The Berlin
Cit itiz ize en
Volume 16, Number 21
Berlin’s Only Hometown Newspaper
Town authorizes $4.5 million to fix sewer By Daniel Jackson The Berlin Citizen
The Town Council authorized Town Manager Denise McNair to sign a $4.5 million bond at its May 15 meeting. This will allow the town to hire a contractor to make repairs to 1.6 miles of leaky sewer line. “Basically, the pipes we’re talking about have cracks, holes, what have you,” Mayor Adam Salina said. “We get charged the amount of flow that goes to the Mattabassett District. So, if we, essentially, fix these holes, when it rains, rather than that rainwater going through the holes, into the pipe to the Mattabassett District to which it gets charged, it will stay outside the pipe and we will only be charged for our true wastewater.” The loan will be acquired by the town and will be paid off by the water districts.
Berlin Water Control Commission plans on adding a $20 surcharge to its customers’ water bill to pay for the project starting in October. BWCC held a public hearing on the change May 22. Lawrence DeAntonio, manager of the Berlin Water Control, said the other two districts will set their own rates and they have not yet scheduled public hearings. Berlin’s sewer pipes let in 300 million gallons of stormwater per year, according to a survey of the pipes done in 1995. The expense to treat this added water costs the town an estimated $600 dollars a day. The Mattabassett Wastewater Treatment Facility, which treats Berlin’s wastewater, faces a deluge of water it needs to treat every time it
www.berlincitizen.com
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Candlelight march
Photo by Lee Roski
In the foreground, marchers walk past luminaria at the Berlin Relay for Life during the candlelight lap May 19 at the Berlin Fairgrounds. Rocking chairs were placed along the route for any cancer survivors who needed to rest during their walk. Look inside for story and more photos.
See Sewer, page 9
Police department awards officers in first public ceremony By Daniel Jackson The Berlin Citizen
Citizen photo by Daniel Jackson
Officers wait for the award ceremony to begin. Officer Jeffrey Veach is seen in the foreground.
In the past, the Berlin Police Department gave awards quietly, before a small group of people inside the police station. “They already knew what he did, or she did,” police Chief Paul Fitzgerald said. “Tonight, you will hear some extraordinary renditions of what our officers do,” Fitzgerald said at the department’s first public awards ceremony. “They do it every day, 24 hours a day seven days a week. Many times, it’s in the wee hours of the morning and nobody gets to see it.” The award ceremony held in the Council Chambers May 16 recognized 16 officers and one police dog for events that happened in the last year. They were given awards for actions such as saving lives, arresting intoxicated drivers, investigations into robberies and for showing valor and restraint when a
wanted man armed himself with a knife during his arrest. The officers included men like Officer Ryan Gould who, on his Sept. 18, 2011 midnight shift, responded to a car accident. The driver was trapped in the car, asking for anyone to pull him out, according to the account read at the ceremony. The car started smoking. Gould tried to put out the fire with a fire extinguisher but the dashboard and the airbags caught fire with the man inside. The fire department account stated that if Gould had not entered the car, dragged the man out just as the car was engulfed in flames, and started administering emergency care, the man would have died. For that action, Gould received a Merit Award. Fitzgerald said that the police department’s awards committee approached him
See Awards, page 5