BRIDGEPORT — A 1.5-acre parcel in the city’s South End will soon be transformed into a community garden.

The vacant lot at 77-127 Garden St., behind the parking lots for the Homes for the Brave and Mercy Learning Center on Park Avenue, will be turned into a park and community garden using a $171,500 Open Space and Watershed Land Acquisition grant.

“Preserving open space in Bridgeport is critical to ensuring a healthy, pleasant atmosphere in this urban neighborhood,” said state Sen. Anthony Musto, D-Trumbull, whose district includes a part of Bridgeport. “This grant will transform an existing eyesore into an attractive park and community maintained garden, making the neighborhood an even better place to live and raise a family.”

The open space grants are part of a program administered by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection that uses state bonds and funding from the 2005 Community Investment Act to support 35 communities in purchasing 2,732 acres across Connecticut and as part of a goal to protect 673,210 acres of land by 2023.

“Land conservation is an important investment in our future, and moves us closer to meeting our goal of protecting 21 percent of Connecticut’s land as open space in the next ten years,” said Malloy. “These preservation projects are key to maintaining our high quality of life and making Connecticut a great place to live, work and raise a family.”

The lot at 127 Garden St. is owned by the Bridgeport Housing Authority. In 2009, the BHA was awarded a $200,000 EPA grant to remediate the site, which lies across the street from the authority’s renovated Eleanor and Franklin housing complex. The site was contaminated with arsenic, metals, mercury, and inorganic contaminants.

“Bringing Bridgeport residents closer to their natural environment through the expansion of parks, recapturing our waterfront and creating community gardens has been one of the highest priorities for our BGreen 2020 initiative,” said Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch. “Enhancing this open space with a new community garden will be a great addition to the neighborhood.”

Are you enrolled in Butler Business School in Bridgeport? If so, contact Linda Lambeck at 203-330-6255 or lclambeck@ctpost.com for a story she is working on.

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So you think you are a news junkie? We put together a little quiz so you can see how well you followed the news stories that everyone was talking about during 2012.

The answers are at the bottom of the quiz, but no cheating.

The answers:

1. She was scared of a man who was yelling at her.

2. Sagging ticket sales

3. A wedding ring and an engagement ring.

4. He set off a radiation detector used by the police to identify possible terrorists.

5. 4

6. Threats were made against utility workers

7. She took care of his dog

8. Fairfield

9. “I might have tacos when I go home.”

10. And with your spirit

11. Pearl Harbor Memorial Harbor

12. Open on Sundays.

13. Speaker of the House Christopher Donovan’s 5th District congressional bid.

14. Legalize marijuana for medical uses; and repeal the death penalty.

15. Yani

16. Wheelers Farms Road

17. The Dalai Lama

18. Atty. Hugh Keefe

19. 3

20. Chelsea

21. Against a Republican attempt to relocate New Britain to the Hartford-centric 1st District.

22. 50

23. Was run illegally and fined the eastern Connecticut father and son who ran the PAC a record $11,200.

24. 14

25. Scott Pellerin replaced Brent Thompson

26. Baltimore

27. Kevin Colley

28. Cheyenne Jackson

29. Naturopathic physician.

30. 28

31. It sank

32. 10 to 11

33. Outside Starbucks

34. “Scandalous”

35. After a furor erupted over the nearly $300,000 in controversial raises were doled out to office staff without BOR approval.

36. 4

37. Matthew Morrison

38. Two 40-foot-long tiger statues in the Detroit Tigers’ stadium

39. Roger Clemens

40. Dave Brubeck

41. Tom Cruise

42. 3

43. Paul Giamatti

44. Stalled work left dirt and debris in their yards

45. 12 years

46. An $11,800 bill for a water main

47. A pot farm for growing medical marijuana?

48. Had racy chats with a woman on Facebook

49. Restaurant,  menu make over in Food Network show “Restaurant Impossible”

50. Crawled on the floors in dark movie houses

51. A new playground

52. A $50,000 a year pension

53. Jeffrey von Arx

54. Marc Leishman

55. Obama= the entry drug to Socialism

56. Allow cell phone towers

57. 1966

The Greater Bridgeport Branch of the NAACP will hold its holiday reception on Friday, Dec. 28 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Bridgeport Holiday Inn.

The event will focus on gun violence in greater Bridgeport as well as the recent school massacre in Newtown.

Bridgeport Native Attorney Luke Cooper will serve as the keynote speaker. Cooper is a investor and lawyer, who, at age 12, was required to testify against his father, who went on to serve 12 years in prison. Cooper later graduated with honors from the Syracuse University School of Law.

Various community organizations with a violence prevention component will have information tables set up to share information about their mission and will seek volunteers. Some of these organizations are Connecticut Against Gun Violence, Bridgeport Police Department Community Services, Positive Young Brothers & Sisters Mentoring, Cardinal Shehan Center Girl Zone, Starwood Teens, Inc., Young Life, Connecticut against Violence, Taking Back Our Community and others.

Tickets at the door are $35 for adults and $25 for students. There will be hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar.

Officials in the “land of steady habits” watched other states switch from sand to salt to treat its roads in winter — for years — before making the switch itself seven years ago.

“We were virtually the last in the universe to make the switch,” Kevin Nursick, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, said on Thursday. “We had something that was working for us, and had for years.”

But the switch to a salt regime allows the DOT to pre-treat highway bridges with a brine slurry that reduces or eliminates icing, officials said. Roads and bridges can be treated as long as a week in advance of a heavy storm, and — unless it rains as it did on Thursday– the salt “reactivates” to melt the snow,  Nursick said.

The state saves about $7 million a year by using salt instead of the old sand/salt mixture, the DOT spokesman said. Most of that comes from not having to sweep up the sand every spring, and finding a place to dispose of the “spent” sand.

“It’s considered contaminated once it’s been on the roads and only so many places will take it,” Nursick said. Sand also got pushed to the shoulders of the road by passing vehicles and so required several applications, he said.

Not everyone is thrilled with the use of salt. “A few dozen” complaints have been logged over the past few years that the corrosive material was rotting the undercarriage of vehicles.

The DOT official said newer cars are designed to handle that material, and washing the undercarriage when weather permits avoids that problem altogether.

TRUMBULL — A Fairfield man was killed in a car accident on Route 25 in Trumbull at around 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, state police said.

Henry Mora, 43, was northbound, south of the intersection with Route 111, when he drove off the road, hit a rock embankment and rolled over, according to police.

 Mora was ejected from the car and pronounced dead at the scene. No one else was in the car. The accident remains under investigation.