Work zone safety a concern for town, state road crews

Road crew safety has been a cause for concern with 71 car strikes on crews in Connecticut so far in 2024.
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Road crew safety has been a cause for concern with 71 car strikes on crews in Connecticut so far in 2024.
“When a worker is killed by an impaired driver at 9 o’clock in the morning while picking up litter tossed out car windows, we have a much greater crisis on our hands.” — Garrett Eucalitto, state Department of Transportation (DOT) commissioner
SHARON — An agitated driver recently ignored commands from a member of the town’s highway department to stop during a roadway construction project. Instead, the motorist maneuvered around the work zone.
“He got angry and drove off the road and popped two tires,” said Casey Flanagan, Sharon’s First Selectman. “I have heard stories that people are speeding through our work zones, or they get impatient or agitated because they need to stop,” he said.
Just recently, Flanagan noted, a worker on the road crew reported that “somebody stuck their middle finger up at the guys” as they drove through the work zone. “It’s really unfair. They are just doing their job and they want to keep the traffic moving.”
With road construction and paving projects in full swing and following the recent deaths of three workers on Connecticut roadways in the past two months, state and local officials are pleading with drivers to slow down and pay attention when approaching work zones. Poor driving habits like speeding, inattentiveness and operating a motor vehicle while impaired are not only dangerous, they noted, but they can have deadly consequences to both the worker and the driver.
On Wednesday, July 3, there was a close call on Route 8 in Litchfield when a motorist in the northbound lane veered off the road and crashed into an unmanned state Department of Transportation (DOT) vehicle as workers were out mowing. The driver sustained minor injuries and was issued an infraction for failure to maintain proper lane, according to Connecticut State Police.
The accident occurred less than 24 hours after Gov. Ned Lamont and state DOT Commissioner Garrett Eucalitto gave a press conference on work zone safety, and one week after a state DOT worker was fatally struck by a suspected impaired driver while picking up litter along an on ramp in Wallingford.
According to state public safety officials, there were 14 strikes on work zone crews by vehicles during June, and 71 strikes on crews to date this year as of July 2. In 2023, DOT reported 141 crashes into work trucks, despite enhanced signage and warnings.
From 2020 to 2022, there were more than 2,500 crashes and 10 fatalities in work zones, according to state officials.
“This crisis needs everyone’s attention,” Eucalitto said. “When a worker is killed by an impaired driver at 9 o’clock in the morning while picking up litter tossed out car windows, we have a much greater crisis on our hands.”
To combat speeding through work zones, from April to December 2023, DOT ran a Work Zone Speed Camera pilot program. During that period, 541,920 vehicles were found speeding in work zones, according to DOT spokesperson Samaia Hernandez. Written warnings were issued by mail to 24,875 drivers, and citations for repeat violations were issued to 724 drivers.
The program, said Lamont during the press conference, will become permanent at work zones around the state. “We will see how fast you are going into that work site and see what you are doing on the way out. We will take a picture of your license plate and you will be held accountable.”
Speed on rural roads a major concern
Work zone dangers are not lost on town highway crews in the rural Northwest Corner.
Speed is their biggest concern, followed by distracted driving and aggressive behavior, according to highway department workers.
“We definitely see a lot of speeding,” and drivers on their cell phones, reported Russell Hoage crew chief for the Salisbury Highway Department. “They just don’t slow down.” Most roads have a 30 to 35 posted speed limit, he said, and it’s not unusual to see drivers whizzing by work zones at 40 to 45 miles per hour.
To help buffer road crews from oncoming traffic, the town highway department often uses dump trucks as protective crash barriers, the road crew chief noted.
Hoage said he is at a loss as to why some drivers fail to see the danger they are posing to themselves and to highway personnel. “I don’t know if people are just not aware of the danger, of if they just don’t care.”
Road foreman Rick Osborne, who has been with the Kent Highway Department for 27 years, said electric cars often catch road crews by surprise. “You can’t hear them coming, so they quickly sneak right up on you. And depending on the equipment being operated, it’s sometimes hard to hear oncoming traffic.”
He also noted that the suspensions on newer cars could be making higher speeds less noticeable to drivers.
Osborne said the department has enhanced its safety measures, including posting warning signs and reflective cones as far out as possible, especially where there are curves in the roads leading to work zones.
“If the cleaning crew is out, we park a truck between them and the approaching traffic, and never work behind the truck” to avoid a worker from being pinned between the vehicles, the Kent road foreman explained.
Then there are the drivers who are just plain rude. “Just the other day one of our guys waved to a driver to slow down,” Osborne recalled. “The driver stopped and said, ‘You can’t tell me to slow down or not to slow down!’”
‘Always expect the unexpected’
At the North Canaan Public Works Department, Stanley Morby said he’s seen drivers go to great lengths to get through a construction zone. “We recently had North Elm closed, and had drivers go right by the barriers, thinking there may only be a tree down or something, and they had to turn around and go back.”
