Town planners approved a 283,000-square-foot warehouse off Spring Street, although it’s not known what company will coming to Southington. Johnson Development Associates received special permit approval last week for the project, which will take place at 99 Smoron Drive, a small street in an industrial area off Spring Street. The $45 million project will be built to attract a tenant next year. Opposition to the plan from neighbors focused mostly on traffic, although some were concerned about the noise from the warehouse as well. Commission members approved the project with only one member, Democrat Christina Volpe, voting in opposition.

https://www.myrecordjournal.com/News/Southington/Southington-News/Southington-approves-large-warehouse-on-Spring-Street.html

The town has applied to intervene in a United Illuminating petition to replace railroad power lines with monopoles that could be 95 to 145 feet tall and remove private acreage from local property owners. UI plans to rebuild 8.1 miles of transmission lines from the Eversource-UI demarcation point in Fairfield to the Congress Street substation in Bridgeport, the utility company announced last year. It’s the fifth phase of a larger project to rebuild 25 miles of transmission line from West Haven to Fairfield and aims to strengthen the reliability of the electrical grid and address the age and deterioration of the current transmission lines. UI submitted its application in March for the project to the Siting Council, which will grant final approval for the plans. Fairfield’s application to intervene states the project could impact “scenic vistas” and “historic districts,” remove trees, use herbicides, seize land, damage wetlands and harm property values.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/fairfield/article/united-illuminating-railroad-power-lines-fairfield-18329248.php

Federal regulators are proposing a series of rules changes aimed at toughening safety requirements for millions of miles of gas distribution pipelines nationwide following a string of gas explosions in Massachusetts in 2018. These proposed changes are designed to improve safety and ease risk through the improvement of emergency response plans, integrity management plans, operation manuals and other steps, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. The proposal calls for improved construction procedures to minimize the risk of overpressurized pipelines and updated management programs to prepare for over-pressurization incidents. The changes require new regulator stations to be designed with secondary pressure relief valves and remote gas monitoring to prepare gas distribution systems to avoid overpressurization and to limit damage during those incidents. Finally, the plan calls for strengthening response plans for gas pipeline emergencies, including requirements for operators to contact local emergency responders and keep customers and the affected public informed of what to do in the event of an emergency.

https://www.theday.com/state/20230825/new-gas-pipeline-rules-floated-following-2018-blasts-in-massachusetts/

Within the last two weeks, a group of residents met twice to share concerns over a proposed data center to be constructed on the Millstone Power Station property. Additionally, a petition from Millstone owner Dominion to carve out space for the data center, is currently before the Connecticut Siting Council. Worried meeting attendees successfully petitioned the council to extend the deadline for public comment in order to allow more time for input. That petition would give NE Edge, LLC, which is trying to develop its first data center, the opportunity to install the facility on the Millstone property. In February, the town began discussing an agreement with NE Edge. Per the agreement, NE Edge would pay the town $231 million over a 30-year period. The Board of Selectmen has approved the agreement, but is unknown if First Selectman Rob Brule has signed it. Brule did not respond to multiple requests to discuss the status of the project over the past 10 days. NE Edge would not comment on the project this week. Construction would include a pair of two-story data buildings, that would provide approximately 1.5 million square feet of storage for cloud and data servers. The centers would be supplied with energy directly from Millstone.

https://www.theday.com/local-news/20230824/waterford-residents-criticize-lack-of-information-about-data-center/

Besides the promise of new recreational offerings, the community center construction project will offer a rare chance to connect with young residents even before the facility’s doors open, city officials said. With up to two years of work ahead on the city’s largest project, there’s plenty of time to use the Fort Trumbull-area building site as a sort of real-time construction classroom, said Felix Reyes, director of New London’s Office of Planning and Development. On Monday, Reyes presented the first of what is expected to be monthly summaries of the project’s progress to the City Council. After months of delays due to the state environmental permitting process, crews last month broke ground on the $40 million project that aims to transform a patch of brownfield into a 58,000-square-foot, recreational facility complete with competitive pool and basketball court areas, batting cages, recreation department offices and programming space.

