NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) – A state highway project to widen Interstate 95 from Branford to New Haven is consuming nearly twice as much land than originally anticipated, enraging several property owners.

The state Department of Transportation said in 1999 it would require 47 property takings for rights of way – 28 total takings and 19 partial – for the $1.4 billion I-95 New Haven Harbor Crossing program.

The DOT now lists 82 properties marked for taking, in part or in full, and the number is growing.

The massive project has evolved over the last seven years to accommodate redesigned bridges, sound barriers and highway interchanges not in the original plan, said Tom Harley, the DOT’s manager of consultant design.

The large majority of new takings are slivers of land and minor easements, some of them temporary, he said.

“A contractor may need to back up on a property owner’s driveway and the contractor buys the right to do that,” Harley said.

“So, yes, the list doubles. But significant acquisitions are not doubling,” Harley said.

That means little to property owners like John LaViola. With others, he has complained that state transportation officials initially told him his property was safe, then moved to take his land.

LaViola lost 19,000 square feet. As a result, the auto body shop he rents to cannot maneuver trucks as easily behind the shop where a steep new embankment drops in just feet from the garage bays, he said. In 2003, he lost portions of three properties.

“They really have some nerve,” said the 77-year-old LaViola. “First they said, We’re not going to touch your property.’ Then they came and said Oh, no. We’re going to take them down’ and I had to pay for taking it down because it was attached to another building. They gave me nothing.”

The state’s New Haven Harbor Crossing program is intended to improve public transit and widen the interstate along a 7.2-mile stretch from Exit 46 in New Haven to Exit 54 in Branford, and build a bridge over the Quinnipiac River. The I-95 project is to continue until 2014.

Land has been taken to pile up dirt and Jersey barriers, pump water and store bulldozers and other heavy equipment, Harley said. In addition, engineers ruled that the ramp connecting I-95 south to I-91 north should be two lanes, rather than one, resulting in more land seizures.

Residents of a public housing development fought for a decade to get a barrier buffering their apartments from the noise and air pollution of I-91, and the state finally agreed. That wall could require as many as 11 additional property takings, Harley said.

In all, the DOT has budgeted $55 million for rights of way activities, he said. That represents 4 percent of the overall cost of the project.

“We’re not adding a lot of significant acquisitions at this point. Most of them are minor,” Harley said.

But to landowners, small land seizures can mean big headaches.

Gas station owner Tom Hennessey said he was told his property would not require takings, but was later informed that the state would take a 1,000-square-foot slice to force a repositioning of his fuel business at a cost of $500,000.

“We had to buy the house next door, build a concrete retaining wall, move a cellular tower, move the tank farm, move the pumps,” he said.

Homeowner Yvonne Halloway lost 75 square feet of a driveway because state contractors required easements to move cranes. For more than a year she fought efforts to tear up her driveway and sidewalk and finally settled for $1,000, she said.

“They just send you a map assuming you are an engineer,” Halloway said.

The expanded property taking means lost jobs and lost tax revenue for New Haven, City Plan Director Karyn Gilvarg said. Land seizures associated with I-95 construction would cost $323,108 in lost tax revenues and displace 372 jobs, including 46 from a razed school, according to a study by Gilvarg’s office in 2002.

Property owners are compensated for the takings through the eminent domain process, but the lost tax revenues are not. With half of its real estate tax exempt already, New Haven cannot afford more property dropped from the tax rolls, Gilvarg said.

“Every dime is important here, because we have very slow growth,” she said.

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Information from: New Haven Register, http://www.ctcentral.com

AP-ES-07-16-06 1325EDT