Working together to protect the Housatonic

CORNWALL — For the Housatonic Valley Association (HVA), environmental protection goes hand-in-hand with thoughtful local planning and development. When the organization was formed 75 years ago, it was a vision that was ahead of its time.

Charles Downing Lay, HVA’s founder, was a landscape architect by profession. He had a home in Stratford, Conn., and taught at Yale University. He became well known for his work in New York City on projects such as Battery Park and Bryant Park. But away from the buzz of the city, Lay often spent time at a family camp in Cornwall. Struck with an appreciation for the Northwest Corner’s natural landscape, he became passionate about environmental protection.

“He strongly believed that the beauty and environmental health of the Housatonic River Valley can be preserved by people who are deliberate in planning how their communities grow,” said Lynn Werner, HVA’s executive director. 

In 1941, Lay founded what was then called the Housatonic Valley Planning Conference. Werner attributed Lay’s pioneer work regarding environmental protection to the ushering in of contemporary planning and zoning commissions and inland wetlands commissions. 

“He really understood the science of water movement across the surface of the land and beneath the surface and the impact of land use on water quality,” Werner said. 

Over the past 75 years, HVA has grown into a highly regarded regional watershed organization and accredited land trust whose work encompasses many aspects of land and water conservation throughout the 1,948-square mile Housatonic River basin in portions of three states. 

Its message is Clean Water for Life, and HVA works with its conservation partners in service of that idea for the benefit of people and natural communities across its watershed.

A wild and scenic river

HVA played an early role in the effort to realize federal Wild and Scenic designation for 41 miles of Housatonic River in Connecticut by having this section of river evaluated for its “wild and scenic qualifications” by the Department of the Interior in the late 1970s. 

That study is still relevant today, enabling the Housatonic River Commission (HRC) to pursue designation through state legislation sponsored by state Rep. Roberta Willis (D-64) and Sen. Clark Chapin (R-30). 

HRC and HVA, along with abutting municipalities, the Northwest Hills Council of Governments and a host of partnering organizations, worked together to support of the legislation that culminated in favorable action by the Connecticut General Assembly earlier this year on Wild and Scenic designation. 

HVA was also an early investor in land conservation across the region, working with land owners on conservation development planning and conserving thousands of acres more through its direct involvement and assistance in projects with its numerous partners. 

Beginning with the permanent protection of the Appalachian Trail along the Housatonic River in northwest Connecticut, HVA launched a Housatonic River Greenway that is a state-recognized greenway today. In northwest Connecticut, HVA sponsors the Litchfield Hills Greenprint Collaborative, a regional conservation partnership with two dozen land trust members that have protected more than 3,300 acres since 2008. 

Recognizing the need for new sources of private capital for regionally significant land protection projects, HVA launched the Greenprint Partners Pledge fund in 2014. This effort has helped match donors from across the area with environmentally significant land conservation projects where the local land trust or group of trusts have worked hard to secure local, state and federal funding. The Pledge Fund has directed $400,000 so far toward two Greenprint member projects, including $200,000 to help Cornwall Conservation Trust successfully close on its 315-acre Trinity Camp Forest project last month and another $200,000 for a 127-acre transaction that is nearing completion with the Goshen Land Trust.

HVA’s concern for water quality led it to invest in mapping groundwater resources in the 1980s and advocating against environmentally damaging practices such as landfilling garbage (which led to drinking water pollution in the watershed). Today HVA’s Geographic Information’s Systems (GIS) capacity is put to good use tracking stream health, analyzing ecologically important land and water resources and helping conservation partners and town leaders set regional land and water protection priorities. 

It takes several villages

Sometimes a threat to water quality and public health is too big for anything less than a coalition of public and private stakeholders to effectively address. PCB contamination in the Housatonic River is one such threat where HVA found common cause with many other groups and communities to hold polluters accountable and start to mitigate environmental impacts. 

United in their cause, HVA and these partners helped devise a graduated cleanup plan for PCB hot spots along the river. 

Today, Werner reported, the vast majority of the PCB particles are collected on sediment at Woods Pond in Lenox, Mass.  Deciding how to approach the goal of removing the PCBs is a point of contention. 

“There’s no magic bullet for eliminating the PCBs. Each potential solution has significant pros and cons,” Werner said.  

Tackling pollution 

As it looks toward the future, HVA has embraced a conservation approach that is collaborative and solution-oriented. With the Still River Watershed, for example, HVA is working with sister organizations and town leaders to reduce pollution from runoff that flows into the Still River from its watershed communities including Danbury, New Milford, Bethel, Brookfield, New Fairfield, Newtown, Ridgefield and Redding. 

HVA is deploying a similar strategy in the Ten Mile River Basin, in towns like Sharon, Salisbury, Millerton, Amenia and Dover. Working with a team of local community and environmental leaders, this new collaboration is seeking to reduce flooding and improve the health of the Ten Mile River and its tributaries. 

HVA’s objective is to tackle pollution sub-watershed by sub-watershed across the region with its partners. Some of the strategies that HVA and its partners have successfully deployed in certain parts of the Housatonic River watershed may be desirable and effective elsewhere. 

Whether providing additional recreational access opportunities along the Housatonic Greenway, or helping urban communities within the watershed to reengage with the riverfront and riparian areas they contain, HVA continues to innovate and seek ways to amplify and enhance the excellent conservation work of communities and organizations throughout the region.