After a controversial plan to remove water fountains to safeguard against germs and maximize dining and retail space got negative feedback, travelers can expect courtesy water at all 31 highway rest stops despite some delays.
Elimination
Contractor Project Service originally removed water fountains when it established plans to renovate 23 service plazas on Route 15, I-395, and I-95, even though a 2006 Connecticut Statewide Rest Area and Service Plaza Study considered them a “basic traveler service”.
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A public-private partnership between the Connecticut Department of Transportation (DOT) and Project Service allows the contractor to lease, develop, and manage the plazas for 35 years while the state receives revenue and owns the buildings.
Restroom Sink Water
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The Day first reported that travelers could bring their own cups to fill with restroom sink water while later customers were advised they could ask for free cups at fast-food outlets to fill with sink water. After that, Patch was told that customers could ask for a cup of free ice water at the food outlets.
However, The Day found out from a building code consultant that water fountains would be required.
Public Input
East Lyme resident Anne Werneau wrote a letter to Governor Dannel Malloy complaining about the removal of the water fountains.
Wernau told Patch that “I am guessing that mine was not the only letter they received, but it must have helped.”
“None of us envisioned the reaction of the public to this decision and we certainly want the plazas to be as user friendly as possible,” Daniel J. Smachetti, Director of Property and Facilities Services, from the DOT, replied in an August 2012 letter.
He promised that the plazas on I-95 would have water fountains while the I-395 and Route 15 plazas will have self-service soda stations with courtesy cups and signage that informs customers that the cups are for water from the soda station.
Route 15 and I-395
About 10 months later, David Collins reported in The Day that he “stopped in one of the newly remodeled smaller plazas on Route 15 and saw no obvious stack of free cups or any notification signs that water is free at the soda fountain.”
He later was told by the DOT that signs “have been or will be installed”.
DOT spokesman Kevin Nursick said on Nov. 27 that water courtesy cups with signs are in seven renovated plazas: I-395 Plainfield NB (northbound) & SB (southbound) and Montville SB as well as Route 15 North Haven NB & SB and Fairfield NB & SB.
Route 15 Orange NB & SB and Greenwich NB & SB plazas are under construction, he said, but will have courtesy cups when they re-open.
Nursick explained that the Route 15 plazas in New Canaan (NB & SB) are not required to have the courtesy cups until they are renovated. After work is completed, they will have cups.
I-395 and Route 15 plazas never had water fountains.
Interstate 95
The newly renovated Darien NB & SB and Branford NB plazas have water fountains, Nursick said.
About five months ago, David Collins reported in The Day that “there are still no water fountains, almost a year later, in the new service plazas in Milford, which opened in the spring of 2012.”
Collins wrote that those plazas “will get fountains within the next 90 days (late September), the DOT spokesman wrote back in an email.”
In a Nov. 27 e-mail, Nursick wrote, “The drinking fountains have been received for both Milford northbound and southbound.”
In a Dec. 5 e-mail Nursick wrote that the Milford northbound plaza fountain was installed on Dec. 2 while in a Dec. 6 e-mail, Nursick wrote that the southbound plaza will be installed on Dec. 12.
Four I-95 plazas are closed for renovations: Fairfield NB & SB, Branford SB and Madison NB, Nursick explained, but they will have water fountains when they reopen.
Water fountains are provided at the Madison SB plaza, which has not yet been renovated. The fountains will still be provided when it reopens after construction is complete.
All 10 I-95 service plazas had water fountains, according to the 2006 plaza study.
Rest Areas
The state’s eight smaller rest areas have water fountains with no changes expected.
These include: I-84 Danbury EB (eastbound), Southington WB (westbound), and West Willington WB & EB as well as I-91 Wallingford SB and Middletown NB along with I-95 Westbrook NB and North Stonington SB.
Federal guidelines prohibit the rest areas from being transformed into food and fuel service plazas so they will not be renovated.
