Selectmen Approve $50,000 To Plan for ‘Salt Shed’ at Transfer Station

Town officials on Tuesday approved a $50,000 contract with a Shelton-based engineering firm to prepare for creation of a salt shed at the Transfer Station.

The new structure would hold about 3,000 tons of salt, according to Joe Zagarenski, senior engineer in the Department of Public Works.

“We have had problems where procuring salt, even for this year there are issues of delivery of salt, not big ones, but we’d like to be able to store enough salt that we never have to worry about not being able to get it when there’s a year like this year,” Zagarenski told members of the Board of Selectmen at their regular meeting, held in Town Hall. 

First Selectman Kevin Moynihan and Selectmen Kathleen Corbet and Nick Williams voted 3-0 in favor of the contract with Tighe and Bond.

Public Works has been pushing for a new salt shed for more than one year. (Some in town have advocated for creation of a “swap shop” at the incinerator building.)

Currently, the Highway Department stores salt in an old incinerator building that is “not the ideal size for the storage and it’s tough to navigate with the salt trucks and the plow trucks.”

“It is desired to construct a salt shed on top of the capped landfill,” Zagarenski said. “We would like to hire Tighe and Bond to determine if it’s technically feasible, identify the permit requirements, and provide an opinion of cost for the project. The study will also inform  the town on the general requirements for any structure we desire to place on the capped landfill. So hopefully it will give us enough detail so that we can, whenever there’s a desire to put anything on the capped landfill, we’ll have the data to know what we need to do.”

The selectmen asked whether funds had been budgeted to plan for the salt shed (yes), whether the study is part of a proposed “master plan” for the Transfer Station (the master plan encompasses the salt shed area), what the actual construction of the salt shed will cost ($1.3 million has been pencilled in), when the construction will happen (fiscal year 2024), how long the study is expected to take (about three to four months) and whether the salt shed would be located “down the hill” from the incinerator building (that’s the thought).

Moynihan said, “Seems like a lot of money for a study.”