Dodging, weaving, and swerving left and right. This isn’t the description of race car drivers approaching their final lap on the track– it’s one of Quinnipiac students driving along Mount Carmel Avenue trying to make it to class in one piece. The obstacle in their way? Potholes, which only seem to grow in size and number at the end of every winter.
Superintendent of Streets for Hamden’s Public Works Department Joseph Longobardi said that while potholes are a year-long problem, they occur more frequently during the late winter into spring, due to the change in weather.
“During the winter you have the rain and then it freezes, and it tends to pop the asphalt. That’s when the potholes occur and the complaints start coming in,” Longobardi said. “We’re filling them (the potholes) from then all the way to the fall.”
There are two trucks that maintain approximately 228 miles of road, one in the north end of town and one in the south. With these two vehicles, the public works department has filled 322 potholes from Jan. 3 to April 4 of this year.
The process of filling and refilling these road hazards is a long one and it depends on weather conditions as well as the availability of materials.
While the pothole is preferably filled with hot asphalt mix, which has long-lasting properties, it is often not available in the colder months. If this is the case, as it is in Hamden, repairs are made with other materials like cold patch, a mixture of stone and oil, and then revisited in warmer months.
Longobardi said the department uses the cold patch to maintain the roads for the winter while the asphalt plants are closed. When the plants reopen at the end of May, they can begin using the hot asphalt as a more permanent patch.
Constant maintenance of the roads is not enough to keep the complaints at bay. In fact, they’re a daily occurrence. There are currently 136 pothole reports on SeeClickFix. Yesterday, that number was 122.
Potholes off of Sherman Avenue
Photos by Kristina Mendoza-Cabrera
“I normally drive pretty fast, but that’s all changed since coming to school here,” Quinnipiac junior Jaysa Quinlivan said. “I feel like I have to be so careful to avoid the huge potholes.”
Sometimes, the consequences are more than a little jostling.
“I’ve messed up my car severely– my bumper was all scratched up,” Quinnipiac senior and New Road resident Sarah Foley said. “There are times when I’ve considered walking to school.”
And while the list of complaints is never-ending, the current resources for attending to the issue only go so far.
“There are many roads that we do need to pave, but it’s the budget,” Longobardi said. “The budget and money is the concern.”
Records of the Town of Hamden show the budget for the entire public works department– not just the sector that works on pothole repair– is approximately $10.4 million, or 4.9 percent of the overall budget. For comparison, the Board of Education receives $82.7 million and makes up 39 percent of the budget. Debt services which make-up 9.3 percent of the budget, get $19.7 million, according to the Town of Hamden’s “Citizen’s Guide to the Budget.”
A breakdown of Hamden’s budget
Photo via Town of Hamden
Still, the public works department works with what it has. Along with roads like Todd Street, Shepard Street and Sherman Avenue, the department has been filling potholes along Mount Carmel Avenue since March. The back roads from Quinnipiac’s main campus to the North Haven campus are especially ravaged.
“The back roads leading from Mount Carmel to Hartford Turnpike? We were on that for a week and a half,” Longobardi said. “We laid 20 tons of asphalt on that and it didn’t even make a dent.”
This is particularly bad news for students like Quinnipiac senior Erin Redding, who has classes in North Haven twice a week. The 15-minute commute is one she dreads.
“It’s a horrible road. The potholes are just unavoidable because there’s so many,” Redding said. “I feel like I’m ruining my car every time I drive there, but I don’t have a choice.”
And it’s not only students who are exasperated. Hamden resident James Wise, a mechanic at Firestone Complete Auto Care, says he can’t even count the number of cars he’s seen this month that have tire damage due to potholes.
“A lot of people have been coming in with their tires busted,” Wise said. “We’ve had quite a few people coming in and complaining about potholes here.”
One of those people was his aunt, Valerie Harold, who lives on West Side Drive and busted her tire after hitting a pothole.
“It was crazy,” Wise said. “I had to replace her lower control arm and everything underneath after the whole wheel fell out.”
Nick Froso, another mechanic at Firestone Complete Auto Care, spoke to the cost of repair for tire damage.
“Immediately it’s like $175 just for a mechanic to look at it. A new rim costs an average of $400 to $500 apiece,” Froso said. “Depending on the car, it’s anywhere from that price and the sky’s the limit.”