His words of advice to drivers are to “slow down and pay attention to your surroundings, no different than if you see a couple of kids walking down the side of the road. Always expect the unexpected.”
Sharon’s first selectman said the heightened dangers facing road crews will spur future conversations about what the town can do to enhance worker safety.
“It’s unsafe for motorists as well,” Flanagan noted. “Sometimes there’s tree work being done, with limbs falling from a 50-foot height and somebody will run through the stop sign from the guys directing traffic. Someone can get really seriously hurt. We need patience from people.”
Flanagan suggested that drivers allow a little extra time if they are heading to work or to an appointment and expect to be traveling through a work zone. “Unfortunately,” he noted, “a lot of the work we do is between working hours when people are commuting.”
Lamont had this message for drivers: “We have thousands of people working along the sides of roads right now. I need folks to look out for each other. I need you to say to somebody who is driving a car that shouldn’t be driving a car to pull over. I need you to say if somebody is busy texting and not paying attention, stop it. We’re doing everything we can as a state to take the lead on this, but the rest really is up to you.”
The entrance to Torrington Transfer Station.
TORRINGTON — Municipalities holding out for a public solid waste solution in the Northwest Corner have new hope.
An amendment to House Bill No. 7287, known as the Implementor Bill, signed by Governor Ned Lamont, has put the $3.25 million sale of the Torrington Transfer Station to USA Waste & Recycling on hold.
The amendment was added after the formation of the Northwest Resource Recovery Authority in Torrington in late May. The text added to the bill reads, “any permit or license relating to the Torrington Transfer Station shall be deemed transferred to the Northwest Resource Recovery Authority, or its designee, and shall continue in full force and effect.”
The change halted the sale to USA, which was unanimously accepted by MIRA Dissolution Authority at its May 14 board meeting, and reopened negotiations with municipal leaders. Torrington is one of two transfer stations in Connecticut, the other being Essex, that are still operated by MIRA-DA. Combined, more than 20 towns currently utilize these facilities.
Members of the Northwest Hills Council of Governments have been working to establish a public option for solid waste management for more than a year. In February 2025, MIRA-DA entered into a term sheet for a regional waste authority to take over the Torrington Transfer Station to be used as a central hub for regional hauling. Those plans were nixed after MIRA-DA’s May decision to privately sell the facility, until the amendment to HB 7287.
The Implementor Bill is “an act concerning the state budget for the biennium ending June 30, 2027,” according to the state website. It was signed by Lamont in early June.
MIRA-DA reviewed the situation at its board meeting Wednesday, June 18. Conversation mostly took place in executive session, but several speakers participated in public comment.
Supporting a public option, Torrington Mayor Elinor Carbone said, “I’m advocating for the local taxpayers for return on the investment that they’ve made over the years through tipping fees.” She continued, “The best way to return that investment is to strongly consider that public option that has been submitted on behalf of the NRRA.”
Selectmen in Cornwall, Falls Village, Goshen, Norfolk, North Canaan, Salisbury and Sharon have all expressed interest in pursuing a public option. Each of these towns continue to haul to Torrington utilizing existing state service agreements, which are due to expire in 2027.
Ed Spinella, attorney representing USA, characterized the Implementor Bill text change as a “rat amendment” that does not affect USA’s proposal. He said he intends to enforce MIRA-DA’s previous acceptance of the sale.
“It’s an enforceable vote and I guarantee you I’m going to make it enforceable,” said Spinella. “We were going to buy the facility regardless of whether or not it had a permit.”
He urged MIRA-DA to produce the necessary paperwork to move forward with the sale.
“I want to sign the documents so we can finish this deal,” said Spinella. “Are you going to be defined by cowering to a rat implementor, rat amendment of the Implementor Bill?”
Following a lengthy executive session June 18 that continued the next day, MIRA-DA recessed without taking action. The meeting was scheduled to continue Monday, June 23, at noon.
In August of 1781, after spending thirty years as an enslaved woman in the household of Colonel John Ashley in Sheffield, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Freeman, also known as Mumbet, was the first enslaved person to sue for her freedom in court. At the time of her trial there were 5,000 enslaved people in the state. MumBet’s legal victory set a precedent for the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts in 1790, the first in the nation. She took the name Elizabeth Freeman.
Local playwrights Lonnie Carter and Linda Rossi will tell her story in a staged reading of “1781” to celebrate Juneteenth, ay 7 p.m. at The Center on Main in Falls Village, Connecticut.Singer Wanda Houston will play MumBet, joined by actors Chantell McCulloch, Tarik Shah, Kim Canning, Sherie Berk, Howard Platt, Gloria Parker and Ruby Cameron Miller. Musical composer Donald Sosin added, “MumBet is an American hero whose story deserves to be known much more widely.”
