Town officials say the utility company that began installing a natural gas main in New Canaan two years ago hasn’t been forthcoming about its plans for this year since the onset of the COVID-19 public health emergency.
Eversource has interpreted the governor’s declaration about “essential businesses” being able to continue their work to mean that it doesn’t cover new services or new installations of natural gas, according to New Canaan Public Works Director Tiger Mann.
Yet the town is hoping the company “will relent” on its read of the new requirement “because if nothing comes forward in this construction season, then we will be looking at a delay of the project for a year,” Mann told members of the Selectmen’s Advisory Committee on Buildings & Infrastructure during a meeting held Monday via videoconference.
“In a nutshell, we have asked them for their plans for 2020 several times. They have come back with limited information. We are going to sit back down with them and ask for some more detailed information to see if we can guide them into certain areas of town—they seem to be expanding and want gas service—and then see what their plans might be for 2021 and 2022, given the fact that they haven’t been forthcoming so far. So we are hoping that they might help us plan for the future.”
Mann had said during a Board of Selectmen meeting last week that Eversource hit pause running service lines from the gas main or expanding that main further into New Canaan, as originally planned.
First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said during Monday’s meeting that part of Eversource’s thinking “may be that with the new installations they don’t want to go into people’s homes currently.”
“But it’s no reason why the business projects can’t go forward,” he said. “There’s a lot of main to be put in downtown, without going into people’s homes.”
Moynihan added that he has asked for assistance from New Canaan resident and state Rep. Tom O’Dea (R-125th) to help solve “the Eversource conundrum.”
Coming into New Canaan from Stamford along Route 106 and then turning up Farm Road to South Avenue, the natural gas main last year was run into parts of downtown New Canaan, officials say. Eversource got as far as Main Street at East Avenue, South Avenue near Elm Street and Park Street to the Park Street municipal parking lot. Town officials had been hoping Eversource this year would expand further down Locust Avenue as well as Pine Street and upper Elm Street at Grove. In addition, town officials hoped that service lines would be run to downtown buildings along Elm Street (from behind them, so that the street itself would not be dug up).