Government

Inland Wetlands To Prospective New Canaan Homeowners: ‘Buyer Beware’

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New Canaan is seeing an uptick in the number of Inland Wetlands violations cited by the town—an unsettling trend that officials attribute, in part, to a lack of knowledge among homeowners who aren’t checking to see whether their plans require permits. Asked to summarize the situation for prospective property owners in New Canaan, Inland Wetlands Director Kathy Holland said: “Buyer beware.”

“Buyer beware of the particulars: lot-by-lot, as far as where the wetlands are located, whether there is good information for that location, whether or not it has been field-tested by a certified soil scientist. That’s the requirement. That’s the only way to know whether wetlands are present or absent.”

New Canaan’s Inland Wetlands Regulations (they can be found, along with other resources, by selecting ‘Inland Wetlands’ from the dropdown menu on this page), like those of other municipalities, follow from what is commonly called the “Clean Water Act” of 1972. The provisions within it protect the environment, and people’s health, by setting standards in areas such as groundwater, flooding, erosion and pollution.

Around Town

Land Trust Finalizes Plans To ‘Complete the Loop’ on New Public Greenway

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More than one year after town officials approved a subdivision on Weed Street with an attendant conservation easement—a strip of land that provided the “missing link” in what advocates have called a “dream greenway,” connecting the New Canaan Nature Center to Irwin Park—the architects of that project say they’re poised to take a final step toward realizing their vision. The greenway—essentially a loop that would include a new walk through the woods between Oenoke Ridge Road and Weed Street—includes Nature Center property as well as the easement and separate pieces of New Canaan Land Trust property. The open question that Land Trust Board of Directors Secretary John Engel and others have grappled with for a year is: How to traverse the wetlands that stand between the easement and Weed Street itself? Now, Engel said, the Land Trust is working with a wetlands scientist “to give us a report so that we can make a raised walkway through the wetlands that will, on the one hand, be the least impactful on the environment and yet it has to be sufficiently substantial so that it is safe for the public.”

If completed, New Canaanites would be able to walk a loop from downtown New Canaan—say, up Elm to the intersection at Weed Street, then to Irwin Park (which itself may connect via a sidewalk to the top of Elm), then through the “new” walkway, across Land Trust and Nature Center property through the woods, then out to Oenoke Ridge Road and down toward God’s Acre and the heart of the village again. “What is important is that we are completing the circle,” Engel said.

News

Demolition, New Construction Planned for 3-Acre Ferris Hill Road Property with Significant Wetlands

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The owners of a 3-acre property in eastern New Canaan that since 1931 has included a small-sized home with a log cabin-style exterior are seeking to raze that structure and replace it with what appears to be a far larger house as well as install in-ground pool with patio and attached garage. The 3-bedroom home at 59 Ferris Hill Road sits near the eastern edge of a north-south oriented lot, about one-third of which is wetlands, including a manmade pond, tax records show. Though no demolition or building permit applications yet have been filed with the New Canaan Building Department, the property’s owners have taken the initial step of obtaining a permit from the town’s Inland Wetlands Department to pursue the project. The proposed work is regulated under Inland Wetlands, in part, because more than one half-acre of land will be disturbed upgrade of wetlands and a watercourse (in this case, the pond) that is more than 5,000 square feet (see Section 7.4 of the regulations here). The property sold in July for $995,000, tax records show.

Around Town

New Canaan Nature Center, Town, Businesses and Organizations Mark Earth Day 2014 [VIDEOS]

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“Where have those flowers and butterflies all gone

That science may have staked the future on?”

—from Robert Frost’s “Pod of the Milkweed”

 

The migration of monarch butterflies through New Canaan—and everywhere else along the East Coast—is happening less frequently in recent years, to the point where some are calling the insects’ once widely anticipated journey between the Northeast/Canada and Mexico “endangered.”

The major reason, experts say, is a lack of milkweed, which monarch caterpillars feed on. “The butterflies can go to all kinds of flowers for nectar, but the caterpillars can only eat milkweed plants. They’re having a hard time with loss of bio-habitat, so we are encouraging people in town to plant these free milkweed seeds,” Susan Bergen, a volunteer for the New Canaan Garden Club, said Tuesday morning from a table inside New Canaan Library. There, she and Jen Rayher (nee Sillo, a 1994 New Canaan High School graduate), director of membership and volunteers at the New Canaan Nature Center, handed out the seeds (“Got Milkweed?” on the packet) to mark Earth Day here in town. It’s one of several initiatives and events planned by the Nature Center for the next week, which New Canaan’s highest elected official today declared “Environmental Awareness Week 2014Week” (see video below).

Around Town

Volunteers Needed for Annual New Canaan Spring Cleanup

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Town officials are calling for volunteers to raise their hands and organize for a longtime New Canaan tradition that sees community members clear trash each Spring from our roadways, parks, downtown/village center, school grounds and elsewhere. The 2014 “Clean Your Mile” campaign is scheduled for April 26 and 27. On that weekend, organizers and sponsors will mobilize to provide gloves, garbage bags and dumpsters (more details on that below). “Clean Your Mile is a New Canaan Spring tradition that is over 40 years old, most likely originating out of some of the first Earth Day activities,” Kathleen Holland, director of Inland Wetlands and Watercourses, told NewCanaanite.com in an email. “Volunteers are recruited from service clubs, schools, church groups and members of the community. We look forward to improving the Town and at the same time helping the environment.”

To help ensure participants get to school grounds, parks, streets, parking areas and other public places, organizers are asking people who will lend a couple of hours to sign up with Kristi Ready at the New Canaan Department of Public Works: Kristine.Ready@NewCanaanCT.gov and 203-594-3090.