Also bears cost of cleanup and remediation

By Joe Kelly

Soundview Transportation, the trucking company responsible for the 2022 crash on Route 44 that dumped thousands of gallons of gasoline into the center of Norfolk, must pay $350,000 and remains on the hook for the full cost of the cleanup and remediation, according to a settlement reached with the Office of Connecticut Attorney General William Tong.

Soundview will pay a $100,000 civil penalty, a $200,000 payment to compensate the state for the costs of overseeing remediation and a $50,000 payment to support state enforcement actions on behalf of Connecticut consumers.

No estimates were provided for how much it will cost Soundview or its insurance company, Federated Insurance, to fully clean up and remediate the largest spill of its kind in state history.

The Soundview truck was enroute from New Haven to a delivery in Canaan early on the morning of Saturday Nov. 5, 2022, when it drifted off the road, hitting a telephone pole and then a fire hydrant near Beacon Lane before flipping on its side. The 27-year-old driver escaped serious injury and there were no other vehicles or pedestrians on the road, but the tank split open. Its entire 8,200 gallons of gasoline spilled out, flooding the area and flowing into the yards of nearby homes before heading into the town’s stormwater sewer system and ultimately into a nearby drainage channel leading to the Blackberry River.

“The house shook like you wouldn’t believe,” recalled Courtney Toomey who at the time lived in the house at 97 Greenwoods Road, closest to the crash. She immediately fled the home with her husband and four children.

A large-scale emergency response ensued including an all-hands-on-deck turnout from the Norfolk Volunteer Fire Department, volunteers from 20 neighboring towns and crews from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. According to the settlement statement, vacuum trucks positioned along the drainage channel captured some 90,000 gallons of contaminated water before it reached the Blackberry River.

Residents nearby on Route 44, but also in the path of the spill as far away as Pettibone Lane and Maple Avenue, were impacted the most. In some homes it was discovered that old, abandoned pipes and drains buried in the ground were channeling gas and fumes into basements.

Toomey and her family moved out of the home at 97 Greenwoods Road and the house has sat vacant ever since, attracting no renters. The owner recently won a 22 percent reduction in the property’s assessed value from the Norfolk Board of Assessment Appeals, as did another resident nearby.

Several residents and property owners are suing Soundview, the driver, the truck rental company and the insurer for damages. The case, which is now going through pre-trial gyrations, is set to be heard in September of 2026 in Superior Court in Stamford.

Testing done at the time of the crash found no gas in the Blackberry and only trace amounts at Norfolk’s sewage treatment plant. Samples drawn nine months after the crash from more than 50 small test sites along the path of the spill showed negligible to zero amounts of gas in the groundwater. Contamination of private wells was not an issue because the homes in the area are served by the town’s water system.

Although the smell of gas has dissipated, questions linger nearly two and a half years after the incident. They include why the truck flipped over on a quiet weekend morning on a fairly straight roadway and why safety technologies installed in the brand-new truck did not help.