#MIDDLEBURY #OXFORD #TOWANTICENERGYCENTER
By MARJORIE NEEDHAM
Barnhart Crane and Rigging of Middletown, Conn., postponed a meeting it had arranged barely an hour before the meeting was scheduled to start. Barnhart plans to transport three 343,000-pound (171.5-ton) transformers from a railroad spur in Litchfield to the Towantic Energy Center in Oxford. The transformers, each moving on separate dates and traveling at night over a two-day period, will move through Litchfield, Morris, Watertown and Middlebury on their way to Oxford.
An Oct. 19 email from Barnhart’s Assistant Project Manager Nick Stekl notified officials of each town about the heavy haul and invited them to an Oct. 26 meeting in Oxford Town Hall. Stekl’s email instructed officials to have police and fire officials attend the meeting and to come “prepared to discuss any road projects, town events, traffic concerns that we need to be aware of that can impact our schedule.”
And so, on Wednesday, Oct. 26, at the appointed time of 11 a.m., Middlebury First Selectman Edward B. St. John, Police Chief Fran Dabbo, Public Works head Dan Norton and town attorney Bob Smith, along with Watertown’s fire chief and residents from Middlebury and Oxford Greens, assembled in the Oxford Town Hall meeting room to hear Barnhart present its plans for transporting these loads.
The meeting time came and went. Around 11:05 a.m., Oxford First Selectmen George Temple appeared in the doorway of the meeting room, looked around the room, and departed. Five or so minutes later, Temple’s administrative assistant, Joanne Pelton, came through the doorway a few feet, stopped and addressed those waiting.
She said the meeting had been canceled by Barnhart in an email sent at 10 a.m. that morning to those it initially invited. She said Barnhart now planned to set up town-by-town meetings, and she had no idea why Barnhart postponed the Oct. 26 meeting.
St. John rose and said he wanted Pelton to make one thing very clear to Barnhart, “They aren’t going on our roads until they work out an agreement with us,” he said.
As others rose to leave, Oxford Greens resident Rochelle Gershenow said, “George walked in, saw all the people, walked out, and the next thing we know they canceled the meeting.” Many in attendance doubted the information about the email was true.
But an email was sent, at 9:53 a.m., and the newspaper obtained a copy of it. It postponed the meeting, apologized for the short notice and said town-by-town meetings would be set up. It gave no reason for the heavy hauler failing to show up at the meeting it had scheduled.
Telephone calls to Stekl and to Dave DiVincenzo, Barnhart’s business development manager and the author of the Oct. 26 email, have not yet been returned.
The planned route outlined in a Barnhart attachment to the Oct. 19 email brings the transformers into Middlebury from Watertown on Route 63. They then travel down Route 64, which becomes Route 188, turn left on Long Meadow Road, right on Lockwood Road and left on Christian Road as they go on to Oxford.
In an interview Tuesday, St. John said most of the roads are state roads, so if those roads get damaged, the state will pay for the damage. Middlebury’s town roads are a different matter. They aren’t built for heavy loads, and they have storm drains, water lines, sewer lines and natural gas lines under them.
St. John said two issues concern him – the safety of residents as these massive loads come through town and preventing damage to the infrastructure paid for by tax dollars. “I just want to protect the residents and their infrastructure,” he said.
He expressed concern that damage to the infrastructure might not be evident for years and said Barnhart needs to provide a guarantee they will pay for damage caused by their heavy haul even if that damage isn’t immediately evident.
The height of each transformer, when on the truck, will be 19 feet; the flatbed trailer holding it will be 60 feet long and, provided we are reading the engineered drawing correctly, the length of the truck plus trailer will be 112 feet, 10 inches. One transformer per night is to moved through Middlebury Tuesday, Nov. 22; Tuesday, Dec. 6; and Tuesday, Dec. 13.