The same cannot be said for what’s to be done about Hamden’s potholes. With an insufficient budget, there is only so much the department can do for road repair. Most of the efforts seem to go toward preventing the damage from growing worse.
For those like Longobardi, the constant filling and refilling of potholes using cold and hot patch feels like an ongoing battle.
“It doesn’t seem like a lot, but we do what we can for now and hope it holds over,” Longobardi said.
The Keefe Community Center, located just off Dixwell Avenue in Hamden, welcomed hundreds of job seekers on Saturday April 6, as it hosted its first job fair. Armed with their resumes and an entrepreneurial spirit, eager attendees arrived in droves. They were met by dozens of equally eager local employers excited to meet new potential employees.
The event was arranged by community service coordinator Y’Isiah Lopes, who less than a year ago was tasked with managing the Keefe Community Center and overseeing outreach projects in Hamden.
“I’ve been employed for seven months now with the town of Hamden, and when they brought me in they wanted me to do some outreach in the community,” Lopes said. “I thought it’d be a great idea to find some of the local employers along Dixwell….and get these jobs together and these employers together for the community.”
Unemployment is currently at an 18-year low nationwide, and Connecticut’s unemployment rate is similar to the national average at 3.8 percent. However, according to a 2019 study conducted by the Connecticut Department of Labor, thousands of individuals in Hamden and the greater New Haven area remain jobless. Both employers and job seekers agree that events like the Hamden job fair are an effective way to close that gap.
“I think unemployment is an issue everywhere, unfortunately. I don’t think it’s just in Hamden,” Angela Vey, an officer with the Hamden Police Department said. “But I absolutely see a lot of benefit with functions like this…I know that the town of Hamden does do a lot to help people try and get jobs.”
The Keefe Community Center has long played a critical role in the town of Hamden. For years it’s served the community through its food bank, by providing shelter for displaced families and by giving assistance to individuals facing heating emergencies during the cold winter months. After taking the position of community service coordinator, Lopes sought to expand the center’s role.
“It’s great being a charitable organization, but we also have to offer something else,” Lopes said.
With this goal in mind, staff from Keefe and Hamden Adult Education organized a job fair featuring mostly employers from businesses located along Dixwell Avenue. From Marshall’s and Stop and Shop to the Hamden Police Department, dozens of organizations participated in Saturday’s event.
TJ Maxx was one of the event’s most popular employers, with over 150 candidates filling out applications.
“Bringing employers in, especially employers like Home Depot, ShopRite, Starbucks, these national employers, I thought it would be great for the community to have the opportunity to work for them,” Lopes said.
For New Haven resident and job seeker Jatajia Copeland, the vast array of employers was a major factor in her decision to partake in the event.
“I go to CT Works in New Haven, and they told me about the job fair in Hamden today,” Copeland said. “When I saw the list of companies I decided to come. I’m not applying anywhere particular, I just applied everywhere.”
In addition to companies looking to hire, the job fair also invited representatives from employment resource organizations like the American Job Center (AJC) to participate.
“My role here today is to find qualified candidates to fill eligible jobs for local employers,” AJC representative Kevin Lawrence said. “People come to me and I register them for a job screening event at our facility. It takes place every week on Tuesday and Thursday.”
Based on attendance, there should be no shortage of qualified candidates. Lawrence explained that in the dozen or so job fairs he’s attended across the state, the usual turnout is around 75 potential employees. In just three hours, the Keefe Community Center had already drawn in 400 participants.
“A lot of employers really love the turnout,” Lopes said. “TJ Maxx and Marshall’s, they said they only came with 75 applications and they already have 150 filled out. They asked us to make more copies because they weren’t prepared.”
When asked why they thought the job fair was such as success, both employers and job seekers came to the same conclusion: it provided an opportunity to make a first impression.
“I think it gets people in and talking to people one-on-one and it gets the ball rolling really quickly because they’re accepting resumes and filling out applications right on the spot,” Vey said. “When you fill out an application online you miss that.”
Lopes echoed her sentiment, adding that taking part in a job fair also lets an applicant stand out from the throngs of online competition.
“When you go online and fill applications out, you have the challenge of 300 other people filling that same application out. By having employers here, you get more of a preferential treatment because you’re actually here,” he said.
Though this was the Keefe Community Center’s first time hosting a job fair, it certainly won’t be the last. Due to its success, Lopes hopes to make the Hamden job fair a semi-annual event.
