Litchfield Hall Construction Debris

To Be Reused For Other Town Projects

By John Voket

Crushed up building materials from the Litchfield Hall demolition site at Fairfield Hills will eventually be used as backfill for three different town construction sites, including the new dog pound, saving taxpayers the estimated $12,000 to $20,000 cost of purchasing fill, Public Works Director Fred Hurley told The Bee this week.

Visitors to the campus in recent weeks may have heard or perhaps even felt the intense vibrations as a rock crushing machine processed tons of leftover debris in the wake of the former hospital building’s demolition. And after being screened and brought to the appropriate standard for reuse, Mr Hurley said the material will be used as backfill on the Litchfield Hall and Yale Lab demolition sites, as well as to backfill under the slab that will be the foundation for the new animal control facility.

Once the fill is applied and the grounds at the site of the Litchfield and Yale demolition projects have been surfaced, leveled and planted, Mr Hurley said it will be hard to detect there were ever any buildings on the site. He said in just a few more months visitors will only see a level, grassy field where the huge dormitory and hospital lab buildings once stood.

Mr Hurley said estimating the cost to purchase such process fill at $25 to $30 per cubic yard, he estimates the town will be able to save possibly as much as $20,000 before accounting for the town crew and trucks to haul and dump the finished backfill where it is needed.

The public works chief also said that he and the town are making progress on another high-profile project, the third phase of streetscape work in Sandy Hook Center. Mr Hurley said that he met with AT&T, Connecticut Light and Power, and state Department of Transportation representatives this week to finalize the placement of new utility poles, which will be staked out next week by utility and DOT crews.

He was pleased to see all invested parties coming together for this preliminary but critical component of the project, because Mr Hurley said work can now proceed on the final curb design for the intersection of Glen, Riverside, and Church Hill Roads.

“We’re also sequencing the schedule of work to ensure we keep traffic control lights operational at that intersection during construction,” Mr Hurley said. “We will advise residents on the one or two occasions where construction will impact traffic at that intersection, but we don’t anticipate any long-term traffic disruptions because of this work.”

He said the bulk of that construction will take place in the summer, when school-related traffic is light or nonexistent.