The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-06-18
WILL CREATE
 GREAT LAKE IN JANUARY
Large Areas of Four Towns To Be Inundated.

Seven miles of road running along the Housatonic river in Southbury and Oxford were acquired yesterday by The Connecticut Light & Power Co. for 500 The amount was fixed in a finding made by Judge Lucien F. Burpee in the superior court and, in accordance with an order of the court Vice President J. Henry Roraback of the company consummated the trans fer by sending a check for s10,00O to the state terasurer's office and filing in the office of the secretary of the state @ $10.000 bond indemnifying the state and the towns of Oxford and Southibury from all claims for dam- ages on account of the discontinuance of the road.
 Acquisition of the road, @ narrow and scarcely travelled thoroughfare between Zoar Bridge in Oxford and Bennett's Bridge in Southbury, was made by the light and power company in connection with numerous pur- chases of vast tracts of land and re- location of churches, cemeteries, schoolhouses and roads within an area of 6,000 acres of the Housatonic valley, to be inundated by the erec- ton of a mammoth dam a short dis tance below the Stevenson station on the Berkshire Division of the New York, New Haven & Hartford rail- road. The lake thus created will set back Hanover brook in Southbury
 Large areas of four towns will be inundated when the basin is filled, Oxford and Southbury in New Haven county and Monroe and Newtown in Fairfield county. The maximum depth of the lake will be 70 feet, since that will be eighty-one feet through at the base and will run down at the deep est part to forty feet below the mean level Of the river. It will be about 300 feet from the Oxford bank to the Monroe bank and a concrete highway will run along the top, talk ing the place of the present steel Zoar bridge.
 An entire new community was es- tablished in Oxford and another in Monroe, by the erection of barracks for the laborers, private residences for the engineers, and others, mess halls, stores and other necessary buildings. Five miles of railroad track were constructed. upon which ten small locomotives labor with traIinloads of material going to. and from the dam. From the construc- ton standpoint, it will be the largest project of its kind in New England, the next greatest being at Turner's Falls.
 An expenditure of approximately $5,00O,o00 is involved in the gigantic undertaking, but it is estimated that, by harnessing the waters of the river, S1 100000 will be saved annually in coal alone. Yet the construction is so arranged that none of the industrial plants below the dam will be allowed
 to suffer by reason of any shutting off of the water, as the regular 24-hour flow will be permitted to pass daily.
 The generating plant will be on the Monroe side of the dam. About SO,- COOL kilowatts will be generated yearly. There will be a 36,00O horse
 power capacity. Service is now being
 given by the power company to Wa terbury, New Britain, Naugatuck,
 Seymour, Beacon Falls, Cheshire,
 Southington, Branford, Norwalk and Greenwich.
 It has been necessary for the com- pany to go back fourteen miles from the dam and regrade the property of
 residents preparatory to flooding the
 district and it has had the effect o1 putting some of the farms directly on the lake front with excellent oppor- tunities for motor boating and bath ing. Timber has been cut around what is to be the shores of the lake for a distance of twenty-eight miles. The so-called Sandy Hook bridge over the Housatonic on the Waterbury-Dan- bury trunk line highway has been raised eleven feet to put it safely above the level of the lake and new i bridge of concrete, twenty-three feel wide, on designs approved by High, way Commissioner Charles J. Bennett is being constructed across the Pom peraug river. In other places, roads have been raised above the proposed flow line.
 The power company is the owner o1 a seventeen-mile transmission line tc Waterbury.
 With favorable weather conditions, it may be possible to transform the vast basin into a lake in four days but the engineers are figuring on nc definite period of time for the food ' ing of the area.