Officials last week approved an approximately $17,500 contract with a Bridgeport-based company to create guards for a town facility after federal inspectors identified a safety issue. Last month, representatives from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration walked through Department of Public Works buildings, as well as Town Hall and the newly renovated New Canaan Police Department—the first time that OSHA came for such an inspection since 2017, according to DPW officials. While in the Waste Water Treatment Plant, an inspector found that eight pumps showing about two inches of exposed, slow-spinning drive shaft on each side of the motor represent “a safety hazard,” according to Bill Oestmann, DPW’s superintendent of buildings.
“And they say because it’s an exposed shaft it should be covered,” Oestmann told members of the Board of Selectmen at their April 7 meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. The pumps, which are bolted to the floor in a lightly trafficked area of the plant, have been in place for more than 25 years “and they’ve been running with no problem, but OSHA felt that they needed some safety guards on these pumps,” he said. The Board—First Selectman Dionna Carlson and Selectmen Steve Karl and Amy Murphy Carroll—voted 3-0 in favor of DPW’s request to enter into a $17,600 contract with Hard Corps Iron Works to create those guards, which Oestmann described as a “kind of safety cage” that still will allow for repairs.
Public Works Director Tiger Mann noted that “at the time of the installation it wasn’t determined we needed it because we asked the question at the time.”
The selectmen asked what kind of accident OSHA foresaw (someone’s clothing or very long hair perhaps getting caught), what is the height of the pumps (ground level), how often inspections happen (every five to seven years), where the funds are coming from (sewer fund contingency) and whether Board of Finance approval is needed (yes, received later on Tuesday).
