Noble Foster ‘Nobby’ Richards
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SALISBURY — Noble Foster (Nobby) Richards of Salisbury passed away peacefully at Noble Horizons on Jan. 6, 2023. He was 91 years old.
Noble devoted himself to his family and friends, and to the institutions where he lived and worked. Born on Jan. 13, 1931, to Foster and Bertha Richards, he attended Kent Center School and South Kent School. He graduated from South Kent in 1949, having served as the head prefect, and captain of the hockey team. After South Kent, Noble attended Trinity College in Hartford, where he majored in mathematics and was a member of the Air Force ROTC. While at Trinity, friends introduced him to Elizabeth Kotsrean, a student at Connecticut College. The two were married on Nov. 23, 1954, in Clayton, Missouri. They immediately moved to Japan, where Noble served as an Air Force pilot.
In 1956, upon completion of his military service, Noble returned to South Kent School as a mathematics teacher. He remained at South Kent as a teacher, coach and ultimately head of school until his retirement in 1996. While teaching at South Kent, he earned his MA in Education from Wesleyan University. To students and faculty colleagues at South Kent, Noble served as a role model — a humble, yet quietly powerful leader who applied the Christian values in which he believed. As a dedicated member of the school family, he did whatever was required, whenever it was required to support the school and its students.
After retiring from South Kent School, Noble and Liz lived in Kent and spent summers in Truro, Massachusetts where they had purchased a home in 1961. In 2017 they moved to Noble Horizons in Salisbury, where Noble became an integral and beloved part of the community. When Liz moved to the Noble Horizons memory unit, Noble visited her daily, usually arriving on his tricycle.
Noble was loving, playful and deeply caring. He cried when his children and grandchildren departed after a visit to Kent or Truro. On Cape Cod, he fished with his sons from a wooden dory he built himself. He played games and danced with his grandchildren. He collected and arranged bottle brush, clover, Queen Anne’s lace, sea lavender and other wildflowers. Protected in military bib overalls, he plunged into the brush near the family house to gather heaping buckets of blueberries for family breakfasts.
Noble loved to hike and bike. He worked many summers as a Cape Cod National Seashore ranger, walking the trails and beaches and sharing his knowledge of plants and wildlife with visitors. He rode every bike-able roadway in northwestern Connecticut and in the towns of Truro and Provincetown on Cape Cod. For a 90th birthday present he proposed a bicycling trip on the KT Trail in Missouri. He completed that ride in October 2022 in the company of 15 family members and friends.
Noble is survived by his wife, Elizabeth; his three sons, Timothy, James and Andrew; three daughters-in-law, Margaret Clarke, Yvonne Richards and Kristin Richards; six grandchildren, Sarah, Charlotte, Rachel, Christopher, Hannah and Audrey Richards; two grandsons-in-law, James Griffin and Ryan Crownover; and a great-granddaughter, Lillian Crownover. Many family members were with him in his final hours.
A memorial service for Noble will be scheduled at South Kent School, with details to be announced at a later date. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations in Noble’s memory be made to the Alzheimer’s Association, Noble Horizons, or South Kent School.
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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.