“Six or seven employers are already committed to coming back next year,” he said. “I may actually do this twice and make it semi-annual, maybe do another in September with other employers in the Dixwell area.”
Bomb Wings and Rice, a new restaurant in Hamden, opened its doors March 16 and gives a margin of every purchase to an organization called Change the Play, making it much more than your typical wing spot.
Owned by Jason Teal, 39, and his partners Ray Guilbaut and chef Stephen Ross, Bomb follows a social business model that emphasizes a contribution to the surrounding society.
Teal built the restaurant so that a portion of every purchase goes to an organization called Change the Play, a nonprofit organization that strives to help at-risk youth by creating programs around education, healthy lifestyle choices and identity.
The idea was partly inspired by a friend of Teal’s who was running a nonprofit in Virginia that fed 2800 children a day. As a former member of the NAACP, Teal realized he could tackle issues of at-risk youth in his community more directly. He decided to launch his own nonprofit version of the program in Connecticut in 2013.
He founded Change the Play, a nonprofit organization that strives to help at-risk youth by creating programs around education, healthy lifestyle choices and identity.
“I partnered with a local church in Meriden in the summer of 2017 and we were feeding 200 kids a day at the time,” Teal said. “I had maxed out the capacity of the kitchen and so I was looking for commercial kitchens or spaces around, and people were charging me a crazy amount of money for only like four hours. So I was like, I could start a restaurant for this.”
Chef Stephen Ross, left, and co-owner Jason Teal, right.
That is when Teal reached out to Stephen Ross, a friend and board member of Change the Play. Ross also happened to be well-known in the New Haven culinary scene for his work at restaurants such as Cast Iron Soul and Anchor Spa. Together with Ray Guilbaut, they conceived the idea of a fried rice bar with wings.
“This restaurant serves as a central kitchen for the food program, so in the morning and on the off days, we make all the meals for kids, free, and at 11 o’clock we kick into the forward-facing business which is Bomb Wings and Rice Bar,” Teal said. “A portion of every meal goes back to the food program to feed kids.”
Teal is planning a grand opening for May 1, 2019 and has much more in store for the restaurant, located at 2373 Whitney Ave., for the future.
“I’m looking to build a franchise and open up a few more locations,” Teal said. “Once we prove that this is a successful model and it does great, then we’ll be looking to open up some more.”
Gus Eliopoulos is a co-owner of Fat Wedge U, a new restaurant on Whitney Ave. Eliopoulos said he believes the most important aspect of running a food business is making sure that their food is fresh. “We thrive on freshness and good quality,” he said. “We make all our own sauces and grind our own meet for burgers in house. We get product shipments in every morning, and we marinate our own chicken. If we don’t use all the chicken that was marinated for the day it goes in the trash and we start a fresh batch the next morning.”
Quick is currently the goalie for the Los Angeles Kings and won the Stanley Cup in 2012 and 2014. At age 33, he holds the record for the most appearances and starts for Los Angeles and has the winningest record in a single Kings season with 40 wins and 23 losses. Quick grew up in Hamden and attended Hamden High School before transferring to Avon Old Farms, a preparatory school known for its hockey program. Ray and Mike’s Deli, a local favorite, named one of their sandwiches the ‘Quickwich’ in honor of Quick’s first Stanley Cup win.
“We are more capable than we can even fathom or understand. We are more resilient than we know.” — Christa Doran, founder of Tuff Girl Fitness
Dumbells and kettlebells. Sweat and signs. Chaos and accomplishment. This is the scene at Hamden’s Tuff Girl Fitness gym, and inspiration bleeds from Christa Doran, the gym owner and fitness trainer who had to learn her own lessons in the worst way imaginable.
The gym Doran built with her inspiration and commitment forged into a community. But in 2018, a personal tragedy rocked Doran to the point she would need that community to survive.
Tuff Girl Founder and Fitness Trainer Christa Doran instructing a client. Photo by Rachel Liu Photography.
The rise of Tuff Girl Fitness
Doran, a 39-year-old wife and mother, founded Tuff Girl in 2011, just after the birth of her second child.
Originally from West Springfield, Massachusetts, Doran has been in the fitness field for a long time. She went to school for occupational therapy with the mindset that the two were similar.
“But (OT) didn’t fill me up in the same way fitness did,” she said.
Though she earned her Master’s of Science in OT, she found satisfaction running classes at the gym during her graduate years.
