New London Breaks Ground On Water Sharing Arrangement With East Lyme

Summer water shortages have been a fact of life in East Lyme for decades. During the dry summer months, the number of people served swells from 18,000 in the winter to 30,000, straining the existing water system to the max and forcing the town to impose water use restrictions.

On Tuesday, however, a groundbreaking ceremony for the East Lyme-New London Interconnection Project promised to end water restrictions for good as of May 2014. This project, which was at least five years in the making, offers a novel solution to the problem by allowing East Lyme to “bank” excess water during the winter months in New London’s reservoir. Then, come the summer, the town can withdraw that same amount of water to serve East Lyme’s water customers.   

As speaker after speaker noted, this is a significant regional project. So it was fitting that the ceremony at Lake Konomoc Water Treatment Plant in Waterford brought together elected officials and local and regional Water Authority representatives from half a dozen municipalities, including East Lyme, New London, Waterford, Groton, and Montville. 

The project will begin with the installation of four miles of water transmission lines from Lake Konomoc and travel north along Route 85, Sachatello Industrial Drive and Butlertown Road to Route 161. The transmission line will then travel south along route 161 and connect to East Lyme’s existing water distribution system.

The $9.9 million project represents a significant investment that is paid for in part by bonds, and in part with federal funding through the Federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund. Ultimately, East Lyme tax payers will foot the bill for the bonds. Water use will be paid by rate payers served by the system. 

The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the Connecticut Department of Health assigned top engineers to the project and worked hard to help the towns cut through the red tape and expedite the funding process. Rep. Joe Courtney also secured a $300,000 grant to help fund the initial planning process. 

Tighe & Bond, Inc. of Middletown is the engineering company overseeing the project, which will include an elevated 600,000-gallon water storage tank at Sachatello Industrial Drive and two water booster pump systems, one in East Lyme and one in Waterford.

East Lyme First Selectman Paul Formica said that ultimately the town foresees installing an even larger water tank on the town-owned property at Darrows Pond in East Lyme.

Cutting through the Sachatello Industrial Park in Montville shaved about $400,000 from the total cost of the project, Formica said. (It costs about $1 million to install one mile of pipe). Overall, the project is coming in at $750,000 less than originally anticipated, Formica added.   

There were many people to thank for bringing the project along, including East Lyme’s late director of public works, Mike Giannattasio, Barry Weiner, chairman of New London’s Water Pollution and Control Authority, and Chris Clark, water engineer for the Mohegan Tribe who helped with the planning process, to name but a few.