Dredging firm seeks approval for amended Montville plan
A plan submitted to the town listed possible sources of excessive noise that include bulldozers, excavators, power tools and generators. The company wrote that it intends to install noise-reducing barriers and acoustic enclosures as needed.
— A North Branford-based company is seeking to amend its 2022 state approval so it can build a dredge processing facility at a Depot Road salt yard along the Thames River.
The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection found discrepancies between a plan it had approved in 2022 and the one submitted to the town for approval in September.
The difference is that the plan approved by the state called for dredged materials to be processed on a barge in the Thames River while the town plan called for the material to be processed on land.
“My understanding is the methodologies that we had presented in the town application were the preferred method of handling the processing of the dredged materials,” said attorney Harry Heller, representing the two applicants.
On Tuesday, Heller said Marine Management Materials LLC was forced to withdraw its site plan application from the town earlier this month because of the inconsistencies and because the Planning and Zoning Commission had reached a deadline to make a decision.
Marine Management Materials is working with DEEP to get the permit amended so it can then resubmit a site plan to the town, Heller said.
Property owner Uncasville LLC leases the site to Gateway Montville LLC, which uses it to store and distribute road salt.
In September, the two entities authorized Marine Management Materials LLC to submit an application to the town to process dredged mate
rials on a concrete pad at the site, which is the last remnant of the former AES Thames power plant.
No new buildings would be constructed, Land Use and Development Director Liz Burdick said Tuesday.
The facility would operate six days a weeks from Oct. 1 to Feb. 28, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m with the exception of Sundays and holidays, Heller said in September.
A 2022 study from engineering firm F.A. Hesketh and Associates said the facility would generate approximately 260 new truck trips per day from the 11.9-acre site, with a maximum of 35 trips per hour.
“The proposed development is not a high traffic volume generator, either daily or on an hourly basis, but the traffic that it does generate is mostly truck traffic,” the study said.
Besides trucks, an October noise control plan submitted to the town by Marine Materials Management listed possible sources of excessive noise that include bulldozers, excavators, power tools and generators, some of which exist at the site already. The company wrote in that plan that it intends to install noise-reducing barriers and acoustic enclosures around particularly loud equipment as needed.
Heller told planning and zoning commissioners in September the facility would bring dredged material from Connecticut and other states to the site by barge.
Once at the site, Marine Materials Management would determine if the dredge contained any hazardous materials, which cannot be brought onshore according to state regulations, Heller said Tuesday.
Heller said the dredged material would be unloaded and placed in bins where, if the material needs to be made more stable, it would be mixed with cement. It would then be loaded into trucks or rail cars and shipped to various contractors, which use it for construction projects, he added.