Fairfield is one of the few communities in Connecticut not to receive nearly all the federal money it requested to recover from Superstorm Sandy or other recent, major storms and disasters.

According to Public Works Director Joe Michelangelo, the Federal Emergency Management Agency twice denied Fairfield's request for a 75-percent reimbursement for dredging Southport Harbor of sand.

Michelangelo says the agency instead covered about one-third of the expense, around $60,000, leaving Fairfield to spend $182,000.

While FEMA provided the reimbursement requested to dredge two other Fairfield waterways after Sandy, Michelangelo says Southport Harbor, being a federal navigation channel, complicated the application.

An Associated Press analysis found denials far outnumbered the grants in FEMA's final appeal process, costing local entities nationally at least $1.2 billion from September 2007 through September 2017.