Residents of Old Lyme’s Sound View neighborhood continue to raise alarms about the town’s sewer infrastructure project, now questioning whether there were irregularities in the Old Lyme Water Pollution Control Authority’s (WPCA) bidding process for the projects.
Residents of the Sound View neighborhood will bear the cost of installing the sewers, which will replace septic systems that multiple authorities, including DEEP and Old Lyme’s environmental agency, have said are causing groundwater pollution that may be entering Long Island Sound. For years, the sewer replacement project has been plagued by problems, including debate over funding for the infrastructure projects associated with the sewer installation, that has at times spilled into public meetings.
The Sound View Sewer Coalition, LLC recently sent a letter to Gov. Ned Lamont, attorney general William Tong, and officials in the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) raising questions about whether there were irregularities in a bidding process the Old Lyme Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA) conducted for sewer infrastructure projects.
The coalition has been working for years to fight the WPCA’s plan to install sewers in the Sound View neighborhood because neighborhood residents will bear the cost of the project.
Frank Pappalardo, Dennis Meluzzo, and Mary Daley, along with other neighborhood residents, formed the coalition to push back against the sewer plans. Daley and Melluzzo also currently sit on the WPCA board.
In 2019, the cost of installing the sewers was estimated at $9.5 million. But only the residents of Sound View, which unlike many neighborhoods in affluent Old Lyme is blue-collar, will bear that cost. The town plans to recover the costs of the project by assessing a yearly fee against individual properties in the neighborhood over a 20-year period.
At the time a 2019 town referendum authorized the funding for the project, the WPCA argued that the whole town should not bear the costs of the sewer project because only Sound View and neighboring beach associations, which have quasi-government status and have formed their own WPCAs. The need to get the referendum to approve the funding may also have influenced the decision to not assess the costs against every resident in town.
“Multiple Town agencies strongly believe that levying the cost across all households in the Town of Old Lyme would cause the referendum to fail.” the WPCA wrote at the time of the referendum.
But because the beach associations have their own WPCAs, are self-funding, and undertook sewer installation projects on their own, they are not on the hook for the cost of the sewer infrastructure.
By 2022, the estimated costs associated with the sewer installation had ballooned to $55 million, largely because of supply-chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The town has taken various measures to try to get the costs under control. While an initial attempt to secure federal funding for the project failed, in 2023, DEEP pledged $15 million in a forgivable loan using Clean Water Funds to fund the project. In 2024, DEEP provided additional grant and loan agreements to finance the town and beach association WPCAs and fund the combined project costs at 50 percent. As of an August 2024 update on the project provided by the town, each property in the Sound View neighborhood is anticipated to pay a $1,368 fee each year for 20 years to pay the remaining project costs. As of April 8, 2025, the cost per household was revised to roughly $1,939 per year by the WPCA to cover the cost of construction, with some households estimated to pay double or triple that amount.
That estimate does not cover other costs associated with the projects, such as ongoing maintenance or legal fees that will not be covered by Clean Water Funds.
Now, members of the Sound View coalition are raising concerns about what they believe are financial irregularities in management of funds related to the sewer infrastructure project and concerns about the bidding process the town has used to find contractors to complete the work.
“The Sound View Sewer Coalition has also identified many data and planning errors which were not corrected before bids were submitted. We believe this project cannot be allowed to move forward in its current configuration. Furthermore, if it does move forward, the Town of Old Lyme should foot the cost for Sound View’s share of the collective infrastructure (pump house, force main, etc.) as it would be a town resource.” the coalition wrote in a letter it recently sent to Lamont, Tong, and DEEP officials.
The coalition drew attention to Project #866018, one of six projects on which the town sought bids to complete the sewer construction, which requires building a pipeline between Old Lyme and East Lyme. The town received four bids, ranging between roughly $11.8 million and $3 million. The lowest bid, for $2,950,025 from Waterford-based B&W Paving and Landscaping, is the one the town is reportedly considering accepting because it is the lowest.
However, as the coalition pointed out in their letter, B&W Paving recently entered a $360,756 settlement with Tong’s office after it was found to be engaging in bid rigging.
The coalition also questioned the qualifications of the other bidders, noting that Baltazar Construction, Inc. was fined $70,000 by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for unsafe working conditions at a sewer construction project in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Ludlow Construction was sued by Hartford’s Metropolitan District over allegations it improperly installed a UV-resin liner to reinforce existing sewer pipelines. The fourth bidder, CJ Fucci Construction, has also been involved with project issues in Waterford and New Haven.
The coalition also raised concerns that the lowest bidder for a project at the Old Colony Beach Association was the highest bidder for the Sound View project despite the communities being adjacent and having roughly the same number of properties.
Further, the coalition says there are accounting discrepancies associated with the project.
“In addition to Clean Water Funds, Connecticut DEEP announced a special provision – a $15 million “forgivable” loan, because this project would otherwise be considered unaffordable. When DEEP authored this in 2022, the Old Lyme WPCA Chair and the WPCA Chairs of the private beach municipalities publicly stated that they had already spent $4.1 million on this effort. However, to date, the town Finance Director has only been able to identify one charge of $553,047.50 which was later reimbursed by Clean Water Funds. We therefore question the accuracy of the $4.1 million number. These are state and federal funds, that will not be paid back once released.” coalition members wrote in their letter.
This story has been updated to reflect increases in estimated fees Sound View residents will pay for the cost of sewer construction.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
No. The Soundview Sewer Coalition, LLC should not have sent that letter. These are the blue-collar people in Old Lyme? They need help. But first they need to understand. Alex Appel wrote an article sometime back in early December 2024 about the AG’s Settlement with B&W Paving, correct? It was in response to Press Release issued by the Office of the AG about bid-rigging and anti-trust laws and the Office of the AG is hear to protect the people and they won’t tolerate this kind of..blah blah blah, yes? Everyone eats it up. It reads like the resolution to some great investigative sting stakeout initiated by the AG years earlier. Is that right? How did you read the press conference? Better yet, what did you think about the the part of Alex Appel’s article where she writes, “The contractors and their principals, the husband and wife who own the companies, agreed to pay the state $216,454 in civil penalties. The rest of the settlement—$144,302—is deferred on the condition that the contractors abide by the terms of the agreement.” The title of that article is , “Married couple caught bid-rigging state contracts to pay $360K.” So its really only $216K now. That’s a good deal. Here is the real headline news: “Attorney General William Tong takes back the $216,000 he handed to “Single Member” Advance Resources LLC on February 3, 2024 [Invoice JUD101129134, Expense Category=Government Buildings, Fund=Capitol Improvements & Other].” But AG Tong lets Advance Resources LLC keep the additional 30K he hands the wife on April 16, 2024.
But maybe no one has or sees a problem with that number. And maybe no one cares that B&W gets to keep all 14 checks the AG hands the husband throughout FY 2024 for a grand total of $1.2 million. So is Soundview certain they want to send a letter to Lamont and the AG and DEEP? I would go a completely different route. But that’s just me.