fontana said. New Haven is seeing strong demand for all kinds of units, including smaller studios and one-bedroom apartments, as well as two- to three-bedroom units for families, Fontana said.

New Haven remains bullish on apartments as record year — with 1,000+ units coming online — projected

A draft of a new study by the Capitol Region Council of Governments, a regional planning agency, is breaking new ground in the decades-old debate over the long-term future of the state-owned Griffin Line. The study concludes that a trail system could safely and logistically run along one side of the active, single-track rail line, from Hartford’s Asylum Hill neighborhood to the University of Hartford and the Bloomfield town line. The estimated construction cost could be between $30 million and $39 million. CRCOG said the project would likely have to be heavily financed by federal transportation grants. The Griffin Line is seen as a key component to the $65 million Hartline pedestrian and bicycling path that would run from Hartford’s Riverside Park on the Connecticut River to Bloomfield. And it also is seen as a viable option for filling a crucial gap in Hartford in the East Coast Greenway, which runs from Florida to Maine.

There’s new hope for a significant CT greenway. It comes after decades of complex debate.