Houston has shared the stage with stars ranging from Barbra Streisand to Motown great Mary Wells. “I have had the honor of portraying Elizabeth Freeman for three years in “Meet Elizabeth Freeman” by Teresa Miller. Our first reading of “1781” is in celebration of Juneteenth, which is wonderfully symbolic and poignant.” Juneteenth celebrates the end of slavery. Two years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, word of their freedom finally reached slaves in Texas on June 19, 1865.
Tombstone of Elizabeth Freeman in the “Sedgewick Pie” family burial ground in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Lonnie carter
MumBet, born in 1742 to African enslaved parents, was purchased at age six months by Colonel John Ashley of Sheffield, Massachusetts, for whom she worked until her thirties. Ashley helped write the 1773 Sheffield Declaration which stated, “Mankind in a state of nature are equal, free, and independent of each other, and have a right to the undisturbed enjoyment of their lives, their liberty and property.” Rumor has it that MumBet overheard a reading of the document. After a traumatic household experience, MumBet left the Ashley home in Bartholomew’s Cobble, walked four miles to Sheffield, and asked attorney and abolitionist Theodore Sedgwick to help her gain her freedom.
Houston shared, “I live in Sheffield near where she was enslaved, in a house she would have passed on her walk from Ashley Falls to Sheffield. I am humbled by the fortitude and inner strength it must have taken for this woman to defy norms and take a stand for her own freedom.We Americans must still stand and fight for our rights to live free.”
Elizabeth Freeman spent her years as a free woman working for wages in the Sedgewick household, saving money to buy her own home in Stockbridge, where she was a midwife and healer. She died in 1829 and is buried in “Sedgewick Pie,” the family burial plot in Stockbridge. One of her great-grandchildren, W.E.B. DuBois, born in Great Barrington, was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard. DuBois founded the NAACP.
Her tombstone reads: “She was born a slave and remained a slave for nearly thirty years. She could neither read nor write yet in her own sphere she had no superior or equal. She neither wasted time nor property. She never violated a trust nor failed to perform a duty. In every situation of domestic trial, she was the most efficient helper, and the tenderest friend. Good mother, farewell.”
The performance of “1781” will take place Thursday, June 19 at 7 p.m. at The Center on Main (103 Main St., Falls Village).Admission is free, donations gratefully accepted.
The new mural painted by students at Saint John Paul The Great Academy in Torrington, Connecticut.
Thanks to a unique collaboration between The Nutmeg Fudge Company, local artist Gerald Incandela, and Saint John Paul The Great Academy in Torrington, Connecticut a mural — designed and painted entirely by students — now graces the interior of the fudge company.
The Nutmeg Fudge Company owner Kristy Barto was looking to brighten her party space with a mural that celebrated both old and new Torrington. She worked with school board member Susan Cook and Incandela to reach out to the Academy’s art teacher, Rachael Martinelli.
“When Susan and Gerald brought this to me, I immediately saw it as a chance for my students to make something meaningful and lasting,” said Martinelli. “It wasn’t just about painting a wall, it was about teaching kids to serve their community through their art.”
Martinelli introduced the project as an after-school club for grades four through eight. “I wanted students who were truly committed,” she explained. Interest was so high that she had to divide participants into rotating grade-level groups, with occasional full-team days for collaboration. The mural became a long-term endeavor, stretching across a school year and a half.
The painting was created on canvas, a nearly 4’ x 27’ roll, donated by Incandela. The paint came courtesy of school principal Ed Goad. With materials secured, the students dove into research, studying maps, landmarks, and city history to inform their designs. “They worked to capture the spirit of Torrington,” Martinelli said. “But also, to match the whimsy of a candy shop.”
The result is a mural that features a playful “candyland” version of the city, where important buildings and landmarks are sized according to their importance to both the client and the community. “They created this hierarchy of bubbles and buildings, this joyful visual story,” Martinelli said. “It’s full of life.”
Beyond art skills, Martinelli witnessed her students develop qualities often harder to teach: teamwork, communication, resilience. “They learned to scale up sketches, mix large batches of paint for consistency, and adapt their work when it overlapped with someone else’s. They really respected each other’s contributions.”
The project also reflected the Academy’s Catholic STREAM (Science, Technology, Religion, Engineering, Arts, and Math) approach to education. “This was STREAM in action,” Martinelli explained. “They used technology to scale and transfer designs, applied math for proportions and spacing, and worked collaboratively to problem-solve. But they also lived their faith — through service, solidarity, and joy.”
Martinelli believes the mural speaks as much to the process as it does to the final product. “Some of the kids who worked on it have already graduated, but they’re coming back for the unveiling. That says something.”
The unveiling of the mural will take place at The Nutmeg Fudge Company on June 11, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., where families, friends, and community members are invited to celebrate the students’ achievement.
Asked what stood out most from the experience, Martinelli said, “For me, the most rewarding part was watching a diverse group of kids work together — different grades, different friend groups — all collaborating with respect, flexibility, and positivity. They created something beautiful, together.”