Work Advances to Improve Water Safety and Infrastructure
Thanks to an amazing team in Stonington, we have hit another major milestone in the long-awaited
Water Loop project. This past week, we posted a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for design and
engineering work!
This significant infrastructure project will eliminate a safety concern by creating a continuous loop of pressurized water within a critical section of Westerly Water’s piping. As some of you know, this has been a concern for the Town since 2016, and a report offering possible solutions was published in 2018. To address this concern the First
Selectman, with support from the Town Engineer, a resident offering pro-bono services, the
Pawcatuck Fire Chief and others, began exploring funding solutions to tie these dead ends together, to create a continuous loop of pressurized water within a critical section of Westerly Water’s piping.
While many of the avenues for funding explored did not yield results, in the Spring of 2021
Congressman Courtney’s office opened an opportunity for federal funding for community projects
and the First Selectman decided this was the project to put forward. Thanks to the support of many
community partners, Stonington’s application made it through competitive rounds of review at the
State and Federal level. In March of 2022, Stonington’s Water Loop project was approved at over $1.9
million as part of the Omnibus bill passed by Congress.
That summer the First Selectman worked with Stonington’s Town Engineer and the Westerly Town Manager, along with their Water Department, to draft, negotiate and sign a Memorandum of Understanding on how the project could proceed in a way that would ensure the ultimate success of the project for both communities.
The Stonington team has been working with our federal counterparts to move through all the
requirements to release the funding. This has taken a great deal of time and effort from many, with
different departments pitching in at different times, as well as support from Selectman Downie-
lending her environmental expertise when needed.
As part of this process, it became clear that getting the $1.9 million in funding was one major hurdle,
but the grant administration requirements were also extensive. This is one of the many reasons we
are so grateful to have a new Grant Manager starting full-time this fall, and grateful to the Board of
Finance and residents for supporting this requested new position.
Today marks a major milestone, and we couldn’t have gotten here without a great team effort. We
anticipate an engineering firm could be brought on by October, and that work is estimated to take
about 9 months. If those timelines go according to plan, we could see construction on the loop
starting in the Fall of 2024. It could be completed that Fall, or pending weather and exact starting
time, Spring of 2025.
To share a timeline comparison, the Town obtained State funds for the Route One sidewalk project in the Summer of 2020. We broke ground this Summer. It was a top priority project, and the funding was from the State, and took about 3 years to come to fruition.
To hear more, see the video update below.