Cleanup shifts to Maple Avenue

Words and photo by Joseph Kelly

This summer’s rainy weather, including the severe storms in July that wiped out several bridges in town, has also delayed the ongoing cleanup of last year’s gas spill. As a result, through traffic on Maple Avenue is likely to remain disrupted well into September.

At the same time, new pockets of gas were discovered on properties near the crash site on Route 44. This means monitoring of those locations is likely to continue until 2025, if not longer.

When the tanker truck flipped over last November, gas was immediately absorbed into the soil around the crash site on Route 44 and Beacon Lane, but a large amount also found its way into a drainage channel and collected under Maple Avenue, which is downhill from the crash location.

After working throughout the Spring to clean up the area on Route 44, attention shifted to Maple Avenue, but then the rains came, necessitating that the sewer line be temporarily rerouted. Authorities originally planned to dig out the polluted soil while leaving the sewer line in place, but when the soil became so drenched with rain, they worried that heavy equipment could slip, causing damage to the sewer line and requiring a separate environmental cleanup just for that. 

According to First Selectman Matt Riska, the cleanup, which was originally planned to be finished by August, will now take until the last week of September, which means Maple Avenue remains unpassable in that area.

The stretch of Maple Avenue running to Laurel Way remains passable but has been completely dug up, part of a long-planned renovation of the road, including new paving, sidewalks and storm drains. Riiska said the initial layer of pavement in that area will be put in place this fall.  Work on the rest of Maple Avenue running to Route 44 will resume next year, he said.

The existence of new pockets of gas in groundwater near the crash site was disclosed at an informational meeting held at the Botelle School on August 15. The discovery came about through continued monitoring and testing by Verdantas, the engineering firm overseeing the cleanup. Representatives of Verdantas said the gas appears to be collecting in old sewer pipes and storm drains in the area. A report was submitted to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Monitoring of those locations, which authorities earlier had hoped would end in 2024, will continue until at least 2025, and possibly longer. Air quality testing was done in six homes in the area and an elevated level of pollutants was found in one of them.