P&Z Endorses Sewer System Extension To Industrial Area

By Andrew Gorosko

Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) members have endorsed a town request to extend municipal sanitary sewer service to an industrial subdivision envisioned for a 37.5-acre parcel near Commerce Road.

The wet, rolling site, which lies south of Commerce Road and east of the Housatonic Railroad’s rail freight line, will be acquired by the town from the state in connection with the town’s upcoming purchase of the state’s Fairfield Hills core campus. The 37.5-acre parcel has M-5 (Industrial) zoning, where the minimum building lot size is two acres.

The town plans to pay the state $3.9 million to buy 189 acres, including 17 major buildings, at Fairfield Hills, the former state psychiatric institution, which closed in December 1995. That sale has been delayed due to a major heating fuel spill at Canaan House, among other reasons.

Community Development Director Elizabeth Stocker told P&Z members recently that the industrial site would be served by both municipal sewers and by a public water supply. Natural gas is also available in that area. Access to the site would be provided by an approximately 3,000-foot-long dead-end road extending southward from Commerce Road. The municipal sewage treatment plant is adjacent to the industrial development site.

The Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA), which operates the town’s two sewer systems, referred the proposal to expand the central sewer system for industrial development to the P&Z for a recommendation.

As part of the town’s purchase of Fairfield Hills, the town will acquire approximately 100,000 gallons of sewage treatment capacity at the sewage treatment plant from the state. Some of that capacity may be used to handle wastewater disposal for the envisioned industrial development.

Town Public Works Director Fred Hurley said February 10 that the volume of sewage treatment capacity needed for industrial growth would depend on the of type of businesses that locate in the industrial park.

The sewage treatment plant at the end of Commerce Road is jointly used by the town and the state. Its daily treatment capacity is approximately one million gallons of sewage. When it began operation in 1997, the state reserved approximately two-thirds of that capacity for its use, leaving one-third of the capacity for town use.

At a recent P&Z session, resident Adrian Sharp of Galilee Way, representing Trout Unlimited, said that the environmental group urges that any industrial development in a new industrial park be reviewed by the town from an environmental protection perspective.

Mr Sharp noted that trout breed naturally in brooks in the area. It is one of only eight places in the state where natural trout breeding still occurs.

Kim Danziger, representing the town’s Economic Development Commission (EDC), urged that P&Z members endorse the WPCA’s proposed extension of the sewer system to the industrial site.   

On that note, P&Z members unanimously endorsed a sewer system extension.

Commercial Subdivision

In a related matter, P&Z members are considering an EDC request for zoning regulation changes, which would maximize the number of building lots that could be created in commercial subdivisions, such as the industrial site off Commerce Road.

The EDC is seeking to have the P&Z exclude from commercial subdivision applications the stricter lot-size calculation requirements that were approved by the P&Z in 2002 as environmental safeguards. Those rule changes altered how minimum building lot sizes are calculated, excluding from that calculation physical features such as wetlands, watercourses, floodplains, steep slopes, and private rights-of-way leading to rear lots.

The EDC wants the P&Z to exempt subdivisions within industrial, business, and professional zones from those stricter lot-size requirements to maximize the number of lots that could be created in a commercial subdivision.

Such rule changes would increase the potential number of building lots that could be created at the 37.5-acre site near Commerce Road, which has developmental constraints. P&Z action on the rule change request is expected at an upcoming session.

Last fall, the selectmen endorsed wetlands and engineering studies to gauge the development potential of the site.