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September 6, 2010

Local Firms Honored For Skirting Nature

Snakes, turtles, a cemetery and slimy salamanders.

Oh, and lots of endangered grass.

Mother Nature caused quite a scramble around the three-mile highway expansion project in Brookfield, but the managers, contractors and consultants are reaping the rewards of finishing the U.S. Route 7 Bypass almost on time while catering to seemingly every environmental hurdle possible.

Even if it did cost an extra $18 million.

“This is as if God put everything in the world right in this one spot,” said Bill Hardy, New England regional manager for SEA Consultants Inc. in Rocky Hill. “It was not your typical project.”

The relatively innocuous four-lane Route 7 Bypass in Brookfield began as a straightforward $87-million road project in April 2007. The idea was to remove the more than 15,000 daily vehicles exiting from Interstate 84 off congested secondary roads.

The work turned complicated when the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection learned the proposed roadway bisected the habitat of two endangered species: the eastern box turtle and the eastern hog-nosed snake. The later discovery of a small slimy salamander habitat — another endangered species — forced a redesign of 3,000 feet of highway while the rest of the construction was underway.

Further compounding the construction was a cemetery that needed a retaining wall to keep the side of a hill — and the coffins — from sliding onto the roadway.

Finally, the surrounding area includes wetlands and five species of endangered grass, forcing the construction of a separate wood trestle bridge just for the works crews and their heavy equipment to avoid the protected lands.

The project shut down numerous times to limit impact on the sensitive times for the protected species; had basic designs worked and reworked on the fly; and at one time was predicted as nearly a year behind schedule. Yet, the work was complete in November 2009, just 19 days after its intended completion date.

The cost of added amenities for the reptiles, roadway redesigns around their habitats and worker overtime to make all these changes pushed the project cost to $105 million.

“It was a learning curve for everyone because they had to deal with things they weren’t used to dealing with,” said Jenny Dickson, project biologist for the Department of Environmental Protection. “I guarantee this is a lot of the stuff they don’t teach in engineering school.”

For the efforts, the Connecticut Department of Transportation, designer SEA Consultants, Torrington contractor O&G Industries and California construction manager URS Corp. have earned the praise of the industry.

The Construction Management Association of America and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials each gave the Route 7 companies their 2010 regional New England awards for finishing the project in a timely manner despite all the environmental concerns. The two organizations also put the project up for national recognition awarded in October.

“We were impressed with how they handled a lot of these issues on the fly and worked together as a team,” said Ken Johnson, chairman of the Construction Management Association of America awards committee. “They had a lot of things you don’t have in a typical highway project.”

The largest problem was that the roadway was to divide the habitat of the snakes and turtles from the area where they lay eggs for the winter. Since roadkill is among the leading causes of wildlife death, the contractors had to build a way for the reptiles to cross the roadway without being harmed, Dickson said. And it isn’t as easy as it sounds.

The different species react differently to light and the closeness of their surroundings, so the companies had to design and build two crossings for the snakes and turtles under the expressway. The turtles got a six-foot-by-20-foot, well-lit box culvert because they don’t move in the dark. The snakes got a 36-inch diameter circular culvert without lighting because they like to move at night.

The slopes of the roadway had to be steep enough to make sure neither species climbed into oncoming traffic.

The small slimy salamander habitat was nestled among boulders on the western slope of a large mountain. While not bisected by the road, the companies had to guarantee the deposit didn’t fall down, eliminating the salamanders’ preferred small, dark living space. To redesign the roadway to avoid the salamander, the project had to be shut down.

The initial delay for the salamander redesign was estimated at 200 days, but the companies whittled that down to almost nothing thanks to teamwork, flexibility and long hours, Hardy said. The Department of Transportation and Department of Environmental Protection worked with the design teams as the project was reformatted on the fly, making for a fast-tracked and streamlined permitting process.

“We all put in a tremendous amount of hours,” Hardy said. “Everyone agreed early on that this (November) deadline had to be accomplished.”

All the solutions appear to be working, Dickson said. The cameras in the snake and turtle tunnels show the reptiles are using the pass-throughs. The Department of Environmental Protection will check periodically to ensure the animals tagged for monitoring are moving and breeding normally.

The roadway itself is working, too. Of the 15,000 daily vehicles exiting off I-84 near Danbury and heading toward Brookfield, more than half are using the bypass.

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