Groton Open Space Association

Groton Council Tentatively OKs ERT For Mystic Woods Tract

GROTON — The Town Council tentatively endorsed requesting that an Environmental Review Team (ERT) assess the 105-acre Fort Hill tract between Flanders Road and Route 1 on which a developer wants to build a 241-unit Active Senior Housing community.

The council voted 5 to 3 Aug. 22, 2006, to direct Mayor Harry Watson, who opposes council action on the matter, to ask for an ERT as soon as possible. A week earlier, the council had voted to hold off immediate action, pending a report from the Office of Planning and Development Services on the status of the project.

Voting for the motion were Councilors Paulann Sheets, Elissa Wright, Heather Bond, Peter Bartinik and Mick O’Beirne. Mr. O’Beirne had made the motion. Against were Mayor Watson and Councilors Catherine Kolnaski and John Scott. Councilor James Streeter did not attend the meeting.

The vote by the council’s committee of the whole does not become binding until an ERT request gets 5 votes at the next regular meeting of the council Sept. 5.

The main issue in the debate that preceded the vote was whether the council should involve itself in matters that are decided by land use agencies. Town Manager Mark Oefinger and Councilors Kolnaski and Scott argued in the negative, with Mayor Watson apparently agreeing. A week earlier he had said the council could be overstepping its bounds if it got involved.

Mr. Scott contended that the council delegates its authority to the land-use agencies when it appoints their members and that requesting an ERT would encourage other groups to come to the council seeking similar requests, bypassing land-use agencies. Mr. Oefinger said that while the matter was before the Inland Wetlands Agency, that agency should be the authority to ask for an ERT.

Mr. Oefinger did report that Atty. Harry Heller, representing the would-be developer Hawthorne Development Partners LLC, of Woburn, Massachusetts, had no objection to an ERT, though he said Hawthorne was not willing to withdraw its IWA application while the evaluation took place. An ERT report can take months to be produced.

Councilor Kolnaski said any ERT request should come from the IWA.

Councilor Sheets, who had proposed the ERT the previous week, said it was a mistake to create “great big lines” between the council and land-use agencies. She said that while a council decision to call for an ERT may not dovetail with the way land use normally is handled in Groton “many people in this town are worried about how we do land use here.”

She said there is nothing “in the Inland Wetlands statute that limits the authority of the town.” She further said that the town should have hired a hydrologist, instead of the wetlands scientist it did hire, to conduct studies of runoff from the proposed project. She also objected to the developer’s plan for a road from the proposed project intersecting with Route 1 on Fort Hill.

By the end of the debate, Mr. Oefinger was calling the motion for the council to ask for an ERT “an innovative compromise” between doing nothing and specifically asking the IWA to call for an ERT, the latter being one option discussed. He said, however, that his own choice would have been to leave the matter to the land-use agencies.

The Connecticut ERT website offers this background:

“The ERT is a group of environmental professionals drawn together from a variety of federal, state, regional and local agencies to form a multi-disciplinary environmental study team to assist municipalities in the review of sites proposed for development or to provide natural resource inventories for planning purposes.

“The ERT works under the guidance of the Connecticut Resource Conservation and Development Areas (RC&D’s). The RC&D’s are a federal and state sponsored program that encourages the blending of natural resource use with local economic and social values.”

The IWA will continue its public hearing on the IWA application Aug. 23, 2006, one day after the Committee of the Whole meeting. Councilor Wright said at the Committee of the Whole that it was “theoretically possible” that the IWA could request an ERT on its own at its meeting. If the IWA doesn’t reject the developer’s application, the project still would need approval from the Zoning Commission and the Planning Commission.

Wendy MacFarland, a Bel-Aire resident who has been active in opposing Mystic Woods and calling for an ERT, told the council that “now is the time for Groton to start doing something for the people and land…Why do we always have to please the developer? Let’s get in the driver’s seat.” She warned that Groton “could look like Orlando in another five years if we’re not careful.”

Ms. MacFarland as a citizen was allowed to comment in the Committee of the Whole using time allotted to Councilor Wright, who donated it to Ms. MacFarland.