“I just felt super lit up in that space,” Doran said. “My true love is fitness. It has been since I was a little girl, but growing up you don’t say that you want to be an aerobics instructor.”
When she realized where her true passion lay, she began pursuing that path even when her professional life was momentarily put on hold.
After marrying her husband Mike Doran and giving birth to their first of three daughters, Livia, she left her job in OT to become a stay-at-home mom. It was not long before she missed working.
“I didn’t want to work when I had kids because I wanted to focus on my children, but I couldn’t help but feel like something was calling my name,” Doran said.
Three months after Livia was born, she decided to try something different. Being new to Hamden at the time, she didn’t have friends in the area.
“I wanted a community and a connection with women,” Doran said.
She started running group classes for women at East Rock Park in New Haven. She bought simple equipment and led group workouts. Women were even free to bring their babies.
“I thought it’d be a great way for me to meet people while also providing this service and building them up in a way that I didn’t see happening in gyms,” Doran said. “It was clearly filling a need that these women wanted. I wasn’t recreating the wheel, I was just delivering exercise in a way they had never seen before, which was from a place of positivity, support, love and empowerment.”
Through word of mouth, the unofficial business of Tuff Girl grew over the next 18 months.
Christa and some members of the Tuff Girl family. Photo by Rachel Liu Photography
Christa Doran. Photo by Rachel Liu Photography
With the help of her business-savvy husband, Doran set to work on this new goal. Mike, who has experience in business as well as a degree in exercise science, helped her to find a physical space, get the lease, licensing and registration.
When Doran, who had been pregnant during the whole process, was ready to have her second child, Mike decided to leave his job in surgical sales to join the Tuff Girl team full time.
Together, they have been growing the business since 2011. Doran has hired and trained a number of coaches and Mike now leads co-ed barbell classes and programming.
“Throughout the gym, strength is our foundation,” Mike said. “It’s about finding the joy that comes with being strong, living life to the fullest and using strength as a way to do things that are important to you whether it’s playing with your children, or lifting a weight you never thought you could.”
A gym becomes a community: ‘People really support one another here’
It was this atmosphere of never-ending support and empowerment that drew in coaches like 26-year-old Hillary Maxson. Having started as a Tuff Girl intern three years ago, Maxson is now a full-time coach.
“I feel so grateful for finding her and this place,” Maxson said. “Christa’s taught me that I don’t have to become somebody I’m not, that I can just fully be my own authentic self and not mold myself into what people think a typical fitness coach and trainer should be.”
Maxson is just one of the hundreds of lives Doran has changed through her hard work and dedication.
Barbara Esposito of Hamden is a Tuff Girl member who has been going to the gym four to five days a week for the past nine years. As someone who has trained with Doran since 2010, a year before the gym’s opening — Esposito has come to know her on a more personal level.
Tuff Girl Fitness Member Barbara Esposito lifting kettlebells. Photo by Brigid Hect Photography.
“I love Christa. She’s inspiring, she’s brave and she’s kind,” Esposito said. “She and I have known each other for nine years and we’ve grown a lot together in terms of loving our bodies.”
Esposito credits Doran for teaching her that being beautiful doesn’t come in the form of skinny.
As someone who battled anorexia from a young age, Doran knows all about the difficulties of self-love and acceptance.
“I did not love or respect or appreciate my body,” Doran said. “I was so consumed with trying to change my body in a way that I thought would bring me happiness. No matter the weight or size I got down to, I was not happy, and I had no idea what I was capable of because I was letting food and obsessive exercise consume my thoughts.”
This image is a far cry from the Doran, chiseled and fit, many people know today.
“The girl who was 15 and starving herself could never have believed that she had built something like this,” Doran said. “I did not realize how strong, or capable or powerful I was, and I think that looking back — that’s my mission. It’s to help women realize how amazing they are.”
Clients like Esposito can attest to this.
“There is a thread of empowerment and feminism that’s weaved through here,” Esposito said. “It’s not a competitive environment. People really support one another here,” Esposito said.
Tuff Girl has more 550 clients that train regularly and sees approximately 4,000 visits a month.
Needing Tuff Girl in the face of tragedy
Despite the success of Doran’s business and career, the past two years have brought her personal life an insufferable amount of pain and hardship.
The horrific reality hit in May 2018 when Doran’s 6-year-old daughter, Lea, lost her battle to brain cancer. She died just nine months after her diagnosis August 2017.