https://www.theday.com/local-news/20230824/new-london-community-center-site-an-opportunity-for-budding-builders/

United Illuminating will have to pay up for breaking a promise to remediate a Fair Haven power plant after state utility regulators formally accused the company of mismanaging English Station — and of failing to prioritize New Haven residents over profit. In a nearly 300-page decision filed on Friday rejecting a proposed rate hike by the regional company, the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) further cracked down on United Illuminating for stalling on its commitment to clean up the power plant at 511 Grand Ave. that they formerly owned and operated for decades. In that partial consent order, the company agreed to put $30 million towards investigating and completing a remediation of the site known as English Station — which is reportedly polluted with carcinogens, polychlorinated biphenyls, heavy metals and other contaminants produced over the years UI burned coal and oil on scene — over three years. PURA wrote that the penalty, which UI estimated would amount to a fine of around $1.63 million per year, is warranted to ​“incentivize the company to fulfill its obligation to remediate the site.”

https://www.newhavenindependent.org/article/ui_fined_for_english_station_mess

Designs for the first two new elementary schools approved by voters last fall are starting to take shape, with approval this week of the educational components for the new John B. Stanton and Greeneville elementary schools. No architectural renderings have been created yet, project officials told the Board of Education at a special meeting Wednesday. The Board of Education on Wednesday approved preliminary educational specifications for the first two schools to be built, the new Stanton and Greeneville elementary schools. Smolley and Mike Faenza, hired by the school building committee as the owner’s representative/project manager, said all the city school projects will be designed with energy efficiencies at least 20% to 40% higher than minimum building code standards, as required for state grant reimbursements.

https://www.theday.com/local-news/20230825/designs-take-shape-for-two-new-norwich-elementary-schools/

Construction and extraction jobs led all others in the first year of the pandemic with 162.6 drug overdose deaths per 100,000 workers, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The overall drug overdose rate increased most years from 1999 to 2020, and in 2021 the U.S. drug overdose rate was 50% higher than in 2019, the report found. Work-related characteristics, such as the prevalence of workplace injuries, precarious employment, health insurance status, stress, lack of access to paid sick leave and unique stressors during the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the “prevalence and management of substance use disorders,” the CDC said. In the broader industry group, construction led all categories with a rate of 130.9 deaths, followed by accommodation and food services with 99.6.

https://www.constructiondive.com/news/construction-highest-overdose-death-rate-cdc/691723/

Originally estimated as a six- to eight-week project, the blasting effort represents one of the first critical phases of the four-year, $148 million reconstruction of the highway. Resident Engineer Robert Obey of Glastonbury-based GM2 said crews could be looking at an extra month of blasting because an especially challenging section of ledge has resulted in longer closures and fewer detonations than project officials anticipated. Each blasting period requires the complete closure of the highway between exits 74 and 75. The goal is to get it open again within 20 minutes, though project data shows there were more closures lasting over 20 minutes than under. State Department of Transportation project engineer Andrew Millovitsch said last Thursday’s delays were exacerbated when the reopened highway had to be closed again after inspection of the blast site revealed rock remnants on top that could potentially cause problems if dislodged.

https://www.theday.com/local-news/20230824/fire-in-the-hole/

The town is weighing the possibility of building a new home for the school district’s Central Office at the former Century Brass property at 12 Scovill St. The school district’s Central Office had been operating out of the town’s historic building at 50 East St. since 1982, according to Faulenbach. But last November, the Central Office began moving to Sarah Noble Intermediate School due to a failing boiler in the East Street Building. The school board has been looking into creating a permanent Central Office at Sarah Noble. The East Street building was turned over to the town on June 30. The site work for building an administration building would probably take 18 months, Public Works Director Jack Healy said.

https://www.newstimes.com/newmilford/article/new-milford-looks-century-brass-site-new-schools-18311611.php?src=nthpdesecp