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Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and state Housing Commissioner Evonne Klein made the announcement.
The funds awarded to Fairfield are for three projects:
- Improvements to the Waste Water Treatment Plant: $2.3 million;
- a Water Pollution Control micro-grid: $2.5 million; and
- resiliency improvements to Penfield Beach: $225,000.
“The damaging effects of storms along Connecticut’s shoreline are just a reality these communities must face,” Malloy said in a statement. “With these grants, however, we can assist these municipalities and their cleanup efforts from the devastation of one of the most severe storms in Connecticut’s history, and help them to establish resiliency plans so they can be better prepared in the years ahead.”
The Water Pollution Control Micro-grid will include a new cogeneration unit that will provide heat and electricity to the facility during normal operation and in the case of a grid outage.
Waste Water Treatment Plant Resiliency project will provide proper protection from the risk of sanitary system overflows by constructing an earthen berm and storm water pump station to protect the waste water treatment plant and other critical facilities from future flood events.
The Penfield Beach project will include retrofitting a vital section of shoreline infrastructure with a timber bulkhead to protect the Fairfield Beach Road neighborhood.
Last year, the state was awarded a second found of funds in the amount of $66 million through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and its Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery. The CDBG-DR program, administered by the Department of Housing, was established to assist the most impacted and distressed areas recover from Super Storm Sandy.
“Earlier this year, DOH disbursed nearly $32 million in several communities ravaged by recent storms. This second round of federal funding will build on the momentum started in rebuilding infrastructure projects,” Klein said in a statement. “It’s also helping these same cities and towns take measures that will diminish the impacts of future storms.”
The primary goal in allocating funding for the rehabilitation and resiliency of infrastructure is to restore a suitable living environment in disaster impacted communities by rehabilitating or reconstructing existing infrastructure and adding resiliency to minimize damage from future storm events.
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