Groton Open Space Association

GOSA Seeks WRPD Moratorium

GROTON — Joan Smith read a GOSA statement, at Citizen’s Petitions, February 20, 2007 Groton Town Council meeting, requesting collaboration with the Planning and Zoning Commissions to impose a moratorium, for up to one year, on new applications for development within the State-designated Water Resource Protection District, surrounding the Groton reservoir system. The Council referred the request to the committee of the Whole. The text of GOSA’s request:

“GOSA recommends that the Town Council collaborate with the Planning and Zoning Commissions to seek a moratorium on all new applications for development within the CT State-designated Groton Water Resource Protection District. The State of Connecticut Plan of Conservation and Development 2005-2010 policy for state-designated conservation areas and public drinking water supply watersheds states: “Guide intensive development away from existing and potential water supply watersheds and aquifers and consider the cumulative effects of incremental growth in state, regional and local planning programs and regulations.”

The moratorium could provide time, for up to one year, to allow completion of a State-funded study of the WRPD, already under way, and for implementation of appropriate amendments to the Groton Town Zoning regulations, as they relate to stormwater discharge and water resource protection. Thankfully, the existing zoning regulations provided sufficient protective language to support a recent Planning Commission motion to deny a large retail development within the WRPD. However, GOSA recommends more stringent requirements for percentages of impervious and undisturbed surfaces, and more stringent requirements for the treatment and discharge of storm water. Revised regulations need to conform to current engineering practices, and to the standards found in the Connecticut DEP 2004 Stormwater Quality Manual. Additionally, the regulations may require an outside engineering review, by a qualified CT Licensed Professional Engineer, on any applications within the Water Resource Protection District, with the cost to be borne by the applicant.

Mike Murphy, Director of Groton Department of Planning and Development Services, introduced an “economic development master plan” at the Planning Commission Feb. 13, 2007 meeting, which could have a profound deleterious impact on the reservoir system. This plan would provide for a connector road between Buddington Road and a site proximate to the intersection of Winding Hollow and Antonino Roads. The plan would “infill” the area, now forested, with commercial development in more “depth” than is possible now. This “master plan” would imperil the existing protection the reservoir receives from natural vegetative cover by permitting an increase of many acres of impervious surface area. Mr. Murphy further recommended against the citizens’ requests to restrict truck traffic on Winding Hollow Road, despite the fact that the road now serves only a residential area.

Despite the State designation of a Water Resource Protection District, and despite the proximity of the area to the Groton Reservoir water system, Mr. Murphy classified this area as “low priority” for protection. He advocated more commercial development similar to the existing Wal-Mart, the new Hyatt Hotel, the Mariott Hotel, and the proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter. This “Master Plan” alone threatens the WRPD, and is reason, by itself, to impose a moratorium until a review of the watershed can be completed and more comprehensive and protective regulations can be adopted.

The CT Department of Public Health Drinking Water Section (DWS) stated in a Jan. 8, 2007 memo that: “A new commercial development containing over fifty percent of built up area is inconsistent with this strategy for the protection of the State’s public drinking water supplies.” Groton Town regulations allow up to seventy percent impervious coverage within the WRPD. “Built up areas” include not only impervious surfaces such as roads, parking lots, sidewalks and rooftops, but also drainage ditches, stormwater basins and other disturbed areas. A strip of landscaping next to a building, tree wells within a parking lot, and narrow vegetative buffers do not provide sufficient overland flow to adequately absorb and provide for plant uptake of contaminants and nutrients. The Commissions might want to review the regulations in other communities, concerning specific requirements for building coverage, pavement, and other impervious surfaces, such as sidewalks, etc. This type of regulation is very common in other towns, and can provide sample language for use in Groton.

A large number of citizens attended three, very long, Planning Commission meetings, and many signed petitions against the Wal-Mart application, indicating a growing concern for the impending peril to our reservoir system. Clean water is our most valuable resource, which you have the responsibility to protect, and which can only increase in value. Montville recently lost a manufacturing business due to inferior water. Please do not let this happen in Groton. Our health and safety and economic well being depend on it.”

Copies of the statement were forwarded to the Planning, Conservation, Zoning and Shellfish Commissions, the Inland Wetlands Agency, and the Groton Utilities.

Councilor Peter Bartinik questioned what legal authority the Council would have to engage in the request, without interfering with the authority of the Commissions.

Joan Smith responded that it is a function of the Council, as a policy making body, to provide leadership in promoting public health and safety, by bringing together the many agencies involved in watershed protection. She stated that effective water supply protection “falls between the cracks,” separating the jurisdictions of several entities: the Towns of Groton, Preston and Ledyard, the City of Groton Utilities, the State Departments of Public Health, Transportation, and Environment, the Ledge Light Health District, the Town’s Planning, Zoning and Conservation Commissions, the Inland Wetlands Agency, the Shellfish Commission and Federal agencies charged with protection of Long Island Sound, such as the EPA, not to mention citizen and commercial customers in several towns, who have an interest in protecting this regional resource.

–By Joan Smith