Doran leaned on her immediate and Tuff Girl family during this time of extreme grieving.
“They [her clients] really supported us through Lea’s sickness and afterward,” she said. “They would cook, come to every fundraiser, bring cards, wine, chocolate, hugs. They were really there.”
Nearly a year has gone by since Lea’s death and Doran continues to be a pillar of courage.
”Christa is strong, of course in the physical sense, but also in the mental sense,” Mike said. “Even with everything we’ve been through, she still shows up every day as a strong mom for our girls and as a strong leader here in the gym.”
Returning to work just three months after Lea’s death, Doran said her work has given her a small reprieve from the pain.
“Pushing the sadness to the corner of my brain for an hour because I’m fully invested here was a nice distraction,” she said. “It’s because I love it and because I feel it’s really important work.”
In addition to her job, Doran found solace in other ways. Around the time of Lea’s diagnosis, she started a blog called “Lessons from Lea,” where she could pour her heart out in an honest and unfiltered fashion.
”It was so therapeutic and healing for me,” Doran said. “I realized every time I hit send, I felt better. It was like a mini-therapy session.”
The reactions the blog received shot far beyond her expectations. People were grateful for letting them so deep into her soul.
“I literally put the ugly out there and the response was really incredible,” Doran said. “I got so many emails saying ‘Thank you for saying how I’m feeling because, me too. You made me feel not alone.’ And that’s powerful when you can connect with people in pain.”
“Lessons from Lea” may have started as a way to cope with Lea’s death, but it has since become an outlet for Doran when she feels the need to write.
“When I have something to say or when I have a story to tell that I think could help somebody, I want to say it,” Doran said.
Doran hopes to one day write a memoir about her family, her work and of course, Lea, from whom she said learned so much.
Photo of Lea by Christa Doran.
Photo by Christa Doran
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Photo by Christa Doran.
Photo by Christa Doran
“She taught me how to love, and she taught me how to be brave because she faced really horrible things as a 6-year-old. And she did it bravely,” Doran said through tears. “If she can go through all that, I can certainly show up to life every day however I am, whether it’s mad, sad, angry or awesome, and give the best I have on that day.”
Even through her devastating loss came a lesson about herself and her own strength.
“I endured something I never thought I could,” she said. “Pain changes you. It shapes you. But then we also have a choice about how we continue to live our lives.”
Doran has made the choice to continue living her life in the most meaningful way she knows how.
By being there for the people and the things that matter the most.
Messages about love, strength, empowerment and self-worth are all ones she relays to both her clients and her girls on a daily basis.
“We have to give ourselves permission to be wherever and whoever we are today and let that be enough,” she said. “It has to be enough.”
For more information about Tuff Girl Fitness, click here.
To read Christa’s blog, go to Lessons from Lea
A photographer. An eclectic group of artists. An organization composed almost entirely of volunteers. All different, but with a common goal: to educate Connecticut residents about the Quinnipiac River, the threats it faces and how it can be used for good.
David James, president of the Quinnipiac River Watershed Association (QRWA), believes it is now more important than ever to get local communities involved with the Quinnipiac River.
“We really think that it’s important for people to have a hands-on relationship with their physical environment,” he said. “In a highly technological age like we have, it’s all the more important to get people relating to their world.”
The Quinnipiac is a river with a long history of pollution. The battle against corporations and industries that have polluted it has seen progress and setbacks. But regardless, locals are coming together through art, education, and activism to inform the public about the importance of their local river.
The Quinnipiac River has been an integral part of Connecticut history for 20,000 years. According to the Quinnipiac River Fund, it begins in New Britain and travels 38 miles south, ending in the New Haven Harbor and Long Island Sound. It travels through 14 towns, including Cheshire, Meriden, Wallingford and New Haven.
The Quinnipiac River, which begins in New Britain and ends in New Haven, is 38 miles long and travels through 14 municipalities.
As industrialization spread throughout the country in the mid-1800s, industries and businesses populated the banks of the Quinnipiac River because of advancements in hydro powered manufacturing. According to the Quinnipiac River Fund, “on the upper river, Meriden and Wallingford became (world-renowned) producers of (silver-plating) and (metalware), and their populations rapidly expanded.” As these populations increased, more industrial discharge and sewage were dumped into the river, causing the Quinnipiac to become severely polluted over the years.
