NAUGATUCK - State Sen. Joseph J. Crisco, Jr., D-Woodbridge,
today welcomed $3.2 million in state bonding to repair the historic,
102-year-old Whittemore Bridge on Maple Street over the Naugatuck
River.
“I know Whittemore Bridge repairs have been on
Naugatuck’s priority list for some time, so I’m pleased their grant
application has been approved and we are finally poised to move forward
with this project,” Crisco said.
“I’m happy to have voted in the past for the
state funding needed to achieve these repairs and reduce the financial
burden on local residents. Connecticut budgets a lot of money for
infrastructure improvements and Naugatuck is the beneficiary
of that.”
Concrete on the bridge’s arches is rotting, and
running water has weakened the footings. Naugatuck city officials
applied for state aid to repair the180-foot bridge through Connecticut’s
Local Bridge Program; just this year, Crisco
co-sponsored and voted for a bill that added $10 million to Local
Bridge Program applications in 2015, bringing the total budget available
to cities and towns to $20 million.
This is the second time state funds have been
awarded for the project: in July 2011, the State Bond Commission
approved $1.3 million for bridge work (Crisco supported that
bonding package as well.) This latest state grant, awarded
on July 9, will pay for half of the total bridge replacement cost;
Naugatuck voters have already budgeted about $2.4 million for the work.
Naugatuck built the bridge in 1912 to honor John
Whittemore, who died in 1910. Whittemore was the head of one of the
Naugatuck Malleable Iron Companies and he used his great wealth to benefit
the community, including building two schools
and a library.
Plans for the bridge were drawn by Henry Bacon, a
nationally prominent architect best known today for the Jefferson
Memorial in Washington, D.C.
In Connecticut, there are more than 3,400 bridges
and culverts on municipally maintained roads, and the construction and
maintenance of these is the responsibility of cities and towns.
But
recognizing the difficulty that municipalities
have in meeting this responsibility, the General Assembly created the
Local Bridge Program in 1984 as part of Connecticut’s Infrastructure
Renewal Program.
The program provides state grants to municipalities for
the removal, replacement, reconstruction or
rehabilitation of local bridges.
This is a press release from Crisco's office.
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