Crews on Thursday morning began installing a temporary barrier at the Fitchville Pond Dam to allow for the inspection of the damaged structure ahead of Saturday’s incoming storm. Contractors and heavy equipment were staged across from Stockhouse Road where they expected to spend the next two days constructing a cofferdam, a waterproof enclosure made of industrial-sized sandbags that will safely allow inspectors to view a section of dam that failed Wednesday. Charles Lee, assistant director of dam safety for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said the cofferdam’s placement will also relieve water pressure being exerted on the approximately 180-year-old dam. Bozrah First Selectman Glenn Pianka on Thursday said the river water had receded and there were no further reports of dam leakage. State officials said the dam owners have a history of not complying with state regulations to inspect the dam every two years and have not filed a recent required emergency action plan.

https://www.theday.com/local-news/20240111/barrier-expected-to-be-placed-at-damaged-bozrah-dam-by-friday/

Train riders getting off at Norwalk’s Merritt 7 station are now steps away from Main Avenue and the Merritt 7 office complex, thanks to the opening of a new pedestrian bridge. After months of delays due to supply chain issues, the pedestrian bridge opened on Wednesday, according to Connecticut’s Department of Transportation spokesperson, Josh Morgan. Along with the pedestrian bridge, a new 500-foot, heated platform at Merritt 7 opened in June 2023. The glass enclosed bridge’s opening was stalled because of missing glass panels that enclose the bridge and equipment for the elevators that connect people to the bridge and platform. Construction on the bridge wrapped up in December, but CDOT was waiting on official sign-offs before opening access to the public. Supply chain issues slowed progress throughout the entire project since the groundbreaking in 2020. Originally slated to be complete by fall 2022, both the material for the platform and bridge were tied up in supply issues. Underground utilities and drainage system issues also stalled the projects.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/cdot-completes-footbridge-merritt-7-advocates-18602740.php

A section of the Pameacha Pond dam broke open Tuesday night during a storm that battered the state with heavy rain and wind, officials said Wednesday. City Public Works Director Chris Holden said a 4- to 6-foot section of the wall broke along the approximately 80-foot dam. He said they were getting equipment together to patch it up Thursday, including concrete road barriers they would use to replace the missing section. Howard Weissberg, the city’s deputy director of public works, noted the city already had approved the replacement or restoration of the 150-year-old dam earlier this year. He said they are requesting $5 million for the construction component of that work, and design will cost more. “Repair would be the ideal,” Mayor Ben Florsheim said in April, “but it’s not likely that that’s going to be feasible. This is a dam that is far gone and needs to be fully replaced,” referring to advice from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, which issued the city a consent order to do the dam work in 2018.

https://www.middletownpress.com/news/article/middletown-pameacha-pond-dam-breaks-storm-18600826.php

Eversource Energy expects to write off as much as $1.6 billion against its 2023 fourth quarter earnings once it completes the sale of its ownership stake in three offshore wind projects, company officials have said. Eversouce is looking to sell its 50 percent ownership stake the company has in three wind projects it is doing in partnership with Danish wind power developer, Orsted. The three wind power projects Eversource is selling its ownership stake in are South Fork Wind, Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind. The charge-off is required to account for the difference in value between when the project was first announced and what it is worth now. A variety of factors, including increased project costs and any constriction delays, can cause a project’s value to change. Erin Baker, an industrial engineering and operations research professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and faculty director of the school’s Energy Transition Institute, said companies like Eversource are selling their ownership stakes in wind power projects “because of a mismatch between the current interest rates and inflation and the negotiated long term contracts, at least in some cases.”

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/business/article/ct-eversource-wind-power-costs-18600365.php?src=sthpbusiness

As the newly elected president of Hartford’s City Council, Surgeon was one of many politicians who spoke Wednesday at a press conference at the Parker Memorial Community Center to spread the word about the Hartford Flood Compensation Program that Comptroller Sean Scanlon’s office is overseeing. The program, which the state legislature launched with $5 million, is designed to provide direct flood relief to Hartford’s North End residents. It was a piece of the $170 million project that Gov. Ned Lamont, federal and state officials announced last summer to deal with systemic flooding issues in the city’s North End. Residents started applying for funding from the program as of Sept. 1, after Lamont appointed Gary Rhule to be the administrator of the fund. The Blue Hills Civic Association has spearheaded the effort in the North End to make people aware of the program and help them fill out applications. CEO Victoria Fennell said an outreach team has been going door-to-door throughout the area and has been doing everything from bringing applications to senior centers and churches to door-to-door service to their offices for elderly residents who don’t drive.