In 1972, what had been previously known as the Water Pollution Control Act was amended and renamed the Clean Water Act (CWA). Under the amendment, the EPA gained the right “to implement pollution control programs” and “made it unlawful for any person to discharge any pollutant from a point source into navigable waters, unless a permit was obtained under its provisions.” Under this new legislation, industries and companies were limited to the amount of pollutants they could release into bodies of water. Following the adoption of this amendment, rivers across the country, including the Quinnipiac, began to see improvements in water quality.
Even with the CWA, the Quinnipiac still sees its fair share of problems. There are two categories of pollution that affect it today: point source and nonpoint source pollution. Point source pollution was the target of the CWA. According to the Quinnipiac River Fund, “point source pollution can be traced directly back to a specific origin. Typical sources are the discharge pipes from factories and municipal sewage treatment facilities.” Although the CWA allows specific amounts of these chemicals to be released into the river, companies still manage to find loopholes.
The banks of the Quinnipiac River were a popular location for industries and businesses in the mid-1800s because of advancements in hydro powered manufacturing. As these businesses flocked to Connecticut, increased amounts of discharge were dumped into the river.
Matthew Higbee, research and communications officer for the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, explained that in order to identify a chemical that pollutes the Quinnipiac, scientists have to specifically test for that chemical.
“The problem now is the chemical industry can come up with a new chemical and we don’t even know to test for it,” Higbee said.
Without knowledge of these new chemicals, it becomes incredibly difficult to identify them as pollutants in the river. In situations like this, point-source pollutants can be dangerous and unpredictable.
Nonpoint source pollution, on the other hand, usually takes the form of runoff. These pollutants and substances are carried by water across fields, lawns, parking lots and roads. Nonpoint source pollutants can include fertilizers, pesticides, road salt, animal droppings, litter, car fluids and dissolved metals. According to Higbee, these pollutants are the current major threat to the Quinnipiac due to the close proximity of the Merritt Parkway, numerous housing developments and the plentiful lawns and fields of Connecticut.
Quinnipiac Associate Professor of Biology Courtney McGinnis has been conducting research on the Quinnipiac River since 2015. While she acknowledges that industries do release chemicals into the river in the form of point-source pollution, her concerns focus more on nonpoint source pollution.
“(We need to) reduce nonpoint pollution sources,” McGinnis said. “While there are discharge permits to dump industrial waste into the river, we also need to improve the barriers to divert nonpoint pollution sources, like runoff.”
Because the exact source of nonpoint source pollution is usually unknown, it is nearly impossible to regulate. Therefore, nonpoint source pollution is one of the largest threats facing the Quinnipiac today.
Nonpoint source pollution can take the form of runoff. With the Merritt Parkway’s close proximity to the Quinnipiac, pollutants from the road can often be carried straight to the river.
These two forms of pollution have degraded water quality in the Quinnipiac and citizens are starting to see consequences. Although for years the pollution problem has seemed hopeless, locals are fighting back.
One of the most active and successful local organizations in the fight against pollution is QRWA. It has one clear goal in mind: to advance the conservation of the Quinnipiac River and its watershed. The group, which was created by a concerned group of citizens from Meriden, Southington and Wallingford, was officially registered as a non-profit organization by the state of Connecticut in 1979.
QRWA is made up almost entirely of volunteers. Although it does collaborate occasionally with scientists and politicians, according to James, the organization relies on volunteers.
“It’s a good thing, because part of our mission actually is to try and connect residents of this area with the resource which is the Quinnipiac River,” he said. “So it actually provides a vehicle for us to get people involved with the resource.”
The organization has three major programs through which it promotes improvement of the river. Twice a year, it holds an event called Source to Sound Cleanup. This cleanup can vary in size from year to year and depends on the amount of time that has gone into organization and the volunteer base. Some years, it includes as few as two municipalities and some years it may include as many as nine. The cleanup focuses on the towns of Cheshire, Meriden, Wallingford and occasionally North Haven.
QRWA’s environmental education programs are a way for younger generations to become familiar with the Quinnipiac River. QRWA works with local high schools and middle schools from Meriden, Wallingford and New Haven to categorize small aquatic life based on the species’ tolerance or intolerance of degraded water quality. At the QRWA headquarters in Meriden, students are able to use the organization’s classroom and science equipment to analyze the water samples.
