Why HRC is seeking Wild & Scenic status for the river

KENT — The Board of Selectmen voted at its Jan. 7 meeting to sign a letter of support for the Housatonic River Commission (HRC) plan to seek Wild and Scenic designation for the Housatonic River.Kent is one of three towns in the HRC coverage area to sign a letter of support. The other two boards of selectmen to sign were in Sharon and North Canaan.Jesse Klingebiel of Kent has been an HRC member for 10 years and has been its chairman. He gave some background in a phone interview this week on why the commission is now seeking the federal status for the river.The HRC was originally created in the 1970s, he said, largely in response to an effort by the National Park Service to designate the Housatonic as a Wild and Scenic river. Its first meeting was in 1979. Many of the original members are still on the commission, which helps with river cleanup and advises towns in the area on protecting the river from, for example, overbuilding. The towns rejected that effort, Klingebiel said, and the river commission was “created as a way to protect the river, but with less federal control.”Back in those early days, Klingebiel said,Wild and Scenic designation had different parameters — specifically, they gave the government more control and allowed the park service to take land and say, “Now this is federal park land.”One of the first regions impacted was the Delaware Water Gap, where Klingebiel said the government “took over the land and told people what they could and could not do. There were a lot of objections to that.”The federal act was changed, and now “the ability for the government to take land is completely gone.”HRC members this year have begun a big push to get Wild and Scenic status, and have been making presentations to the boards of selectmen in Falls Village, Cornwall, Kent, New Milford, North Canaan, Salisbury and Sharon (towns that are on the river, from the Massachusetts state line in the north to Boardman Bridge in New Milford in the south).There are several incentives for the commission members to seek greater protections at this time, Klingebiel explained. For one thing, many of the longtime members are seeking protections that will endure. The new federal act is an attractive one and could provide greater protection without diminishing local control.If for example, projects are proposed for the river that have federal funding or a federal component, the National Park Service will have a stronger voice in limiting those projects to ensure the health and safety of the river.Klingebiel did note that Wild and Scenic status does not significantly impact the hydroelectric plants along the Housatonic, which are already under federal control through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Another factor is the increase in building projects on the river shores. More building is being done, and HRC members feel that too often they are not consulted in advance or that their advice is not heeded. “One of our hopes is that it might give a little push to local boards and commissions to say, ‘Well, we are a Wild and Scenic river, and this is a nationally recognized river, not just our own nice, little river,’ “ Klingebiel said.“And maybe those boards, while totally empowered to make the decisions they make, maybe it will make them do a little more of what we would think should happen with the river’s best interest in mind.”Some people have spoken up in opposition to the plan because they fear that federal recognition could lead all the towns in the area to have the same problems of congestion, overuse and littering that recently plagued Kent, especially at Bull’s Bridge.Klingebiel said that those problems now seem to be under control, partly because the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the Appalachian Mountain Club stepped in to help. “Bull’s Bridge was significantly transformed by the end of last summer,” Klingebiel said. In part, he said, it was because the outside groups stepped in to help, saying, “We’ve been lucky in the past that we didn’t have to, but we have to manage this now with something other than benign neglect.”“It’s all fixable,” Klingebiel said. “If people are parking illegally and creating problems with their cars, you have to ticket them.”Also, of course, the problems in Kent exist without the river receiving a Wild and Scenic designation.On the positive side of the Wild and Scenic coin, Klingebiel said that several rivers in the region have recently been designated, “and the river commissions in those town are raving about it, all the feedback is that it’s amazing, it’s great. The downside? They say there really isn’t one.”Klingebiel said that HRC members are prepared for this to be a long process. Once the informational meetings with the selectmen have been finished, there are plans to have larger-scale public information meetings.