January 27th is the one-month anniversary of an informational meeting hosted by the Avalon Farms HOA Board for its members with Curt Bosco, Middlebury’s Zoning Enforcement Officer, and First Selectman Ed. St. John. The purpose of the meeting was to answer questions about the Southford Park proposal (meaning the site plan before the Conservation Commission as well as the text amendments before the Planning and Zoning Commission). Several other Middlebury residents were invited to the meeting, including neighboring HOA board members and private landowners close to the Timex site.
Since that time,
opposition to the idea of a 750,000 sq ft distribution center in
Middlebury has grown immensely. However, the same question keeps popping
up: why can’t we just take a town vote and vote no?
Unfortunately,
CT state law gives the sole authority to Planning and Zoning
Commissions to make these kinds of choices. There is a process to
follow: someone applies with an idea, the idea is considered, the answer
is yes or no depending on several factors, the most important being
what right is conferred in the regulations. Essentially, if the rules
say something is allowed as long as the applicant meets all stated
requirements, the application can’t be denied if it meets all stated
requirements. This is what right-of-use means: If you want to put a
pool in your yard, the town can’t say no as long as you follow all the
rules for putting in a pool.
Because the
Planning and Zoning Commission is solely responsible for making all the
rules about what can go where, there can’t be another authority that
interferes with this process. As much as we all want to VOTE NO, we
can’t take a vote that would compel P&Z to do anything. We could all
sign a symbolic petition, but that would waste time and energy on
something that doesn’t really advance the cause.
What
does advance the cause? The upcoming Conservation Commission meeting on
January 31st at 7:30pm at the Shepardson Center is a key milestone in
the process. There is no public comment scheduled for the meeting, so no
one can speak opposition during the meeting. However, you can email it
in ahead of time to the Wetlands Officer - dseavey@middlebury-ct.org - and you can attend the meeting and watch the Commission discuss the
application. You could even quietly hold a sign that says: Opposed - Do Not Destroy Wetlands.
This
brings us to the heart of the issue before the Conservation Commission:
the destruction of wetlands. Per the Clean Water Act of 1972, all
parties seeking to construct projects that will have an impact on
wetlands must take all reasonable measures to avoid such impacts, to
minimize unavoidable impacts, and to provide mitigation for the
remaining unavoidable impacts.
Here’s the key: you can’t just skip to option #3. You must first take all reasonable measures to avoid such impacts.
Application #490 is using 19.1% of the allowed 20% usage of 111.9
acres. It’s basically shoving all the building it can onto the combined
properties at 555 Christian Rd. and 764 Southford Rd. It’s asking to
fill 15,608 sf of “isolated wetlands” so it can create 32,000 sf of
other “mitigation” wetlands elsewhere on the property. But the only
thing driving the filling of wetlands is the size of the building and
the surrounding access, parking and loading areas. Furthermore, the CT
Audubon reports that “many mitigation sites in Southern New England have
a high failure rate because they fail to meet performance standards
(Minkin and Ladd, 2003).” In other words, it’s expensive to build
mitigating wetlands correctly, and most developers don’t have the skill,
patience or desire to spend money on doing it correctly. Plus, who’s
really watching once the permits are issued and the project is approved?
In
this case, the mantra shared at the December 27th meeting was as
follows: “It’s just science. There’s not enough of an impact to wetlands
plus they are adding back twice as many, so it’s fine. The Conservation
Commission didn’t call a public hearing because it wasn’t a very
significant impact.”
The real science
is way different: filling wetlands is the very definition of
unreasonable impact. One is supposed to design a project in such a way
as to AVOID such destruction. Reducing the overall building size and
corresponding parking/loading areas would be an easy way to avoid filing
wetlands. This site is asking for 750,000 sf of building because it
maximizes the developer’s profit, not because it’s the best choice for
the surrounding environment.
It’s not a total
sum game either: what occurs naturally often isn’t replicated
artificially very easily. Sure, you can get an artificial arm after you
lose yours, but does it really function the same way? Likewise, the
random creation of new wetlands does not add value back to the original
system in the same way the original wetlands did. Add to this discussion
the fact that this proposed use is categorized a High Pollutant Load
Site by the CT DEP Storm Water Quality Manual “2004 Manual” and you
have a recipe for environmental disaster. The civil engineer hired by
the Middlebury Small Town Alliance to review the site plan submitted to
the Conservation Commission (Application #490) found 8 pages worth of
reasons why the site plan doesn’t comply with CT regulations on storm
water management. It wasn’t just one area of non-compliance, it was
piece after piece after piece of the design that was either not best
practice, designed incorrectly, or just flat out not the way it should
be done.
What do we conclude from all this?
Had someone not caught wind of what was happening around the holidays,
this application would have snuck right through the Conservation
Commission and Planning & Zoning with very little resistance and
little to no embedded protections for Middlebury residents. It’s not
just a simple text amendment before P&Z, it’s a request to change
the very nature of the LI-200 zone from a light industrial use (meaning
the affects of the use of the zone - pollution, noise, traffic, etc.) to
a heavy industrial use (heavy traffic, heavy pollution, heavy noise).
It’s asking us to put our children’s health and our own on the line
(asthma rates within a mile of a warehouse are at 55% and heart issues
are at 9.1% according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District
for the area encompassing LA, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino
counties) It’s asking us to shoulder all the negatives for what
positives? Some tax revenue that we might see way in the future once all
the tax abatements cease and property taxes rise so the other side of
town can compensate for the 20% loss to property values within a mile of
the project?
It’s just not worth it. Even the
Economic Development Commission doesn’t support this project: it voted
to send a resolution saying as much to the P&Z Commission at its
January 23rd meeting, and then was threatened the next day by the First
Selectman and Town Attorney with a Middlebury Code of Ethics violation
for sending an "unsolicited opinion" to another town committee. The
draft copy of the meeting minutes were altered to remove the language of
the resolution and the result of the vote. Not only is this a blatant
Freedom of Information Act violation, but it’s probably a federal civil
rights violation too.
We don’t have to take
any of this. Not the proposed zoning changes, not the “mansplaining”
away of important environmental issues, and certainly not the bad
behavior by our own officials. Please - this affects all of us, and not
just in Middlebury. The regional traffic pattern changes will trickle
out towards Southbury, Woodbury, Watertown and Oxford too. We’ll all pay
the cost, and we won’t be able to do a darn thing about it if
distribution facilities become a right-of-use in the LI-200 zone.
At
the beginning of this article, I said taking a town vote was a waste of
time and energy...that was a ploy to suck you into my article (hope it
worked) and to allow me to make my final point. You actually can vote.
You can vote with your body by attending the Conservation Commission
meeting on January 31st and the Planning and Zoning Meeting on February
2nd. You can vote with your mouth by sending emails to dseavey@middlebury-ct.org (
So let’s vote, and let’s take back our Town!
