If water is a valuable resource, how is it being protected in Connecticut?
How local, state and federal laws impact the health and economic viability of Long Island Sound, Connecticut's largest natural resource.
Long Island Sound is home to more than four million people who live in its coastal communities. The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection estimates the Sound is also home to more than 1,200 species of invertebrates, 170 species of fish, and dozens of species of migratory birds. The Sound provides thousands of jobs in commercial transportation and fishing. And its recreational use is estimated to contribute more than $9 billion annually to the Connecticut economy.
Being the state’s largest natural resource, Connecticut has invested millions of dollars in communities throughout the watershed to address pollution concerns and protect tidal wetlands. Mark Tedesco, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Long Island Sound Office Director, said the Sound has made immense progress combating pollution, but still has a way to go. The U.S. Clean Water Act, for example, put a total maximum daily limit on nitrogen entering the Sound.
Having a water resource so significantly impact the Connecticut economy, UConn Law Professor Joseph MacDougald says that state law does a lot to keep Long Island Sound in good health. MacDougald is executive director of UConn Law’s Center for Energy & Environmental Law.
Can you give a summary of the state’s approach to water regulation?
MacDougald: Connecticut has no county government, so we have 169 towns and almost all have an inland wetlands commission. Each town’s commission reports to the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection for base standards for their wetlands compliance with the state law.
But a lot of decisions as to how we work with our wetlands and keep them healthy is done at the town level and city level. Then we have a concept that's very hotly litigated, called Waters of the United States.
This is how the federal government will work with the state on those waters that are large, that are connected to waters of the United States, like the rivers that come through the wetlands that are around them that are tied to Long Island Sound. So, the state pays a lot of attention to the health of those waters.
Another thing that I would talk about which is a little different is Long Island Sound itself. We think about Long Island Sound in terms of both a multi-state study because New York is a big player as well as Connecticut in sharing Long Island Sound.
We have federal regulations, many of them that go through Long Island Sound, but the state is also very engaged with everything that happens in and around the coast — runoff that goes into the Sound, the health of the beaches — that happens if there's sometimes you'll see beaches closed during the summer, or after storms, if large sewage plants become inundated. And a lot of all of this is tied to climate change.”
Q: Speaking of federal regulations, something recently that caused a lot of controversy was the rewriting of the Clean Water Act.
MacDougald: “I think what you're referring to is the definition WOTUS- Waters of the United States’ designation. This is a really big issue, because it's all about whether or not a body of water is regulated through the federal government.
If a body of water is flowing into a river that goes across state lines or to the ocean, everyone would pretty much agree that that's a water of the United States that the federal government has a lot to do with. But the problem comes with tributaries and wetlands and all the support structure.
Also, we saw something really important after Hurricanes Irene and Sandy, is that when Connecticut has a big storm surge, those marshy areas and wetlands serve a real protective function. An economist would call this ecosystem services — those wetlands are helping us and they help clean the water. There's a lot of good reasons why you'd want to protect them.
And then the question is who protects them? So there was the Supreme Court case- Rapanos v. The United States, and the Supreme Court held a broad reading to the types of water pollution covered by the Clean Water Act.
That boundary is between Clean Water Act protection and state protection. And some places like Connecticut do a very good job of protecting their waters. And other states might be less consistent. So it matters a great deal. And it also matters a lot about the approval level. And who gets to say whether you can build and what your offset should be? It's a giant question.”
Q: What about states who don't have the same funding as Connecticut? Federal environmental programs like the EPA have been given less funding for 2021.
MacDougald: “The EPA is a pretty big resource for how the state's going to manage their water resources. And that's, that's a big deal. I think one of the things that can't be understated is the importance of research and techniques, as we're looking at a lot of climate change changes a lot of our assumptions on water health.”
Q: Does the responsibility fall to the states to form environmental legislation before the federal government?
MacDougald: No, I don't think that would be the right takeaway. The federal government has immense power, it just hasn't been using it as much as it could. I'll tell you that one of the ways that it affected Connecticut in a very positive way was it issued a program to inspire communities to become more resilient.
They created the National Disaster Resilience Competition, a large federal program, where states could apply for different ideas as to how they could make their state more resilient. And they set it up in this competition, and Connecticut was one of the winners. That resulted in several physical projects being conducted — a sizable one in Bridgeport to make that area safer — but also provided for planning money and study money to try and come to other ways that Connecticut can be more resilient.
So the federal government has a lot of power, but so do the states. One of the things I would encourage every student, if they're in Connecticut, or wherever you live, is to pay lot of attention to the decisions being made in the town or city where you live, like town and city government can have a giant impact on water quality, collectively much bigger than anyone would suspect.
Getting involved early on with zoning commissions and wetlands commissions or even your town's environment committee can really make a big difference. It is much harder to influence federal policy directly. But water policy is one of those areas where you can do a lot of good immediately and all towns are doing good, particularly in a place like Connecticut that has a tradition and legal structure that powers towns enormously.
Q: Is Connecticut’s approach to environmental policy unique?
MacDougald: We're not 100% unique, but we are a home rule state so the towns have a lot of legal authority as to what happens within their borders. We have this structure where we let the towns form wetlands commissions. Towns have a lot to say about their zoning and land use. And although it’s land use, we're talking about water. Land use affects water.”
Top photo by Allison O’Donnell