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MILLBROOK — Theater is blossoming in Millbrook, in large measure because of the Half-Moon Theater, along with some help from the Millbrook High School. Friday and Saturday, June 3 and 4, at 8 p.m., Half-Moon presented the first 10-Minute Play Festival at the Millbrook High School auditorium. The event consisted of 10 (which turned out to be 11) plays, 10 minutes each, with 16 different actors, actresses and playwrights based locally and from New York City.“It’s a really fun way to see a lot of different playwrights and styles, and every playwright has their own sort of voice,” said Geoff Tarson, artistic director of Half-Moon Theater. “I think it’s wonderful because there are so many different plays and it varies so it never gets slow. There is a new one coming in just a few minutes.” All of the plays were written for the 10-Minute Play Festival with a loose theme of city versus country. “Some are very much about that, really almost taking that literally,” said Tarson. “Some are a little subtle, taking that sense a city person has coming into a country environment. Some of them are just very vaguely related to that, sort of entwined.” Along with the plays’ themes of city versus country, the playwrights themselves are a mix of country and city residents. There is no shortage of accomplishments among the playwrights and directors. Ranging from Fulbright scholars to television writers, the playwrights have worked with distinguished actors and in productions of their work around the world.It is no wonder that Annabel Barrett, 19, a Millbrook actress, is happy to be involved with the Half-Moon Theater.“I am young and seeing people who have been doing this a lot longer is just really inspiring. It’s fun because they’re all really my friends,” said Barret. “I have known the entire Half-Moon Theater for years. Everyone is just brilliant and funny, and basically the humor that you see on stage is exactly the way it is in real life.”Though Half-Moon Theater is based out of Poughkeepsie, the relationship with Millbrook is growing.“We have been doing readings in Millbrook for the last two years. We are trying to provide theater for Millbrook that it doesn’t seem to have,” said Tarson. “We have been doing our productions in Poughkeepsie, but we have definitely been trying to increase our audience and our visibility in Millbrook, which has been really supportive.”Though Half-Moon has done readings at the Millbrook Book Festival, Grace Church Parish House and Punch Gallery, the 10-Minute Festival is the first to be done at the Millbrook High School.“The reason we’re doing it at the high school is because we honestly wanted to accommodate more of an audience,” said Tarson. “We are only doing it for two nights, and because it’s a larger cast and so many playwrights, we wanted to make sure there were enough seats.” Tarson said if there were a space available to buy or share with another business, the theater company would like to have a permanent space in the village.“We are a new theater company and we don’t have a lot of money. But we would love to work with Millbrook. If Millbrook was interested in that as well, we feel like we could make Millbrook our home,” he said.Tarson said he hoped that the audience that came to see the 10-Minute Festival enjoyed the variety that the theater has to offer.“Its exciting to see that many plays and styles, and be like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe I saw this play that was really wacky and off the wall and this play that was very real and very subtle,’ and that was all one evening,” said Tarson. “I think it’s hopefully really impressive in that way and enjoyable because people will not know what to expect and hopefully they’ll be really pleasantly surprised.”
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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.