With less than a week remaining in the legislative session, environmental advocates are turning up the volume in their opposition to the a proposed land swap in Haddam that would give 17 acres of state-owned open space overlooking the Connecticut River to private developers.
The Connecticut River Gateway Commission's senior planner, J.H. Torrance Downes, strongly criticized state Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Daniel Esty for the "continuing silence" of him and his department on a pending "land conveyance bill" that would give the state's 17 acres to developers. It would be in exchange for 87 wooded acres the developers own elsewhere in Haddam, away from the river.
"With this letter, the Connecticut River Gateway Commission expresses tremendous dismay and disappointment at the Department's continuing silence on the conveyance of 17.4 acres of State-owned conservation land in Haddam for the purpose of private development," Downes wrote in a letter to Esty Tuesday.
"The general consensus holds that the Department has remained silent because it has been requested to do so by powers outside of the DEP," he wrote. The Gateway Commission "strongly requests that the Department follow its own policies on such matters and take a position of opposition to this conveyance based upon the negative precedent that it will no doubt set and the concern it will cause poetential benefactors of land to the State."