Avery Cotton

NCHS Student Details Bird Population Trends for Conservation Commission

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The NewCanaanite.com Summer Internship Program is sponsored by Carriage Barn Arts Center. A New Canaan High School student’s recent analysis of bird population data shows an increase in recent years of two species. According to an analysis by rising senior Avery Cotton, New Canaan has seen a sharp rise in the number of turkey vultures and fish crows sighted here. “The hypothesis behind this steep increase was that these species which had previously been accustomed to different climates, or southern warmer weather,” Cotton told members of the Conservation Commission at their July 13 meeting, held in Town Hall and via videoconference. “They were expanding their ranges northboard because temperatures were warming around here, and that accommodated their specific needs.”

Cotton—an avid birdwatcher and member of the University of Connecticut’s Conservation Ambassador program, part of Uconn’s Natural Resources Conservation Academy—based his analysis on more than 1,200 individual handwritten checklists found at the New Canaan Nature Center, spanning 1977 to 1992, all compiled on a monthly basis.

Around Town

Q&A: Composting Talk To Be Held Thursday at New Canaan Library

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New Canaan Library, Planet New Canaan and the Conservation Commission are co-sponsoring a talk about composting on Thursday. Registration is open for ‘Anyone Can Compost: Approaches to Home Composting that Work for You,’ to be held at 6 p.m. on June 15 in the Jim & Dede Bartlett Auditorium at the library. It features Master Gardener and Composter Alice Ely, garden education chair at Wakeman Town Farm, one of the organizers of Westport’s Pollinator Pathway, a UConn Advanced Master Gardener and a UConn Master Composter. Composting is widely practiced in New Canaan. According to data supplied by the Department of Public Works, the total food scrap collection weight at the transfer station (in pounds) for the five weeks starting May 3 are: 1,110, 1,420, 980, 1,040 and 1,150.

Government

Public Works: State Reviewing Town’s Plan for Bristow Park Entrance Along Route 106

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State officials currently are reviewing New Canaan’s plan to create a more pedestrian- and motor vehicle-friendly entrance to Bristow Park from Route 106/Old Stamford Road, according to the head of the town Department of Public Works. The Connecticut Department of Transportation is reviewing the plan “for an encroachment permit,” Public Works Director Tiger Mann told members of the New Canaan Conservation Commission at their Feb. 19 meeting. “Since it’s along 106 inside their [the state’s] right-of-way they have to approve it,” Mann said at the meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “And that includes a pull-off or dropoff area for school buses, and then parking spaces, one disabled space and several other standard spaces.”

Plans shared by Mann show one disabled space and four standard spaces.

Government

Public Works: Town Workers Here To Help Those Seeking To Use New ‘Swap Shop’ Apply for Transfer Station Permit Online

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Town officials say residents seeking to use the recently launched Swap Shop at the Transfer Station can get help obtaining a permit for the facility in multiple ways. For New Canaanites unable to access or use the online system through the town’s website for a Transfer Station permit—a requirement to use the Swap Shop at the Lakeview Avenue facility—there are municipal workers ready to help. “If you can’t access it online, and perform it online, I have three people—one in my office, one in our special projects office and then Donnie Smith down at the Transfer Station—that will actually walk you through the process and help you fill it out online in front of him,” according to Tiger Mann. “We do ask that you have it only because we’re trying to make sure that the Station is used correctly and that we monitor goods coming and going,” Mann told members of the Conservation Commission at their regular meeting, held Feb. 9 at Town Hall and via videoconference. 

His comments came in response to remarks from Commissioner Ann Silvio, who said she’s seen chatter on Facebook about the “difficulty of getting a pass.”

Silvio noted that residents pay the same annual fee regardless of when during the fiscal year they purchase a pass.

Andrew Yuang

NCHS Science Team ID’s High Phosphorus Levels in Bristow

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Members of the New Canaan High School Science Team identified unusually high levels of phosphorus in Bristow Bird Sanctuary based on samples collected this past summer, according to a presentation the students gave last week. Natural levels of the chemical element should come in around .1 mg/L for streams with no reservoirs, yet tests conducted by a lab in June following a sample at Bristow came back at more than six times that amount, according to Andrew Yuang, a NCHS student who joined Science Team Co-Captain Kira Titova at the Dec. 8 Conservation Commission meeting, held in Town Hall and via videoconference. 

Asked by Commission Chair what negative impact of high phosphorus could be, Yuang said that, similarly to nitrogen, high phosphorus that comes into a waterway—typically, from fertilizer—could lead to an overgrowth in algae which, in turn, reduces the amount of dissolved oxygen that aquatic life needs to breathe, an environmental condition called hypoxia. Schipper said, “It makes sense we are doing this test, because we are concerned about what is happening in our freshwater streams and ponds, but we’re also concerned about the downstream effect on Long Island Sound, and I would say i’m not surprised that there might be a very high reading because, as a regular visitor to Bristow and Bristow Pond, I’ve noticed the pond is often so heavy with plant life it feels like a snapping turtle could walk across the top of it, as opposed to swim underneath it. And so we actually have that kind of Petri dish of plant growth that you can see going up high and then fall off—it helps that the stream continually flushes water through there.