New Haven Independent

The news came at a public hearing in City Hall Thursday evening on the state Department of Transportation’s plans to expand I-95 by Long Wharf. The purpose of the meeting was to air a new environmental report on the impact of various proposals on how to widen I-95 and change the flow of traffic in and around Long Wharf and Sargent Drive.

At the meeting, Mayor John DeStefano announced that the city is now advocating a less-impactful “no-build” plan instead of any of the six alternatives offered by the state. With gas at four dollars a gallon and a new commuter rail line, the city needs to rethink its highway-centered focus, he said. “The world has changed a lot, and it’s time for our transportation decisions to change as well.” The city had previously advocated building a “ring road” around the Long Wharf industrial area. (Click here for a story on that, and here for Mary O’Leary’s Register story on why the city changed its mind.)

Kris Sainsbury (pictured above) showed up to the meeting with over a dozen neighbors from the City Point area. She agreed with the mayor’s new stance. And she came ready to lobby for another cause.

In a united front alongside elected officials, they made the case for “immediate” aid to an area that has been “brutally” altered during the highway project.

They spoke of how their neighborhood greenspace, Bayview Park, was “destroyed” when the state chopped down a row of mature trees that had lined the border of the park. The trees had offered shade and a buffer from highway noise, pollution, and errant trucks. (Click here for a background story.)

“We had our park — now we don’t have much at all,” Sainsbury told a handful of state officials seated at the front of the Aldermanic Chambers. “Children don’t play here any more,” she added.

To protect park-goers, neighbors and the nearby MicroSociety Magnet Elementary School from the new rush of highway noise, Sainsbury and others called for “immediate” implementation of sound barriers. Her request was backed up by two elected officials from the area.

“The destruction that you have thrust upon Bayview Park” is “devastating,” said Alderwoman Dolores Colon. She called for sound barriers to be implemented “if not immediately, then very fast.”

“Residents cannot wait any longer for a barrier,” urged State Rep. Juan Candelaria.

In response, the state brought some good tidings, but said their results may take a while to materialize.

Buffering $$ Found

One of the findings of the environmental impact study, which should come as no surprise to Hill neighbors shouting to be heard along the highway’s banks, was that noise levels are indeed high enough in the Howard Avenue area to require warrant abatement.

The study qualifies the project for federal funding for noise abatement, said Thomas Harley, manager of consultant design at the DOT and a point-person for the Long Wharf project. Barriers are already going up to the west of Howard Avenue; the study will require that barriers also be hoisted to the east, stretching along both sides of Bayview Park, Harley said.

The barriers would be concrete walls 15 to 20 feet high, matching the ones that just went up by I-95 in East Haven, Harley said.

Before the study was done, Harley said he wasn’t able to find the funding to pay for such barriers along the whole of City Point, even though neighbors were asking for them. But because of the study’s findings, noise barriers will now be mandatory, he said.

“It’s good news for everybody,” said Harley.

A Two-Year Wait?

What may not be as good news is how soon the park-lovers will find relief.

Up on the podium, Harley told the room of over 100 people that he had no timeline. Pressed on the question after the two-hour hearing closed, he revealed the limitations to getting the buffers in place.

Harley said since the barriers weren’t part of the DOT’s original plan, and the state is required to take everything out to bid, he’d probably have to write a whole new contract for the sound barriers and bid them out as a separate project — unless he could get the federal government to agree to slip them into the existing project as a change-order.

Writing up the contract and putting it out to bid would take “over a year,” Harley said. (“It’s government,” he explained.)

Harley said a second problem standing in the way of the barriers is that two contractors are already at work in that area — one’s at work on the Howard Avenue Bridge. Another is soon to start work on the Long Wharf/I-95 plan. While the DOT won’t make a final decision until May on its precise plans for Long Wharf, it is going to get starting very soon on the so-called “no-build” plan that serves as a baseline to the six alternatives that the DOT is considering for the future of Long Wharf.

The sound barriers likely wouldn’t go up until those two contractors finish up work, Harley said — and “it’ll be a couple years before those contractors are done.”