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The annual summertime Weekend in Norfolk, Conn., (also known cheerfully as WIN) will be held from Friday, July 30, to Sunday, Aug. 1. Small but mighty, Norfolk is bubbling over with an astonishingly diverse array of activities, from hiking and boating to classical music to dance music to visual arts to farming (and of course eating).
Originally, it was a winter WIN (Winter in Norfolk!). This is the summer edition, which will include self-guided tours of some notable architecture in town, including the Norfolk Library, the 1868 Soldiers Monument, the Romanesque Battell Chapel and the Battell Fountain.
The Freedom Trail is another self-guided tour, which leads to the grave of slave James Mars (1790-1880), who fought for the rights of enslaved Blacks. He is buried in the Center Cemetery on Old Colony Road. Beside his grave is that of his father, Jupiter Mars, who served in the American Revolution.
A different kind of self-guided outdoor walk is the Hike the Peaks Challenge: The dare is to hike all six of the Norfolk Land Trust peaks: Pine Mountain, East Summit Ridge, Beech Hill, Dennis Hill Gazebo Pavilion, and Haystack Mountain.
There are guided tours as well, including one of the village Green, on Friday from 4 to 5 p.m. or Sunday from 2 to 3 p.m.; and an Historic Postcard Walk on Saturday from 11 a.m. to noon. All tours begin at the Norfolk Historical Society Museum.
Warm up your leg muscles before your hikes with some dancing at Station Place on Friday starting at 5 p.m. with the Grantville Dawgs. The dancing continues on Saturday with Michael Cobb; he and his group will perform at Station Place.
There will also be chamber music performances.
Sunday is Farm Day with open days at Norfolk’s four farms: Husky Meadows, a certified organic farm will offer tours from 9 a.m. to noon; Autumn Harvest Orchard will welcome visitors from 2 to 4 p.m.; Lost Ruby Farm, a micro goat dairy creamery, is open to from 3 to 5 p.m.; and Broad Field Farm will allow peeks into the greenhouses where organic heirloom tomatoes and other produce are grown.
There is much more on the schedule, including fly-fishing, electric bike demonstrations and stained glass workshops; to get details, go to www.weekendinnorfolk.org.
And for those who can’t think of Norfolk in summer without thinking of the exceptionally good book sale at the town’s library, it will be held this year from Aug. 27 to 29.
The hours are Friday, noon to 5 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. — and after 2 p.m. on Sunday, the remaining books are free for anyone who wants them. There are often many, many volumes remaining at the end of the sale and the library appreciates having them taken to loving homes by bibliophiles.
Norfolk, Conn., has it all, from dancing in the streets to chamber music, from hiking to boating to farming. It will all be open for public consumption during the Weekend in Norfolk, July 30 to Aug. 1. Photo courtesy Weekend in Norfolk
Photo courtesy Weekend in Norfolk
Norfolk, Conn., has it all, from dancing in the streets to chamber music, from hiking to boating to farming. It will all be open for public consumption during the Weekend in Norfolk, July 30 to Aug. 1. Photo courtesy Weekend in Norfolk
Telecom Reg’s Best Kept On the Books
When Connecticut land-use commissions update their regulations, it seems like a no-brainer to jettison old telecommunications regulations adopted decades ago during a short-lived period when municipalities had authority to regulate second generation (2G) transmissions prior to the Connecticut Siting Council (CSC) being ordered by a state court in 2000 to regulate all cell tower infrastructure as “functionally equivalent” services.
It is far better to update those regs instead, especially for macro-towers given new technologies like small cells. Even though only ‘advisory’ to the CSC, the preferences of towns by law must be taken into consideration in CSC decision making. Detailed telecom regs – not just a general wish list -- are evidence that a town has put considerable thought into where they prefer such infrastructure be sited without prohibiting service that many – though not all – citizens want and that first responders rely on for public safety.