Riffle Bio Assessment by Volunteers (RBV) is a QRWA program implemented by the state. In the RBV program, a small group of volunteers catalog macro and micro invertebrates in rivers across the state in order to judge water quality. However, two years ago, due to a lack of funds, the state stopped testing polluted bodies of water, like the Quinnipiac.
“Our hope is that they begin to save that data again because the Clean Water Act that was passed in the ‘70s and the state mandate that comes from that says that we’re supposed to be collecting data from all water bodies, not just from clean water bodies,” James said. “So we’re hoping that we can correct that and get that data flowing again.”
With more knowledge about the Quinnipiac’s water quality, organizations like QRWA are able to strengthen efforts to improve the river. And that improvement is critical if the Quinnipiac River is to be a usable resource for local residents in more urbanized areas of central Connecticut. James and QRWA understand how important the Quinnipiac can be for local communities.
“A lot of times people who live in urban areas have less ability to access cleaner areas and more rustic areas,” he said. “Just because they’re in an urban area doesn’t make them any less needful of natural resources or less deserving of having access to natural resources.”
Access to natural resources goes beyond a clean river. It extends as well to clean recreational areas surrounding the river. Another local group has attempted to tackle this problem in an entirely different way.
Pick-Up Artists is a group of artists who come together to rid local parks and recreational areas of trash and garbage. After cleaning up the garbage, the group settles down and creates art inspired by the environment. In October of 2018, the group gathered at Quinnipiac River Park in New Haven to tackle the litter that covered the area.
The organization is small, as it was formed in the fall of 2018, and was founded by environmental and political artist Zoe Matthiessen. Matthiessen vividly remembers the moment that drove her to action.
“I had been on a (bike) ride and I was sketching and on my ride home, right in front of me, like literally 2 or 3 feet in front of me, a seagull was hit by a car as it was picking through trash on the street,” she said. “I cried all the way home and I was like, ‘that’s it, I have to try to do something.’”
Matthiessen immediately began creating fliers and distributing them around New Haven. Shortly after her initial efforts, the New Haven Parks and Recreation Department began to help Matthiessen organize her idea and gather supplies.
The first two events, held at Edgewood Park and Quinnipiac River Park, were attended by 10-12 people. Matthiessen felt that the second event stood out over the first.
“I think the second cleanup was even more of a success, we got every little bit of trash out of there, I think we got about 12 bags full of trash,” she said.
Following pickups, members create art of varying subjects, from tree stumps to ducks, tugboats to lamp posts. However, Matthiessen hopes the cleanup events will help Pick-Up Artist members become more aware of how they are using plastic and garbage.
“You think about where the garbage is coming from and the short shelf life it has and how unimportant the function of it was, and it’s very frustrating because the lifespan of the garbage is quite long and the function that it serves is just so brief,” she said. “So I think that it makes you more aware of what you’re doing on a day-to-day.”
Matthiessen plans to schedule more events for the upcoming spring season. She stresses that the events are open to everyone, not just artists. And the end result is worth it.
“It is really satisfying to walk away from a place, seeing all the bags of trash lined up, thinking about how you’re leaving it compared with how it was when you first arrived,” Matthiessen said.
But Matthiessen has not been the only local trying to use art as a form of activism. New Haven photographer Ian Christmann uses photos as a way to illustrate how pollution has affected the Quinnipiac River. He received a grant to photograph the river over the course of two years, highlighting the beauty and abuses.
Although Christmann’s initial goal was to show towns along the river what the conditions looked like upstream and downstream from their corridors, he also made some unsettling discoveries. According to Christmann, he learned that in the ‘80s, the river was the second most carcinogenic river in the country and that to this day, companies continue to dump waste directly into the water. However, one discovery hit a little too close to home.
“One of the most upsetting sights I saw was the size of the discharge pipe pouring into the river behind Cytec Chemicals (now Allnex) in Wallingford, knowing that the water was flowing down into my neighborhood after that point,” he said.
After two years of shooting and exploring every inch of the Quinnipiac River and its watershed, Christmann was able to narrow his final project down to 150 photos that truly highlighted the various conditions of the river.
The final exhibit was displayed in the city hall or library of each town in the Quinnipiac River Watershed. After remaining in each of those locations for a month, the exhibit was moved to the state capital building for one last display. After the completion of the exhibit, the photos were donated to QRWA for educational and advocacy use.
Overall, Christmann was happy that he could fight the battle against pollution in a way he knew so well.
