STATE WATER PLAN
The Connecticut Water Planning Council (WPC) has released a draft Connecticut State Water Plan for public review and comment. Public comments will be considered in the preparation of a final State Water Plan to be submitted to the legislature in 2018. The public comment period runs through November 20, 2017.
Copies of the draft plan and instructions for providing comments can be found at http://www.ct.gov/water.
To sign up for news alerts from the Connecticut Water Planning Council, register at www.ct.gov/water or send an email to wpc@ct.gov requesting to be added to the e-alert distribution.
Reservoir & Utility Lands
Human health depends on pure, clean drinking water. And nothing protects our drinking water sources like the forests that buffer and safeguard our reservoirs and the rivers and streams that flow into them. However, bad developments threaten our drinking water lands, adversely affecting our water quality.
Water Company Lands
CFE, along with its Endangered Lands Coalition, has worked hard to draft and pass laws protecting more than 100,000 acres of water company lands that surround Connecticut's drinking water reservoirs. However, another quarter-of-a-million acres of privately owned, undeveloped, and unprotected forestland that purify these streams, rivers, and reservoirs are increasingly threatened by unabated development.
During the 2007 legislative session, CFE worked to pass Public Act 07-252, removing threats to the successful program incentivizing water companies to sell their private lands to conservation purchasers. PA 07-252 clarifies that water companies can sell land to towns, the state, or land trusts for conservation without having to go to public auction, protecting them from cash-rich developers and shielding our drinking water from unneccesary contamination.
CT's Drinking Supply Watershed
Click to Enlarge. Map: Trust for Public Land
NU – NSTAR Merger
In February 2012, CFE was granted intervener status by the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority in the Northeast Utilities – NSTAR merger. CFE sought to protect 9,500 acres of valuable open space owned by NU in approximately 90 municipalities in the state.
An agreement was reached between the state and the two utility companies in which NU agreed to transfer 1,000 acres of open space, including King's Island (Enfield/Suffield), Skiff Mountain (Sharon), Hanover Road (Newtown), and Barlett Road (Waterford), into a preservation land trust. The agreement also extends the existing Memorandum of Understanding until 2024 concerning the other 8,500 acres of land. This gives the towns where the land is located or a local land trust the option to buy the land if and when the company wishes to sell.
In 2000, CFE successfully intervened in the proposed merger of NU and Con Edison. As a result, NU and the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to protect the landholdings. Nearly 375 parcels of land were identified as having high value for public recreation or natural resource conservation or preservation and were placed on a Conservation List as part of the MOU. The MOU gives towns and land trusts the first opportunity to purchase any of these parcels for open space conservation and recreation purposes.