A West Haven company is making a plea to be considered for hazardous waste-cleanup work after it claims being wrongfully terminated a few years ago during a state investigation into contract steering that has not implicated the firm. AAIS Corp. charges that it is now barred from other state and local work and has become ancillary damage in a wide-ranging state and federal investigation into contracts. Leigh Appleby, communications director for the DAS, said Friday night that AAIS was terminated from the contract “for convenience” but is free to bid on state work and other contracts. The hospital project is one of several that DAS and federal authorities investigated for possible contract steering, including school construction projects supervised by Konstantinos Diamantis, a former member of the state House of Representatives who has since retired and whose employee grievance was dismissed.

https://www.ctinsider.com/politics/article/company-claims-wrongly-fired-ct-hazmat-contract-18655642.php

State officials significantly modified a $225 million United Illuminating transmission line project in Bridgeport and Fairfield on Thursday, upsetting local opponents and considerably delaying the company’s plan. While UI’s proposal called for the removal of aged transmission lines along the Northeast Corridor and to construct new monopoles primarily south of the Metro-North railroad line, the Connecticut Siting Council voted to require the company to instead build its new infrastructure north of the rail line. Gerber, the city of Bridgeport, and the Sasco Creek Neighbors Environmental Trust have asked the utility to bury the lines. UI officials say that the underground option is too costly and is not supported by the Connecticut Department of Transportation. Cost estimates for the underground option differed dramatically between the applicant and opponents. UI estimated it would cost about $1 billion to install the project underground, but the town estimated $200 million for an underground double-circuit configuration. SCNET estimated $182 million.

Siting Council Approves Transmission Lines to Run North of the Metro-North Line

The Federal Aviation Administration has awarded Tweed New Haven Regional Airport a $2.5 million grant toward the cost of building a new 75,000-square-foot terminal on the East Haven side of the airport, airport officials announced Thursday. The project, currently estimated at $165 million, also includes lengthening the airport’s runway, adding additional parking and building a new entrance off Proto Drive in East Haven. East Haven Mayor Joe Carfora, in his letter announcing East Haven’s appeal of the FAA’s FONSI, strongly suggested that more discussion of the issues associated with expansion and an environmental impact statement are needed. The expansion plan and the FAA’s investment makes “an important step forward” for Tweed which currently has an outdated, undersized terminal that is subject to flooding, the release states.

https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/faa-grant-tweed-new-haven-airport-expansion-18669698.php

The town and the nonprofit Save the Sound have appealed the approval of the Tweed New Haven Airport expansion in federal court on Wednesday, maintaining that an environmental study failed to address “crucial” looming impacts. After reviewing an environmental assessment of the $165 million plan, which includes the extension of a runway and new terminal and parking in East Haven, the FAA issued a “Finding of No Significant Impact” in December, moving the project forward to the permitting phase without additional environmental studies. The federal court can now decide to either dismiss the petitions, affirm the FAA decision or reverse it. In a Wednesday statement to CT Examiner, Jorge Roberts, chief executive officer of Avports — an airport management company which signed a 43-year lease with Tweed — stood by the original study and said the project would be moving forward throughout the appeal process.

East Haven Files Federal Court Appeal Against Tweed Airport Expansion 

A multimillion-dollar project to reduce flooding along the Rooster River is in the middle of a town government tussle over how to allocate federal COVID-19 relief funds before they expire. Town officials said Fairfield has about four more months to commit more than $2.8 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding for the Rooster River flood mitigation work, but they might need to move the money elsewhere if the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers doesn’t grant the necessary permits for the project within that time frame. ARPA fund recipients are required to allocate the money by the end of 2024 and spend them by the end of 2026, but Gerber said the town would need to go out to bid, requesting project services, by June or July to have enough time to commit the final costs before the deadline.

https://www.ctpost.com/fairfield/article/rooster-river-flooding-mitigation-allocation-18650902.php