“It was great using my abilities as a photographer to highlight and engage people around the conditions of the Quinnipiac River, in order to amplify the beauty and abuses along the river,” he said.
As the Quinnipiac’s water quality improves, it has the potential to become a beautiful resource for recreational activities.
Overall, it’s important to remember why clean rivers benefit local communities. The Quinnipiac River has been a pivotal resource throughout Connecticut’s history. It can be a home to aquatic life, a resource for recreation, and subject of art. But as James claims, communities should rely on the Quinnipiac for their prosperity.
“I think we have a deep held belief that human health is tied directly to environmental health,” he said. “It’s not really possible to have a healthy community without healthy resources.”
A shooting incident in a Hamden parking lot has residents worrying once again about crime in their town.
A shooting incident on March 17 outside the Off The Hook Restaurant shortly after closing left two bullet holes in the passenger side of a parked car and one shell casing on the ground.
Though no one was injured in the incident, it nevertheless left some residents worried.
Guiseppe Pellino Jr., a Hamden resident and employee at the Wood-n-Tap restaurant, said he was upset to hear about the shooting on Dixwell Avenue.
“It’s scary to hear that, especially when it is so close to home,” he said. “That’s literally around the corner from me.”
This is one of several crimes involving firearms that happened in Hamden recently. Last month, in a two-week span, there were two armedrobberies and a woman was shot in her home
Pellino said he loves Hamden and is worried about the increase in crime.
“Growing up, this was a great town, and it still is… I don’t know what really has changed over the years,” he said. “I worry because I love being in Hamden and I don’t remember this being an issue before.”
The recent shooting in the Off The Hook parking lot is not the first shooting there. In September, a man shot another man in his ankle and a woman in her thigh.
Michael Cheng, the manager at Green Laundry, which is two stores over from Off The Hook, says he thinks the police should have a larger presence in this part of Hamden.
“I don’t think this neighborhood is that safe compared to others, especially at night,” he said. “I think there should be more police patrols in front of this parking lot because of the restaurant [Off The Hook].”
Cheng has managed Green Laundry for three years and says he feels crime has risen since Off the Hook moved into the neighborhood in 2017.
“Before they moved here, there was a crime or incident maybe every few months,” he said. “When they came, it was more and I heard about a lot of fights.”
Operators of Off The Hook could not be reached for comment.
Cheng said he believes that dangerous events like these have a negative effect on his business and customers.
Despite the feeling of people like Cheng, patrol officer Angela Vey said she thinks crime fears are overblown.
“I really do think people feel safe,” she said. “Especially when they see officers in the community and interacting with people.”
Vey said she was unable to comment on the March 17 shooting because the investigation is ongoing.
“We do a lot to ensure safety,” Vey said. “We have a lot of proactive patrols, officers are out stopping cars or suspicious people, we have bicycle and motorcycle patrols and in the summer we have walking beat patrols on certain days.”
Yet, despite Vey’s assertion of Hamden’s general safety, a website that ranks safety of cities and towns,neighborhoodscout.com ranks it in the bottom third of towns and cities in the U.S. when it comes to safety.
Unlike Cheng, Pellino says he has noticed stepped-up police patrols.
“Now, you definitely notice more of a presence,” Pellino said. “Hamden is pretty safe. I feel safe and it makes me feel good knowing there is always patrols on the street and in the neighborhoods, Honestly, they do a great job in the town.”
“I walk every day because I had a stroke recently. I try to keep my leg going. I love being outside and noticing all the flowers now for spring. There’s everything here, pretty much. Even though it’s a big town, it still has its small town aspects. Two strokes and a heart attack. I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and I fell on the floor because my leg didn’t work. Luckily there’s an elevator in the building. So I dragged myself downstairs and had the security guard call the ambulance. It was scary because I couldn’t speak right, but I got my speech back and I’m walking better. I’ve been through big things before, so it was just one more thing. Yeah, I’m tough, I get that from my Dad. I have good memories, that’s the good thing you know.”
Malawista was a medical researcher and Professor of Medicine at Yale University. Alongside his Yale colleague Dr. Allen Steere, the pair defined the illness brought to their attention by the Connecticut Department of Public Health as “lyme arthritis” in 1977. They determined that the illness was the result of a tick bite, and after more research outlining the variety of symptoms surrounding the illness, the name was changed to “Lyme Disease.” At the age of 79, Malawista died due to complications of melanoma in his Hamden home in September 2013.
