Commuter Lot Redo: Storm water handled
By Linda Lemmon
Town Crier Editor
PUTNAM — Work has begun in earnest on the rehabilitation of the commuter lot off Kennedy Drive.
Currently, according to Town Administrator Elaine Sistare, the storm water management system is being installed. It involves catch basins being installed in the lot and across Kennedy Drive where a filtering system is being installed. The system operates much like a rain garden. Water is filtered naturally in the storm water infiltration basin and then moves, cleaned, into the Quinebaug River.
This project involves putting piping under Kennedy Drive and between the basins and to the filtering pond and then to the river. She said the work will probably take a couple more weeks. Plantings around the areas will come later.
When that is finished work will begin on “modest to mild grading” on the recently purchased Eversource land and the commuter lot. That will involve closing the Canal Street entrance to the lot. 
Weather factors in, naturally. Officials said if there are starts and stops in this phase that the town will ask that work be “paused” for the weekend of Fire & Ice event Feb. 8. The commuter lot restrooms, recently victims of vandals, would be unlocked. If however, if they are going “gangbusters,” the town will just let the work proceed. 
With several events coming up for the downtown area a couple months after that, Sistare said they town hopes they will be “first in line” for asphalt when the asphalt plants open in April.
“The big picture,” she said is that “we’d like to be ready by spring.”
The project, several years in the planning, has a construction value of $950,000 and is being paid for with federal American Rescue Plan Act funding.

.