‘This Is Outrageous’: Selectmen Blast State’s Contractor as Water Main Project Faces More Delays; Repaving of South Avenue Up in the Air

Town officials on Tuesday loudly criticized a years-long Aquarion water company project overseen by the state that’s already caused major inconvenience to New Canaan residents, saying that now South Avenue may not be repaved until next year.

Made public in 2019 and launched in 2022 with a planned three-year schedule, Aquarion’s water main installation started on the eastern edge of New Canaan—along Route 106 at the Wilton line—and then wound its way past Lakeview Cemetery and up Harrison Avenue to South Avenue, where it’s running to Farm Road.

Public Works officials said this summer that the project was entering its final phase, yet the repaving of South Avenue, which doubles as state Route 124, had to be pushed into the school year due to a six-week delay in Wilton from the contractor, Bridgeport-based Waters Construction Co. The town then worked out a compromise where Waters was to work for four straight Saturdays, doing trench restoration work and then milling and paving South Avenue from Harrison to Farm Road.

Yet the contractor ignored the set schedule of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., starting instead at 6:50 a.m. on a recent Saturday and making the state “furious” enough to halt that road work altogether, according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann.

“He [Waters Construction] was supposed to work from 8 to 5, he chose not to work from 8 to 5,” Mann told the selectmen at their regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference.

Mann continued: “He started mobilization at 6:50. I know that because I got an email and a text message at 6:50, and then proceeded to work all the way through, even though we were pinging him saying, ‘Get off the road, get off the road, get off the road.’ And then finally I demanded he gets off the road at 7:50, and he finally got off the road at 8:25, 8:30. So subsequent to that, we met with the DOT. I called the DOT to let them know what’s going on, and then Monday morning we had a conference call, and they suspended all Saturday work for that contractor at that location. So they said, ‘No more Saturday work. We’re done with that.’ We will have a subsequent meeting to determine how to go forward with the permanent trench restoration and the permanent repaving of South Avenue sometime this week, to determine what the path forward is. But they said they were all done with it, and that’s where it stands.”

First Selectman Dionna Carlson and Selectman Steve Karl voiced displeasure about the project and current state of South Avenue as well as Route 106, which also had to be dug up for the new pipe.

“A paving crew cannot come and start working at 6:50 in the morning,” Karl said. “This entire project, from the minute it started, Aquarion and what they’ve done to our roads in this town, the inconvenience to all of our residents and everything that’s happened—if you ran your business this way, you would be out of business. It has been the most horrendous few years that we’ve seen, ever. This is outrageous, how bad this has been run. And it’s the talk of the town, in terms of the main artery of this town is horrible. If it snowed, you couldn’t plow that road. It would destroy plow trucks. It is so bad. And 106 is just as bad, and they’ve had detours up and inconvenienced residents. It’s crazy. And this isn’t a [single] year, it’s years with zero benefit to our residents. It is outrageous the way this has been handled.”

Karl referred to the fact that the newly installed water main, though it moves through New Canaan, does not serve local residents. Rather, the project is designed to take water from the Bridgeport system all the way to Stamford and Greenwich.

The comments came during Mann’s regular update on public works projects.

Mann said, “At this point in time, we have to have a meeting with them, with the DOT, with Aquarion water and the contractor to see exactly what their timeframe might be to come to New Canaan to finish South Avenue’s work and to finish the 106 corridor.”

He said there’s a chance the state will have a contractor come to New Canaan and temporarily repave South Avenue from Brooks to Farm Road this fall, though that’s just a proposal at this point and hasn’t been approved by the state Department of Transportation.

“What they’re thinking now—and I don’t want to say it’s definitive, because we don’t have definite plans yet—was to have them come in and mill and pave the road two inches down, two-inch mill, two-inch pave, and put it to bed for the winter, and then come back next summer and make them do their trench restoration,” Mann said. “Because the pavement depth for the DOT is not sufficient once they put in a temporary trench repair, temporary pavement, and then they come back in and go full depth. So it’s not adequate for their needs, but the thought is that they’ll come back next summer and do that.”

Carlson asked when that meeting with the DOT would happen and Mann responded that it hasn’t been scheduled yet. The idea of paving “is not a done deal,” he said, is “a discussion between the DOT and myself.”

“The DOT’s thought, as well, was to put it to bed: If the trenches settle, let the trenches settle but get a ridable surface on it,” Mann said.

Carlson noted that Aquarion is being sold and said that, in her opinion, “this is the product of this sale of the company.”

“I can’t imagine this isn’t the result of the sale of the company and them trying to get—as a condition of the [sale]—there’s a push to finish the sale, certain assets had to be in place, and that’s my guess,” she said. “I don’t know for sure, but I can’t imagine that they would have done this way. We have a long history of Aquarion. It’s only now that it’s being sold that this nightmare is starting to take place.”

Mann noted that the town’s dealing with Aquarion in the past had been positive.

Carlson said, “It’s a mess. The whole thing has been a mess from the beginning.”

Mann said, “Unfortunately you’re right. It’s been difficult. I’ll use those words.”

Karl said that South Avenue historically has “one of the best road beds that you could ask for.”

“It was a beautiful, solid road bed from the whole way, and then we [the state] went and dug it up, over and over again, and basically destroyed the road bed,” he said.

The DOT is “furious” about the situation, Mann said.

“That’s why they pulled the permit immediately and said, ‘We’re done,’ and then said, ‘We’re going to go,’ ” Mann said. “And they’re basically punishing Aquarion and the contractor for it. We’re in the midst of that, but we’re hoping that the thought being that if they come in and mill and pave and give us a rideable surface. My quote to them is, ‘It’s your road, my people,’ right? So it’s my residents, our residents driving on that road every single day. It might be your road, but it’s our residents on it. So we’re together on that, and we have to make sure that it’s a nice rideable surface, because the complaints don’t go to the DOT. The complaints come to me, and then I’ve got to forward them to the DOT.”

Selectman Amy Murphy Carroll asked how quickly South Avenue could be milled and paved to get it usable, if that plan goes into effect.

Mann said it would be done between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. weekdays with “several days’ worth of work.”

“It’s not a one-day mill and fill. It would be several days’ worth of work to get that done,” he said. “But again, it’s a shortened timeframe, and it’s the worst timeframe, to be honest with you. Nine to 2 is the worst time for a truck to be on the road to try to go get material and come back, to try to get to the plant and get back, it’s the worst. That’s why you start at 7 a.m., because the trucks are already at the plant at 5:30 waiting to get loaded to come here for 7 o’clock. So we would lose all that opportunity.”

Meanwhile, Aquarion still has to finish its work in Wilton and come through what Mann called the “problematic” area near Silvermine and Valley Roads near the bridge to Wilton.

“And then work all of Silvermine down to Canoe Hill,” Mann said. “So they’ve got a substantial amount of work in front of them for a very short runway. But we’ll know a little bit more by the end of this week. We’ll hopefully have a path forward as to what’s going to happen on South Avenue and what’s going happen on 106, as well.”

Karl said the state needs to be more hands-on with Aquarion, which has “clearly bitten off more than they can chew.”

“They disrupted too many miles of roads all at the same time,” Karl said. “It’s clear that it was way too aggressive in terms of being able to put the roads back to the way they should be. They should work in one area and then finish it and move to the next area.”