Eversource Energy surged the most in almost four years after announcing plans to exit the offshore-wind and water businesses, moves aimed at refocusing on its core business of delivering electricity and natural gas to customers in the US Northeast. The Springfield, Massachusetts-based company announced Tuesday a deal to sell its 50% stakes in two US offshore-wind projects to Global Infrastructure Partners LP. That follows a January agreement to sell its 50% stake in a third project to its joint venture partner Orsted A/S. Eversource also said it would start the process of seeking a buyer for its Aquarion water-distribution business. Eversource will realize $1.1 billion in cash proceeds for selling the stakes in the South Fork and Revolution projects to GIP, according to a statement Tuesday. The sale is expected to close in mid-2024. That will help offset a $1.95 billion charge the company took in 2023 as the US offshore wind struggled to contend with rising costs that have prompted developers to delay or cancel projects.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/eversource-1-1-billion-deal-220021666.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuY3RjYXBpdG9scmVwb3J0LmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJcyRdVGIKTXgSph03B1GCI1zz4moHDkFx5I5CS_hnZKGEYfzY_ERIAtJQoO4bQs8bm9B_V-foVkdLDriGz_CHt9I9d45SwC86HBizFK7JEbIu5Y7Xhzjm5wIncrNqTrZmRKGpieLF4nkXrf0hzLcoQhfWrwlsys2P2Z8g-WJP8p

Chief Financial Officer John Moreira blamed the Public Utilities Regulatory (PURA) for the company’s cash flow issues, saying the regulatory agency’s new methodology has prevented it from recovering $800 million related to supply costs and arrearages. PURA no longer allows utilities to forecast costs for supply in rate adjustments. However, Eversource expects to recover that $800 million within the next year, or longer, the company said. In the meantime, Nolan said Eversource is working to evaluate market interest in the sale of Aquarion. He declined to put a valuation on the company and also declined to provide a timetable. Bridgeport-based Aquarion serves about 241,000 customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire — 92% of whom are based in Connecticut. It had net income of $33 million in 2023 and book equity of $1.3 million.

‘Cash coming in the door’: Eversource says potential sale of Aquarion would help alleviate cash flow issues

Residents are opposing a solar project as trees are being removed and open fields are transformed into an access road and clearings for more than 51,000 panels. The project, which is owned by Silicon Ranch and sits on 212 acres in Litchfield and Torrington, was approved in September 2021 by the Connecticut Siting Council. Tree-clearing and other activities began on the site in early November 2023, and blasting began at the end of January. Silicon Ranch made its proposal to the town of Litchfield in 2020 to install more than 50,000 solar panels, called photovoltaic modules. The power generated from the site will be sold to Eversource and United Illuminating, according to documentation from the Connecticut Siting Council, provided by the Torrington land use office.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/controversial-solar-farm-starts-construction-18644593.php

Post Road Residential is angry that, by accepting a brownfield remediation grant from DECD, they are required to ensure the construction workers hired to perform work on their development project would earn not less than our state’s prevailing wage. They’re apparently also upset by having to ensure a certain number of housing units are set aside as affordable. In 2017, the bipartisan budget expanded prevailing wage protections for workers employed on projects funded with economic development monies. It passed with strong support from both sides of the aisle in both chambers. This was a commonsense initiative — if a private company is seeking public assistance dollars for development, then they’re going to in turn pay our state’s workforce a livable wage. Rather than echoing this developer’s gripes, the Town of Fairfield, and frankly DECD too, should instead stick to its principles. Fine, don’t take our money. There are plenty of other developers who will.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/opinion/article/opinion-don-t-let-developers-widen-ct-wealth-gap-18664685.php

Wage theft is a pervasive problem facing workers throughout the US. According to a 2014 report by the Economic Policy Institute, workers lose over $50bn a year to wage theft from employers. Wage theft includes tactics from stiffing workers on pay, failing to properly pay workers for overtime, minimum wage violations, misclassification of employees as independent contractors, and not providing workers with mandated break times. IUPAT is currently assisting workers in holding another local construction company accountable for wage theft and retaliating against workers, Spectrum Construction. IUPAT has launched several campaigns aimed at organizing workers in the construction industry to not only unionize, but to push back against a trend of wage theft and misclassification that union organizers argue has been worsening in the construction industry, especially toward immigrant workers.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/it-has-really-gotten-out-of-hand-wage-theft-rampant-in-us-construction/ar-BB1igi32?ocid=socialshare&pc=HCTS&cvid=acc956e394b2473189022f7f628df459&ei=128