Town officials recently approved a nearly $19,000 contract with a Norwalk-based company to repair a heavily used trail in Waveny Park that suffered damage due to Hurricane Ida.
The Board of Selectmen voted 3-0 in favor of the $18,700 contract with Hussey Brothers Excavating to repair and reset some flooding controls on the trail that runs along the main road through the park as it approaches Lapham Road.
“It’s a newer installation, it got hit pretty hard with Ida,” Public Works Director Tiger Mann told the selectmen at their Sept. 21 meeting, held in Town Hall and via videoconference.
“And we are looking at redoing the trail portion and then increasing the swales on either side with a little more drainage,” Mann said, referring to channels designed to help with runoff. “We have drainage there and we have some swales. We are looking at the amount of water that was rushing down through there, we need to increase the swale depth and then add a little bit of drainage and then repair the trail itself.”
Hussey Brothers has “done excellent work for us in the past and we would like to continue that relationship,” Mann said.
First Selectman Kevin Moynihan and Selectmen Kathleen Corbet and Nick Williams voted 3-0 in favor of the contract.
Corbet asked what the timeframe of the work would be. Mann said he wanted to get the trail back into shape within about two weeks.
“Right now it’s usable but it’s not great,” he said. “We did some a kind of top dressing work, just to kind of dress it up and get it so people can use it but we really want to get it and take care of it.”
The work appeared to be well underway as of Oct. 3, with new swales or trenches dug alongside the trail for a long stretch between the parking lot west of Waveny House toward Lapham Road.
Moynihan said the town might be able to qualify for reimbursement from the federal government if damage done by Ida in the state is declared a disaster by FEMA. Mann said New Canaan fared very well compared to area towns. A washout on Turner Hill Road affected part of an embankment there and Valley Road below it, he said.