Such regs come in handy when egregious tower sites are proposed in sensitive areas, typically on private land. The regs are a town’s first line of defense, especially when cross referenced to plans of conservation and development, P&Z regulations, and wetlands setbacks. They identify how/where the town plans to intersect with the CSC process. They are also a roadmap for service providers regarding preferred sites and sometimes less neighborhood contention. In fact, to have no telecom regs can weaken a town’s rights to protect environmental, scenic, and historic assets, and serve up whole neighborhoods to unnecessary overlapping coverage and corporate overreach. Such regs are unique to every town and should not follow anyone else’s boiler plate, especially industry’s.
Connecticut is the only state that has a centralized siting entity for cell towers. The good news is that applicants must prove need for new tower sites in an evidentiary proceeding and any decisions have the weight of the state behind them. The bad news is that the CSC used to be far less industry-friendly and rote in their reviews, which now resemble a check list. There is an operative assumption at CSC that if an applicant wants a tower, they must need it, otherwise why spend significant money to run the approval gauntlet? This reflects a subtle shift over the years at CSC from sincere willingness to protect the environment toward minimal tweaking of bad applications with minor changes. The bottom line is that towns really cannot rely on the CSC to do all the work for them.
What CSC issues telecom providers is a “certificate of environmental compatibility” after an evidentiary proceeding (not unlike a court case) with intervenors, parties, expert witnesses, and the service provider’s technical pro’s sworn in and subject to cross examination. Service providers get to do the same with any opposition from intervenor/party participants – like towns and citizens -- and their experts. It’s an impressive process whose ultimate goal is the fine balancing between allowing adequate/reliable public services and protecting state ecology with minimal damage to scenic, historic, and recreational values. They unfortunately often fall short of their mandate – like approving cell towers with diesel generators over town aquifers -- evidenced by CSC only rejecting about five cell towers in the past 15-20 years.
The CSC was founded in 1972 and clarified its mission in the 1980’s to prevent the state from being carved up willy-nilly by gas pipelines, high tension corridors, and broadcast towers. With the sudden proliferation of cell towers beginning in late 1990’s, it became the most sued agency in Connecticut by both an arrogant upstart industry if applications were denied and by towns/citizens when bad sites were forced on them. CSC gradually formed a defensive posture that drives their decisions toward industry with deeper pockets and attorneys on retainer.
For citizens, nothing can wreck one’s day like the CSC. It behooves towns to protect what little toolkit they have, and understand the legal parameters of the CSC’s playing field. The CSC is not a “normal” government agency where municipal/citizen redress is based on logic and local support. Their process is largely immune to everything but specific kinds of evidence – like town regs with setbacks/fall zones, radio frequency transmission signal strengths, sensitive areas identified, and detailed wildlife inventory, among others.
There is a current cell tower fight involving two intervening towns -- Washington and Warren; both with good cell tower regs – over a tower site within 1200’ of a Montessori School, near Steep Rock’s nature preserves with comprehensive geology/wildlife databases that include endangered, threatened and special concern flora and fauna, on established federal/state migratory bird flyways, within throwing distance to a historic site capable of being listed on the Underground Railroad, and with an access road on a blind curve entering a state highway that will permanently damage wetlands, vernal pools, and core forests. There are well credentialed environmental experts, including Dr. Michael Klemens, former chair of Salisbury’s P&Z, as well as the former director of migratory bird management at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and an RF engineer testifying to alternative approaches, plus three attorneys representing intervenors. It is the most professional challenge I have seen at CSC since Falls Village successfully mounted one that protected Robbins Swamps several years ago.
The hearing is ongoing, with uncertain results. To see what it takes today to stop an inappropriate tower siting, see Docket #543 under “Pending Matters” at https://portal.ct.gov/csc before removing local cell tower regs – the lowest hanging fruit that any town can possess in case it’s needed.
B, Blake Levitt is the Communications Director at The Berkshire-Litchfield Environmental Council. She writes about how technology affects biology.