This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
01/15/2024 10:50 AMThe Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) report on Tweed New Haven Airport’s proposed Master Plan expansion has left General Assembly members representing East Haven distraught and continues to raise concerns from area residents.
On top of over 900 testimonials submitted by residents in communities surrounding Tweed, House Republican Leader Vincent Candelora (R, 86), Senator Paul Cicarella (R, 34), and Representative Joe Zullo (R, 99) are deeply concerned about the negative impact the expansion of Tweed could have in a multitude of ways.
“Like many East Haven residents, we are shocked by the FAA’s findings,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement. The assemblymen said that the airport's expansion was incongruent with state and federal goals in pushing for clean energy policies and initiatives, and they consistently hear concerns from residents “about the impact on our air quality from increased jetliner activity,” as reflected in submitted testimonials.
For the assemblymen, East Haven Town Hall, residents opposed to the Master Plan, and federal officials, the expansion, in one way, amounts to a regional public health issue. But there is also anxiety over how traffic around the expanded airport will be affected, with the intersection of Hemingway Avenue and Short Beach Road at its center.
The intersection has been known to the town for experiencing chronically “intolerable and hazardous” flooding conditions, said Michelle Benivegna, director of administration and management, citing it as one of the main objections towards the expansion. The intersection and its corridor of Short Beach Road and Coe Avenue, which commuters use to enter and exit downtown East Haven, has also been considered by Tweed as a corridor into its newly proposed East Terminal.
Charles Coyle, the superintendent of operations for the Public Services department, said what seems like the most obvious solution, to elevate the corridor of Short Beach Road, also known as Route 142, and Coe Avenue, known as Route 337, would not be optimal to eliminate the persistent flooding.
Part of this stems from the position of water pipes connected to Short Beach Road that drain into the East Haven Marsh Wildlife Area east of the corridor. According to Coyle, raising the intersection’s roads will only continue the chronic flooding.
“If you raise the road 10 feet, you're still gonna get flooding because it's going to come back through the pipes. You're only going to disperse it in different spots,” said Coyle.
While Coyle said that the town would “never” be able to completely eliminate the chronic flooding, proposed improvements have been considered, as reflected in correspondence between Town Hall officials and the Department of Transportation (DOT).
The results of a scoping study conducted by the DOT suggested several potential fixes in a letter dated to East Haven on Sept. 27, 2023. Raising routes 337 and 142 is included as a suggestion, as is constructing a road diet on the routes to Silver Sands Road, as well as “Adding/upgrading non-motorized user amenities throughout the project limits,” such as “providing bike lanes/buffered bike lanes/wider shoulders, adding a sidewalk to both sides of the road within project limits.” Upsizing existing drainage pipes connected to the routes “where necessary and feasible” is another suggestion.
Coyle said whatever improvements are decided upon at the intersection will be left to the DOT to fix, as routes 337 and 142 are state roads.
Regarding Tweed, East Haven Town Hall is concerned about the Master Plan’s lack of an adequate flooding management plan given an expected worsening of rainfall impact and its ability to accommodate a large boost in traffic at the corridor.
In response to the Draft Environmental Assessment report released by the airport earlier this year, East Haven Mayor Joseph Carfora stated, “This flooding occurs at Hemingway Avenue at Coe Avenue and Short Beach Road — a critical juncture through which virtually all traffic to and from the airport would travel under the proposed plan. If this intersection is flooded, the route to and from the airport is cut off.”
These concerns do not evade Candelora, Cicarella, and Zullo, who have heard from concerned area residents about the “related influx of passenger automobile traffic” that could come along at the intersection with the expansion. Additionally, “Families are equally worried about our surrounding infrastructure and town resources like police and EMS [Emergency Management Services] to safely handle even more traffic on local roads,” they said.
East Haven Town Hall is also concerned that improvements suggested by the DOT to the intersection “do not take into account the proposed expansion and relocation” of Tweed and the “routing of large quantities of additional traffic on these roads as the primary route of egress and egress to the airport,” they said back to the DOT in a letter dated Oct. 11, 2023.
Against the Town of East Haven’s wishes, Tweed’s Final EA report stands by a No Action alternative for access to the airport’s newly proposed terminal via the corridor. The Final EA states, "The Proposed Action would address existing chronic and severe passenger terminal area congestion, lack of comfort and services due to significantly undersized and outdated facilities, and non-standard land use compatibility of the terminal area with adjacent land use.”
The FONSI report acknowledges that existing traffic along routes 337 and 142 “would be temporarily affected by the Proposed Action during construction” but are potentially “short-term” impacts that are “less than significant compared to background traffic levels.”
The report continues, “The project would implement a Maintenance of Traffic Plan and a Traffic Control Plan during construction. Future airport operations consider the number of passengers and employees arriving and departing the airport during the morning and midday peak hours.”
Along with East Haven Town Hall, area residents like Branford’s Ken Engleman, who lives on Short Beach Road, remain concerned about the expansion as it relates to flood management. This is especially true with the corridor and the intersection being used as an evacuation route during a natural disaster.
“By [Tweed] expanding this airport, which is going to create more damage, more problems with homeowners, they’re increasing the chances of people being stuck in an evacuation route because no one in this Master Plan is talking about creating new roads,” said Engelman. “If we have another [Superstorm] Sandy, which we're going to have…where are people going on the evacuation route?”
However, some area residents strongly disagree with Engelman, including Bridget McCann, who views the longtime infrastructural issues experienced at the intersection as completely irrelevant to Tweed or its probable expansion.
“This flooding has nothing to do with the airport. It is due to location, marsh, high tide, and weather - not airlines or the amount of cars in the road.”