Salisbury joins climate resiliency group

SALISBURY — The Board of Selectmen voted unanimously to join SustainableCT at the board’s regular monthly meeting Monday, March 4.

SustainableCT is a nonprofit organization. The selectmen were urged to join by Barbara Bettigole, chair of the Transfer Station Advisory Recycling Committee, who said membership will allow the town to participate in grant-funding opportunities for projects at the Salisbury-Sharon transfer station.

Selectman Kitty Kiefer asked what it costs.

“Nothing,” said Bettigole.

A sustainability committee with members from both towns will be appointed, First Selectman Curtis Rand said.

Bettigole gave an update on activity at the transfer station. Coming in the first week of April: Food Waste Prevention Week.

Bettigole’s emailed newsletter of Saturday, March 9, states that over 400 households in the two towns are participating in the food waste diversion program. From February 2023 to February 2024, 79,200 pounds of food scraps have been taken out of the municipal solid waste stream.

She said the transfer station plans to expand the program ahead of the requirement that commercial establishments separate food scraps from the waste stream, which takes effect in 2025.

The selectmen discussed the question of food trucks, referring to a recent kerfuffle over a food truck that was parked in town without the property owner’s permission.

Rand said it was a misunderstanding, but the selectmen need to decide what the policy is. He described the town’s policy to date as “pretty laid back” and that the question, if it arises at all, usually comes up during major events such as the Fall Festival:

“There’s not a lot of them, and they’re temporary.”

The selectmen ultimately did not make a change, but will keep an eye on food trucks to make sure they are operating with the property owner’s permission and are not directly competing with established restaurants.

Peter Gilbert of the Salisbury Winter Sports Association told the board that SWSA is raising money to rebuild the 30-meter ski jump at Satre Hill, to match the improvements made to the big jump and the 20-meter jump and provide training and competition opportunities for jumpers of intermediate skills. He said the cost of the project is $425,000. He did not ask the selectmen for any money, nor did they offer any.

The selectmen discussed the problem of the highly invasive and destructive hydrilla in town lakes, especially Twin Lakes and Lake Wononscopomuc. At the Board of Finance meeting Thursday, March 7, Rand said that this spring and summer, the town will close Lake Wononscopmuc to all outside boats. (Canoes, kataks and rowboats are available for rent.) The Twin Lakes Association will take on the problem at its lakes, and the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection will reconfigure the public boat launch for car-top boats only.

Latest News

Hospital unveils photo exhibit

Guests of the opening reception July 25 mingle in the Sharon Hospital hallway that now displays photographs from the Housatonic Camera Club.

Patrick L. Sullivan

SHARON — A show of photographs from the members of the Housatonic Camera Club opened at Sharon Hospital Friday, July 25.

The venue was a hallway off the main lobby, which had several advantages, such as good lighting, both natural and artificial.

Keep ReadingShow less
Young journalists — the next generation

Our summer interns crowd around Anne Day for an iPhone photo tutorial at The Lakeville Journal office.

Riley Klein

Here in the Northwest Corner midsummer is a season worth celebrating. We drive through the countryside that seems to become more lush everyday. For us at The Lakeville Journal and The Millerton News, summer also is the journalism intern season when we observe a different kind of growth. This year we are hosting eight paid interns who learn from us just as we learn from them. Four are high school students (including one who was part of a student-launched newspaper at Housatonic Valley Regional High School this spring). That effort was supported by The Journal, and it will continue this fall. The four others are college students. Some came to us having experience in some form of journalism pursuit, or were simply curious to see what it’s all about.

The schools represented are: Housatonic Valley Regional High School, The Hotchkiss School, Riverdale Country School, Marist University, Kenyon College, Middlebury College and the University of Virginia. All the student interns have life connections to the Northwest Corner and Dutchess County.

Keep ReadingShow less
Complex calculus: Climate migration

"From our window, we could see the distant flames glowing in the dark,” recalled novelist and poet Barbara Quick of the Tubbs fire that broke out in the Northern California wine country in October 2017. Burning at the unprecedented rate of an acre per second, the fired killed22 people, destroyed more than 5,000 homes, and devastated the city of Santa Rosa. “It was terrifying,” she added. The following day, the air still darkened by soot, Quick and her husband Wayne Roden, a longtime violist with the San Francisco Symphony and owner of Roden Wines, packed up their family photos, mementos and Quick’s notebooks, and relocated to an Airbnb until the smoke cleared. Soon afterwards, the couple sold their house in Sonoma and moved to the leafy, cooler community of Sherman, Connecticut.

Brittany Morris, Elyse Harney Morris’ daughter, has a similar story to tell. She and her husband and their 20-month-old had been living in California when the Los Angeles fires—and their aftermath—prompted their family’s move back to the seeming safety of Litchfield Country.

Keep ReadingShow less