Protect CT’s Watershed Towns (long version): Please send the letter below today to show Hartford you care! -

Learn more about the issue and how to help by visiting here: https://eastoncourier.news/2022/04/02/life-in-a-reservoir-town/

Long version – please copy/paste the following letter into a new email

STEP #1 – Please create a new email in your email software and copy/paste the following email addresses into the TO field:

Email To: CT General Assembly Housing, Environmental, and Planning Committees, and Community Leaders

STEP #2 – Please copy the following subject line and paste it into the subject bar of your email:

Email subject: Urgent Action Needed to Protect Connecticut’s Water Supply

STEP #3 – Next, please paste the letter below into the body of the email. Feel free to customize:

Hello,

I am writing to urge you to support the idea of exempting towns whose land is more than seventy percent watershed from the application of the Land Use Appeals law (CT Statute 8-30g), which allows developers who propose development in the watershed to sue reservoir towns in state courts if their proposal isn’t approved.

CALL TO ACTION:

Housing Committee: convert the “bill concept” introduced to your committee the week of Feb. 7, 2024, by Senator Hwang to exempt towns with more than 70% watershed land from the enforcement mechanism of CT Statute 8-30g and give the bill a hearing. Conversion from concept to bill should be easy; Senator Hwang drafted and introduced an identical bill last year.

Other committees: draft similar legislation if you can and contact Marilyn Moore, Chairman of Housing, at [email protected] (and other Housing Committee members). Tell them you support this concept. This is a bi-partisan issue of protecting water concentrated in a few reservoir towns.

Please read this article on the history of a typical CT water supply town, Easton – https://eastoncourier.news/2022/04/02/life-in-a-reservoir-town/. This is the type of town we are talking about.

CT Statute 8-30g allows developers to circumvent local Zoning and Conservation Commissions and erode sensible regulations that keep the State’s drinking water safe. For example, the Town of Easton employs low-impact development with large lot sizes to minimize the adverse impact of dense development on reservoirs yet is constantly threatened by developers who want to undermine that zoning.

But zoning regulations are not applicable in 8-30g cases, and when developers appeal denials of dense developments, courts have sided with developers in most cases. Developers currently can appeal to State Superior Courts and the Land Court in Hartford. All this litigation around zoning designed to keep the water clean unfairly burdens the taxpayers in the small towns where the state’s reservoirs are located.

Watersheds statewide have been under increased pressure from development interests, who have sought to build at higher densities than local zoning and public water utility regulations have historically allowed. It is a matter of urgent public safety and environmental protection that your committee remedy this unintended consequence.

The risks to the water supply are real. Several hundred homes are leaching sewage and phosphates into Candlewood Lake. Chemicals have been found in the groundwater in Weston. In Easton last year, a commercial property near a reservoir was found to be leaking gasoline into the groundwater. (see links below)

Bridgeport gets over 90 % of its water from a reservoir system, mainly in the Town of Easton, whose land is over 70% watershed. That same town’s system sends water to over 700,000 surrounding people in southern Ct. towns, including Greenwich. It is a similar story in the rest of the state. Our water resources are concentrated in a few locations, locations that are not suitable for high-density development.

We must protect Connecticut’s environment and our precious water supply from contamination that higher-density development can bring. If this water becomes undrinkable, there is no easy way to resupply drinkable water to our state’s towns and cities.

State Senator Tony Hwang and Representative Tony Scott have introduced the “bill concept” to the Housing Committee of protecting the environment and our water by exempting towns whose land is primarily watershed from this law’s enforcement mechanism.

It is a matter of urgent public safety that this “bill concept be “written into a bill and have a public hearing.

The 8-30g law has unintendedly increased the financial burden on watershed towns to protect everyone’s water by increasing the number of inappropriate development projects they must fend off. This is unfair and jeopardizes our state’s drinking water supply.

Below is an example of the type of project I am talking about. Senator Hwang’s and Representative Scott’s common-sense language would make unwise proposals like these less likely in the watershed towns.

In Ledyard, CT, a developer recently used Statute 8-30g to propose 26 units, 26 septic systems, and 26 wells on a 9.5-acre parcel next to a tributary that feeds into the reservoir that supplies water to Groton, the US Submarine Base, General Dynamics, and Pfizer. Local zoning requires 1.5 acres per house. This developer proposed 1/3 an acre per unit. Some of the proposed septic systems were within 100 feet of the river that connects directly to the reservoir.

The Town of Ledyard denied the application, and the developer appealed to the State Circuit Court and to the Land Court in Hartford, which ordered mediation. The developer has returned with new unacceptable proposals for high-density development on the land that the town must consider. The court may impose a development solution that risks water supply contamination if they don’t negotiate. Once water is contaminated, it is tough to purify.

Why should a developer be put in a position to pressure a town to compromise and allow some form of high-density development on a tributary that leads into a reservoir? Why should a developer (whose motive is profit) and a court have the power to overrule land use rules and rulings of a Conservation Commission and Water Utility whose only goal is to keep Groton’s water safe? Why should small towns like Ledyard bear the exorbitant legal cost of fighting off unwise proposals that put everybody’s drinking water at risk?

Amending the 8-30g law is consistent with the State’s Conservation & Development Policies Plan 2013-2018, which urges protecting the state’s essential water resources and locating new higher-density development where urban infrastructure – such as water and sewer service, jobs, and public transit are available.

Population growth and climate change effects, including drought and flooding, emphasize the need to protect our drinking water supply. Connecticut must focus on this critical resource as a small state with limited water reserves for its population’s needs. Please draft Senator Hwang’s and Representative Scott’s “bill concept” into a bill and give it a hearing.

Sincerely,

STEP 4: Be sure to include your name AND town:

[Your Name] [Your Town]

STEP 5: Send email [Hit SEND in your email software]