Conserving and protecting lower Fairfield County's coldwater fisheries

Seeking to find sources of contamination in order to address the problem, the students — working with Harbor Watch/River Watch, a program run by Earthplace, a nature center in Westport — collected water samples at various locations in the river and its tributaries. The students presented their research last Thursday at Ridgefield’s town hall.

The governor's signing of a bill this week has resolved a snafu that began last month, when state environmental officials prematurely started charging thousands of anglers $10 each for a new saltwater fishing license that didn't exist until the bill creating the new license was signed into law.

Environmental officials announced Thursday that Gov. M. Jodi Rell has signed the bill -- passed on June 3, the final day of the regular 2009 session of the legislature -- which now will require an estimated 100,000 people who fish on Long Island Sound to obtain annual licenses.

The current general permit originally expired on September 30, 2007. It has been reissued without modification three times, most recently on April 14, and this latest version is set to expire September 30, 2010. The most recent renewal requires permittees to reregister their facilities.

On July 30, 2008, DEP Commissioner Gina McCarthy published a Notice of Tentative Determination to renew the general permit with modifications. Based on that notice, stakeholders filed petitions for a public hearing and requests to intervene. As a result, the DEP suspended the proceedings and worked with stakeholders to address the issues and concerns that were raised and to further revise the proposed general permit.

I tried to do the right thing: I went out and bought a pair of felt-less wading shoes.

But I’m too late to protect the Esopus Creek in the Catskills from the spread of didymo, the “rock-snot” algae infesting premier trout streams in New York and New England. The Department of Envir­onmental Conservation says didymo has now been confirmed in the Esopus, as it has in the East and West branches of the Delaware River and the Battenkill River.

The February decision of the Conservation Commission to deny, for a second time, the Riverbend affordable housing project for 656 Redding Road is being appealed in Superior Court.

Frank and Reeda B. Harsche, owners of the property, filed papers on March 6, citing the denial of their latest application by the commission as “illegal and arbitrary.”

According to the court document, the Harsches are citing seven reasons for the appeal, the first being that the Conservation Commission’s decision was not supported by “sufficient evidence in the record.”

Findings from this first nationwide study of human drugs in fish tissue have prompted the Environmental Protection Agency to significantly expand similar ongoing research to more than 150 different locations.

Gardeners and lawn-care companies will have to rethink how they fertilize local lawns if Westchester County lawmakers approve a phosphorus ban that has been debated for two years.

The ban, along with other limits on fertilizing lawns, would take effect by 2011.

It is designed, lawmakers say, to reduce runoff of phosphorus and nitrogen into the region's water bodies and curb algae blooms that threaten water quality.

Connecticut Fund for the Environment (CFE), a New Haven-based environmental group, Monday released a list of legislative priorities designed to boost environmental protections that benefit the economy and positively impact job growth.

Curt Johnson, senior program director and staff attorney for CFE, commented on the penchant to characterize environmental policy as unworkable in the current economic climate.

“Investing in environmental protections grows the economy,” said Mr. Johnson. “Thousands of jobs could be created through initiatives that protect the state’s beaches and drinking water, and the economic return on investment for transit upgrades is three to one. Developing solid environmental policy is exactly the type of long-term planning that will help insulate Connecticut from major expenses down the road.”

Congressman-elect Jim Himes met with Fairfield County group leaders last week representing flood-prone residents from Darien, New Canaan, Norwalk, and Rowayton.

Less than a month away from being sworn in as congressman for Connecticut’s Fourth District, Himes met with the leadership of Save Darien’s Wetlands, West Norwalk Association, Friends of the Five Mile River, and residents from Rowayton who brought Himes and his team up to date on the position of beleaguered property owners in Fairfield County.

One of the annoying parts of owning a home is the cost of hidden upkeep. Say you've got your eye on a new dining room table; you can already picture the dinner parties, the guests, the fun. Then, wham, your boiler goes, and you have to spend your decorating fund on something no one will ever see. There's no glory in it, but it has to be done.

That is kind of the situation with Westchester County and the $235 million that the Board of Legislators just approved to upgrade sewage-treatment plants that discharge into the Long Island Sound. Sure, there are more glamorous uses for the money, but reducing the nitrogen load that the plants are dumping into the Sound has to be done. A cleaner, less environmentally stressed Long Island Sound is worth the cost.

Millstone built us a new bridge. Millstone replaced the leaky roof on our food pantry. Millstone built a playscape for disabled kids.

From some of the testimony last week, you'd hardly know that the Millstone nuclear power plant was up for a water discharge permit and not the Rotary Club's corporate citizenship award.

Elected leaders lined up to gush about what a great neighbor the nuke plant is...

...Millstone isn't up for the good neighbor award. It's seeking to renew its water discharge permit, a license to suck 2.2 billion gallons of water a day from Niantic Bay to cool its reactors, then flush it back into Long Island Sound 10 to 20 degrees warmer.

Riverbend plan: Same concerns arise at new hearing

While the public hearing was new, old concerns about density and negative wetlands impacts continued to plague planners of the proposed Riverbend development.

Because of technical difficulties, the Conservation Commission was forced to erase the past three sessions of the public hearing on Frank and Reeda Harsche’s application for an affordable housing project on their 626 Redding Road property.

Hence the newly opened hearing Tuesday night at the Redding Community Center, at which all residents who spoke called for the development to be denied, citing the “excessive density” and fears of pollution or damage to the watershed lands.

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Westonites participate in river quality research

On Saturday, Oct. 25, 76 people from Weston, Easton, Fairfield, Redding, Wilton, and Wesport attended the Nature  Conservancy’s Saugatuck River Watershed Partnership’s fifth annual macroinvertebrate sampling training at the Weston Grange. In teams, the volunteers sampled and identified the stream bottom organisms at 17 sites within the watershed.

Benthic macroinvertebrates are animals without backbones living in the stream bottom that are visible to the naked eye. This group includes crayfish, mollusks, such as clams and snails, aquatic worms, and immature forms of aquatic insects, such as stonefly, dragonfly and mayfly nymphs.

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In 1996, about 1 million bushels of oysters worth $50 million were harvested from Long Island Sound.

By last year, the oyster catch had dropped to less than $10 million, according to the state bureau of aquaculture.

Oyster populations rise and fall for a number of reasons, none of them entirely clear.

When the Sound was cleaner — before fertilizer run off, shoreline development, industrialization and sewage — the mollusks were plentiful.

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It was The Nature Conservancy’s first land preservation project and the beginning of a successful partnership with a conservation-minded community. That strong partnership continues today. The Mianus River Gorge Preserve is now managed by Mianus River Gorge Preserve, Inc., a nonprofit land trust, and has grown to a total of more than 900 acres, 166 of which are protected through conservation easements.

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This view from the waterfall on the former Gilbert & Bennett wire mill site off Route 107 shows how much of the Norwalk River has been “daylighted.” — Rachel Kirkpatrick photo

While the daylighting of the Norwalk River is about 90% complete at the Georgetown redevelopment project at the former Gilbert & Bennett wire mill site, infrastructure work is temporarily stalled.

“The roads are designed and ready to go,” said Stephen Soler, Georgetown Land Development Co. (GLDC) president. “We were going to the bond market,” he said, adding that now there is a question of when the bonds can go on the market with a decent rate. “With the collapse of Wall Street, it’s hard to sell bonds,” he said. When the bonds do go on the market, they will be benefit assessment bonds.