State DOT Cooperating

With Various I-84 Investigations

HARTFORD (AP) — The state Department of Transportation’s oversight of the outside inspector involved in a troubled $52 million I-84 construction project included mostly reviewing paperwork, the commissioner told state lawmakers Monday.

Ralph Carpenter said state staff were not physically watching over the operations.

“Maybe we should have been,” he told members of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, which questioned Carpenter about how hundreds of storm drains along a stretch of I-84 between Cheshire and Waterbury wound up defective.

Many lead nowhere, some are clogged with debris and others were apparently connected with substandard, cracked and leaking pipes.

Carpenter said he’s reviewing whether a lack of employees is to blame. The department’s staffing is at a historical low, according to state lawmakers. But Carpenter said it appears that what happened with the I-84 storm drains could be an isolated problem.

“It appears to be an anomaly, when we’ve used an inspection unit like this, for something like this to occur,” he said.

“We can get more inspectors. There’s no denying that,” Carpenter said. “My responsibility is to find the balance there. I don’t want to cry, ‘The sky is falling,’ without knowing the whole administrative process that’s employed when we’re doing projects this large.”

Carpenter has been on the job for about six months. He was previously commissioner at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Federal and state investigators are currently looking into why the storm drains are defective.