CIF Board Approves $2.85 Million for Three Norwalk Projects

NORWALK – The Community Investment Fund 2030 Board today approved $2,850,000 for three Norwalk projects in Round 9 of the program.

The board approved:

• $1,500,000 for the Bouton Street Sewer Extension,
• $1,100,000 for the Keeler Brook Pump Station Replacement,
• $250,000 for Friends of the Norwalk River Valley Trail, Inc. to study Woodward Avenue and the Longshore Avenue culvert.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff (D-Norwalk) serves on the 21-member CIF Board, which the General Assembly created to direct state bond funding to municipalities and nonprofits for community development, housing, health services, and economic revitalization.

The Keeler Brook station carries wastewater for the Connecticut Avenue corridor, a stretch of Norwalk that supports roughly 5,000 jobs and feeds the regional oyster industry. The city will build a new 4.5 million gallon per day sanitary sewer pump station on a 0.60-acre city-owned property at 493 Connecticut Avenue, outside the floodplain, and demolish the damaged station. Norwalk’s application sets a goal of ending the temporary bypass pumping and unpermitted discharges now in place within a year of completion.

The Bouton Street Sewer Extension will connect homes between 188 Bouton Street and 174-176 Bouton Street that still run on aging septic systems. The work includes four new sewer access manholes and approximately eight new sanitary sewer laterals in an area the city describes as challenged by poor soil conditions, groundwater, and flooding vulnerability.

“Sewer infrastructure never gets a ribbon cutting, and nobody thinks about it until the day it stops working,” said Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff (D-Norwalk). “Keeler Brook went down in the 2024 storm, and Norwalk has been running that corridor on temporary pumping ever since. This funding replaces the station, moves it out of the floodplain and protects the businesses, the workers, and the shellfish beds downstream. The Bouton Street project does the same quiet work on a smaller street, getting Norwalk families off failing septic systems and onto the city sewer. I want to thank Mayor Barbara Smyth and Norwalk’s public works team for bringing the board a plan that was ready to build, and my colleagues on the CIF Board for backing it. Norwalk keeps showing up to this fund with serious projects, and the state keeps saying yes. That is how a city gets its infrastructure rebuilt.”

The $250,000 awarded to Friends of the Norwalk River Valley Trail, Inc. funds two coordinated feasibility studies, carried out in partnership with the Manresa Island Corporation. The Woodward Avenue Conceptual Design Study will develop safety and mobility concepts for the corridor, and the Longshore Avenue Culvert Study will assess whether an undersized culvert is restricting tidal flow into the adjacent salt marsh. Together they produce the buildable concepts and baseline data needed to pursue construction funding.

Round 9 is the latest in a run of Community Investment Fund awards to Norwalk. Earlier rounds delivered:

• $5,139,240 for Lockwood and Heather Lane in Round 3,
• $2,500,000 for South Norwalk Elementary in Round 5,
• $1,000,000 for the Washington Street streetscape and $2,500,000 for Lexington Avenue mobility upgrades in Round 7.

Contact: Kevin Coughlin | kevin.coughlin@cga.ct.gov | 203-710-0193