$1M distributed through Hartford flood fund; $4M remains

More than a decade before its licenses are set to expire for the two Millstone nuclear stations it owns locally, Dominion Energy has filed a notice with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it intends to seek approval to run the plants for many years to come. In a letter to the NRC dated Dec. 20, Dominion’s vice president of nuclear engineering and fleet support, James E. Holloway, stated that the company, along with partners Green Mountain Power Corp. and Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Co., plans to apply for a license extension of 20 years for both Millstone 2 and Millstone 3. The older Millstone 2 plant’s license currently runs through July 31, 2035, while the newer Millstone 3’s license will not expire until Nov. 25, 2045. The plants currently account for about a third of the town’s tax revenue, or about $36 million a year, according to Dominion calculations. Dominion said in its letter to the NRC that it will inform the agency of any changes in the expected license renewal filing. O’Connor said the public will have multiple opportunities to weigh in on the license renewal.

https://www.theday.com/local-news/20240110/dominion-seeks-to-extend-it-licenses-to-operate-millstone-power-plant-until-2055-65/

The U.S. Department of Labor announced Tuesday a final rule revising its interpretation of the Fair Labor Standards Act’s classification provision to determine whether a worker may be considered an independent contractor. The final rule largely tracks the agency’s October 2022 proposed rule. It retains the multifactor, “totality-of-the-circumstances” framework for analyzing independent contractors’ status included in that proposal. The rule will be published in the Federal Register on Wednesday, Jan. 10, and is slated to take effect March 11, officials said. In a press call Monday, Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su said the final rule would ensure a level playing field for workers, particularly vulnerable workers who are misclassified and lose out on minimum wage, overtime pay and other protections under the FLSA. Separately, DOL is rescinding the Trump administration’s 2021 independent contractor final rule, which had been enacted during that administration’s final weeks. The Biden administration attempted to withdraw the rule in May 2021, but a federal court put it back into effect, holding that the act of rescinding the 2021 rule violated the Administrative Procedure Act.

https://www.constructiondive.com/news/dol-independent-contractor-final-rule-march-11/704037/

Meriden Markham Municipal Airport is seeking to build five new aircraft hangars on the Wallingford side of the Meriden-based airport. Wallingford’s Planning and Zoning Commission is scheduled to review the airport’s special permit request Wednesday, pending administrative approval from the Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Commission. The airport, on Evansville Road, covers 109.5 acres of land in Wallingford, according to town records. The hangars will be paid for through a $671,000 Federal Aviation Administration grant and are aimed at meeting pilot demand, Castillo said. The new hangars are part of an airport revitalization effort in recent years that included a $1.4 million grant from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Airport improvement program to repave the southern section of its taxiway. Last fall, eVertiports met with airport and city officials to discuss providing potential charter services using electric, vertical takeoff aircraft. eVertiports hopes to install a compact landing pad that would open the facility up to chartering taxi flights to the surrounding region.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/recordjournal/article/meriden-markham-airport-expands-wallingford-18595627.php

A Connecticut businessman has been awarded a minor league soccer team, which he hopes will compete in a new waterfront stadium in Bridgeport, he announced Tuesday. The man behind the effort, multimillionaire tech entrepreneur André Swanston, says the new team is part of his continued push to bring an MLS and/or National Women’s Soccer League team to Bridgeport. Swanston recently gained approval from Bridgeport’s planning and zoning commission to build a stadium on a parcel of land along the Pequonnock River, currently home to the vacant Shoreline Star Greyhound Park. He says the proposed stadium would initially have between 7,500 and 10,000 seats, with the option of expanding in the future if the city lands an MLS or NWSL team. Swanston said he’d like to complete the stadium in time for the 2025 season, a goal he called “ambitious but possible.”

https://www.ctpost.com/sports/article/ct-bridgeport-mls-nwsl-soccer-stadium-18596281.php?src=rdctppromostrip

Eversource Energy is in advanced talks to unload its share in three offshore wind projects that it planned to build with Orsted A/S, and will take a fourth-quarter charge of as much as $1.6 billion. Eversource owns stakes in two joint ventures with Orsted that are developing the South Fork, Revolution and Sunrise sites east of Long Island, New York. The US firm expects an after-tax impairment charge of $800 million to $900 million on all of them. It will take an additional charge of as much as $700 million for Sunrise after local regulators rejected a request for higher rates for the project. The company reduced the carrying value of the projects after estimated construction costs rose, as did uncertainties tied to the rate request ruling. Orsted slipped as much as 1.9% in Copenhagen Tuesday. Since the Danish company had already marked down the value of these assets on its books last year, it won’t take a significant hit from the move by Eversource, Citigroup Inc. analyst Jenny Ping wrote in a note.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/eversource-moves-sell-wind-assets-002350764.html?guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuY3RjYXBpdG9scmVwb3J0LmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJcyRdVGIKTXgSph03B1GCI1zz4moHDkFx5I5CS_hnZKGEYfzY_ERIAtJQoO4bQs8bm9B_V-foVkdLDriGz_CHt9I9d45SwC86HBizFK7JEbIu5Y7Xhzjm5wIncrNqTrZmRKGpieLF4nkXrf0hzLcoQhfWrwlsys2P2Z8g-WJP8p&guccounter=2