Debate Over Constructing New “Super 7″ Continues

WILTON — An eight-person coalition of opponents to constructing a new Route 7 expressway from Norwalk to Danbury spoke in Wilton Tuesday morning about why this “dead road,” as one described it, should never be built.

Led by state Sen. Toni Boucher, R-26th Dist., each took a turn in Wilton Town Hall presenting reasons why they thought the state should not go forward with its construction, which ranged from damaging wetlands and increasing air pollution to awaiting the results of widening the existing Route 7 and exploiting opportunities to increase service on the Danbury branch of the Metro-North Railroad.

Identifying it as a “dead road,” Boucher said that after a 50-year discussion, every proposal for the expressway has been scrapped after encountering “oftentimes bitter opposition.” And besides repeated rejection by residents in the towns through which it would run, Boucher said current environmental regulations and road design requirements would prohibit its construction along its proposed path.

“The difficult and dangerous topography of the area and new federal guidelines for highway grades have rendered any proposal for a superhighway in this location so costly as to render it untenable,” Boucher said.

Portions of the southern end of the project were completed in Norwalk between 1969 and 1992, resulting in 3.9 miles of four-land highway connecting Interstate-95 to the Merritt Parkway and continuing to Grist Mill Rd. On the northern end, 9.9 miles of multi-lane highway were constructed from Danbury to Brookfield between 1961 and 1992.

The proposed extension of the Route 7 expressway, also known as “Super 7,” would run for about 15.5 miles through Wilton, Weston, Ridgefield and Redding. Of those four towns, only Weston’s First Selectman Woody Bliss has supported building the road.

The opponents at Tuesday’s presentation expressed exasperation that despite numerous town meetings, state studies and a decades-long court fight, efforts to build the road have arisen again.

Currently, the road’s leading proponent has been state Sen. Bob Duff, D-25th Dist., who earlier this month released the results of a survey conducted by the University of Connecticut — Stamford Campus that indicated a majority of support for the proposed expressway by residents of the towns through which it would traverse, as well as surrounding municipalities.

But Gail Lavielle, commissioner of the Connecticut Public Transportation Commission and, according to Boucher, an authority in polling methodology, described the survey touted by Duff as being inadequate to its purpose and, “far more disturbing, misleading to the public and worried and frightened people who had been reassured that the threat of having their lives disrupted by an expressway had disappeared.”

After pointing to weaknesses she saw in the survey’s sampling methodology, Lavielle said, “claiming that a survey like this shows overwhelming support for Super 7 is not only misleading, it’s just wrong.”

Identifying an impediment to building the Route 7 expressway that has not drawn much attention before, John Chew, executive director of the Brookfield-based Housatonic Valley Council of Elected Officials, said the current widening of existing Route 7 in Danbury is using the right-of-way for the proposed expressway.

With the current project costing $80 million, Chew said no government agency would agree to rip up Route 7 in Danbury after it’s been widened, so, “You can’t reach Danbury with Super 7 … because where you’re getting into Danbury is taken. It’s a valley; there’s no place else to go.”

Robert Nerney, Wilton’s director of planning and land use management, said that, if constructed, the Route 7 expressway “would have an enormous adverse impact on not only Wilton, but I think fair to say, on lower Fairfield County in general.”

Nerney said the ecological impact arising from a project of its magnitude would “significantly compromise” the waterside aquifers and air quality along the Norwalk River.

Patricia Sesto, Wilton’s director of environmental affairs, said the proposed Route 7 expressway’s right-of-way is largely placed within the Norwalk River valley, which is already “consumed” by the railroad’s Danbury Branch and existing Route 7. The Super 7 expressway, she said, would have little choice but to traverse the outlying hillside of the river valley, which is characterized, in part, by very steep slopes.

Sesto presented a list of hazards to the Norwalk River she saw occurring if the expressway were constructed, and said that in the era when the road was originally proposed, “our knowledge regarding wetlands, habitat and river protection was far narrower than it is today.”

“Given these environmental considerations,” Sesto said, “it is unclear if the highway is still worth the environmental price, or if the path that was proposed four decades ago is even still the best path.”

Arguing that both the federal government and Connecticut are deeply in debt, the first selectman of Wilton, William F. Brennan, said any available funds should be used to improve Interstate-95, “the most overloaded interstate road in Connecticut.” Brennan said the Route 7 expressway would worsen conditions on I-95 by feeding thousands of additional cars onto it.

“For almost40 years (the Route 7 expressway) has been discussed, but never constructed,” said Brennan, “(because) the people most impacted have strongly opposed it, they do not want it, and any efforts to resuscitate interest have been repeatedly defeated.”

At the conclusion of Tuesday’s presentations, Boucher handed out a notice requesting residents and elected officials speak against the expressway at the next meeting of the Municipal Planning Organization of the South Western Regional Planning Agency.

During its September meeting, the MPO reiterated its request that the state conduct a study of possible uses for the right-of-way of the proposed Route 7 expressway. The MPO next meets on Thursday, Oct. 22, at 8 a.m. in the Norwalk Transit District’s headquarters at 275 Wilton Ave. in Norwalk.