It took just a couple of days.
Last week, huge machines swept onto the south side of the Merritt Parkway at Exit 41. Loudly, insistently, they demolished dozens of trees.
Suddenly, the tranquil buffer separating the highway from the Westport Weston Family Y was gone. In its place were brush, wood chips, and an open view of traffic whizzing by.
Y employees were aghast. One said, “They took everything. There was even a hawk’s nest there.”
The Department of Transportation has every right to do what they did. It’s their land. In recent years, at least 2 people have been killed on the Merritt by falling trees.
Still, the speed and ferocity of the project was stunning. This is the same DOT that took about 23 centuries to replace a tiny Merritt Parkway bridge at North Avenue.
Meanwhile, folks on the north side, and east and west of the clear cutting — actual homeowners, not YMCA patrons and employees — wonder who’s next.