New Routes to Progress

Some problems seem universal and intractable. Rain, for example: the flow of rainfall over the ground washes harmful quantities of pollution into Connecticut’s rivers and streams. More miles of state waterways are degraded in this way than by municipal sewage and industrial discharge pipes combined. Does this make the state’s clean water goals hopelessly unattainable? Perhaps not. Waters can be improved by deploying a combination of better land-development techniques, filtering of urban stormwater, and more careful use of fertilizers and other potential pollutants on land. But these modern solutions usually require regulation, enforcement, ingenuity and – especially – greater awareness of the problem by virtually everyone. None of these will advance without more work by municipalities and the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). But, as documented in the special report Dreams Deferred, the DEP does not have enough staff to do everything required of it.

In 2007, the Council confirmed that the DEP can be effective in helping municipal commissions protect the local environment. Over the last several years, municipal inland wetlands agencies have become more protective of wetlands, as judged by how many acres they permit to be destroyed with each permit issued (p. 11, lower graph). Over that same time, the DEP has been conducting training programs for municipal wetlands agency members and staff. The Council sought to find out if there is a measurable connection between training and more protective regulation. Though each local wetlands agency is required by statute to have at least one member or staff person complete the training, state records show that many towns do not comply with this law. The Council compared the performance of the trained towns against the untrained ones, and found that agencies with trained members or staff allowed less wetlands destruction with each permit they issued. In other words, training saves wetlands. Yet the DEP has had only two staff persons to oversee the training and performance of 170 municipal commissions.

The Council concludes that modest investments in DEP staff, aimed at assisting municipalities in their environmental protection duties, would help to get the state toward its goals. For some of those goals, nothing else will.