At the first meeting of the newly elected Democratic-majority City Council, Ward 4 Council member-elect John McNamara and Ward 5 Council member-elect Francisco Santiago have proposed a resolution to commence engineering work to advance the Allen Street Drainage Improvements/Reconstruction Project.
A number of residents of a neighborhood to the southwest of CCSU, including Newbury, Hampton, Allen, Brighton streets and Eton Place and Roxbury Road, including McNamara, have been advocating for action by the city to address flooding in their neighborhood.
The resolution introduced by McNamara and Santiago noted that, “the existing storm and sanitary sewer systems in Allen Street are approximately 100 years old and are undersized for the existing development within their respective sewer-sheds,” adding that, “as a result of these systems being undersized, sections of Allen Street near Stewart Street frequently flood and residents experience regular backups.”
Area resident Frank Chase and McNamara had said, in September that, “Flooding has occurred five times in the area since July that city officials attribute to climate change. The infrastructure project has been postponed for the last six fiscal years.”
Largely in response to neighborhood advocacy, the Council approved $4 million toward the project to complete the Allen Street drainage improvement project. But with concerns lingering that updates to the designs for the project might slow it long enough for the funding to disappear at the end of the city budget year in June, advocates have been pressing for the design work to be expediated.
The resolution now offered by McNamara and Santiago proposes to use $115,000 from the Public Works Department FY24 Clean Water Fund for engineering services to advance that design work.
The proposal is on the agenda of the first Council meeting of the new two-year term of office, on November 15, 2023 at 7:00pm
Editor’s note: John McNamara is a contributing writer for the New Britain Progressive, but was not an author of this article.
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