Rivers Alliance
of Connecticut
Connecticut's United Voice for
River Conservation
Home
P.O. Box 1797
Litchfield, CT 06759
860-361-9349
rivers@
riversalliance.org
(last updated Wed 8/4/08)
Click here for RA's analysis of the 2008 legislative session.
RIVERS ALLIANCE ADVOCACY INITIATIVES FOR 2009
In this document : Inland-Wetlands and Water Courses Act, River-Buffer Legislation, Pesticides and Medications in Water, Sewage Treatment Technology, Loophole in Power-Plant Siting, Funding for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)
Inland-Wetlands and Water Courses Act
The burden of protecting the state's increasingly
valuable water resources falls almost entirely on local volunteer commissioners.
In the last dozen years, the DEP has largely abandoned its role as a helper of
local commissions and enforcer of last resort. Commissions are faced
with ever more complex applications and threats of litigation. Recent
court rulings have nibbled away at the authority traditionally presumed to
reside with local commissions. The results are loss of wetlands, streams
impaired by polluted runoff, disappearance of populations of frogs, turtles and
salamanders, increased flood, and large dead zones in Long Island Sound.
Rivers Alliance supports legislation to enhance the Inland-Wetlands and Water Courses Act by stating in plain language the state's commitment to the protection of wetlands and streams; by allowing the commissions to take into consideration credible evidence by, for example, water utilities or eye witnesses, when evaluating applications; and by making explicit the implicit statement in the Act that the burden of proof is on the applicant not the commissioners.
Among our partners in this effort are Connecticut Fund for the Environment, Trout Unlimited, Housatonic Valley Association, Audubon Connecticut, the Tidewater Institute, Connecticut Audubon Society and others.
The simplest, most efficient, and most cost effective means of protecting water quality in the state's waters, including Long Island Sound, is to promote natural vegetation along banks and shorelines. Vegetation buffers the effects of runoff from rain and snow. Green buffers soak up storm water, reducing flooding and banking water in the ground for times of drought. Buffers filter and break down or attenuate contaminants, such as motor oil, pet waste, road salt, and cleaning products. Trees provide shade and nutrients for aquatic life. In urban areas, buffers can be incorporated into redevelopment projects to enhance enjoyment of city rivers.
Rivers Alliance supports legislation, similar to the law in Massachusetts, to discourage paving, clear cutting, and other buffer-destructive activities within 100 feet of water's edge. We are working with the same group of partners mentioned above, and we have teamed particularly with the Housatonic Valley Association to create educational materials on the importance of river buffers.
Pesticides and Medications in Water
Pesticides and medications are often similar or identical in
chemical structure effects, and both are prevalent in streams, ponds, and beach
waters. The most recent science shows that the complex cocktail of toxins
in fresh and salt water is potent enough to damage aquatic life. The
effect on humans is less clear, but the evidence points in a bad direction.
Rivers Alliance supports a range of efforts to limit the disposal of medications into wastewater and to limit the cosmetic use of pesticides in and near the state's waters. We work closely with the Farmington River Watershed Association, who is the lead group in the state on this issue.
The state's open-space land is disappearing, and most of the easy-to-develop places are taken. One way to shoehorn projects into limited space is to use what is called “ATS.” This refers to a variety of packaged, on-site sewage-treatment technologies that, in theory, provide sewage treatment in a small space. (ATS stands for “alternate” or “advanced” treatment systems.) The technology is neutral in the sense that it can be used to support smart growth (in a village center, for example) or to violate smart growth (for example, by permitting dense development in sensitive sites near well fields, trout streams, and swimming spots). Unfortunately, the performance of ATS has been well below the promised results, with some facilities meeting permit requirements about half the time and other facilities not coming close. The poor performance is exacerbated in Connecticut by an enforcement breakdown at the understaffed DEP and a division of authority between the DEP and the Department of Public Health.
Rivers Alliance of Connecticut is working with the lead state agencies and the Geoffrey Hughes Foundation to develop educational materials on this issue, as well as recommendations for ensuring that the technology performs as promised and is used and monitored wisely. Our partners in this effort include The Nature Conservancy, Harbor Watch/River Watch, and Connecticut Fund for the Environment.
Loophole in Power-Plant Siting
Public Act 07-242, An Act Concerning Electricity and Energy Efficiency, has many good features, but a vast loophole. The law severely curtails and possibly eliminates the Siting Council's authority with respect to any “grid-side” distributed resource project generating not more than 65 megawatts. This could be, for example, a large biomass, wind, or hydro plant.
The law says that the Siting Council “shall … approve by declaratory ruling” the construction and location of the [grid-side] project, “so long as such project meets air-quality standards of the Department of Environmental Protection. In other, similar legislation, Rivers Alliance has worked with legislators to add “water-quality standards” to the air-quality criterion. The absence of a requirement to meet state water-quality standards is probably an oversight. Nevertheless, as the law is written, the Siting Council must automatically approve any such project, even if were an environmental disaster. For example, the project might need 10 million gallons per day of cooling water, the destruction of the last habitat of an endangered species, and the generation of enough noise to deafen all neighbors. Presumably other government officials would have jurisdiction over such impacts, but the very important Siting Council would not.
The declaratory-ruling process that the Siting Council is apparently required to use for grid-side projects under 65 MW, essentially short cuts the standard certification process. Rivers Alliance will advocate that the law be changed to give the Siting Council the option of using a full certificate process or the abbreviated declaratory-ruling process. Further, Rivers Alliance will ask that the Siting Council be required to use the full certificate process for water-cooled power plants. Today's efficient energy technology makes it possible to site a plant away from the Sound in small fresh-water watersheds. Withdrawing one million plus gallons per day (as even a small plant may require) could be devastating in some watersheds.
Rep. Steve Fontana, co-chair of the Energy and Technology Committee, has promised to work with Rivers Alliance on this issue.
Funding for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)
Chronic underfunding of the DEP is undercutting the agency's ability to do its job. In fiscal year 2007 General Fund support of the DEP in adjusted dollars was slightly below what it was in 1972. The DEP has about 1,000 employees, the same as in 1988. As a percentage of the state budget, General Fund support for the DEP in 1972 was 0.7 percent. Today, it has shrunk to 0.2 percent!! This means that the DEP cannot keep up with sewage-treatment inspections, cleaning up state parks, wetlands violations, air-quality enforcement, and numerous other issues. Rivers Alliance and numerous other environmental and civic groups are already asking for more funds for the DEP in 2009.
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