Pootatuck Watershed Association Plans Environmental Protection Role

By Andrew Gorosko

First Selectman Herb Rosenthal this week welcomed to town a new private, nonprofit environmental protection organization, whose goal is safeguarding local water supplies.

Mr Rosenthal spoke to about 30 people May 9 in the Alexandria Room at Edmond Town Hall at the introductory meeting of the Pootatuck Watershed Association (PWA). The group has organized to environmentally protect the Pootatuck River Watershed.

Mr Rosenthal and George Benson, who is the town’s land use enforcement officer, will be town representatives to the organization. Mr Benson is an expert on lakes and ponds.

The first selectman said he is excited by the environmental protection mission of the PWA, noting the importance of safeguarding the purity of local water supplies for the future.

PWA President James Belden explained the organization’s goals. He described the symbolism of the group’s logo, which is comprised of the Main Street flagpole and adjacent church architecture framed by an advancing stream and enclosed within a water droplet outlined by the group’s name.

The PWA will work hard to protect local natural resources for the sake of society and environmental quality, he said.

Water is a substance central to human well-being, he said, noting that humankind lives within the hydrologic cycle.

The wise conservation of local water resources is a prime concern of the PWA, Mr Belden said, noting the value of healthy, clean waterways. The town has bucolic beauty and environmental assets that are very worthy of protection, he said.

Mr Belden stressed that the PWA is not an antidevelopment organization, but is a group that seeks to encourage environmentally sustainable patterns of land development.

The Alexandria Room was ringed by an array of displays that depicted the environmental challenges facing the town.

The displays included descriptions, photos, and graphics on topics including the effects of fuel spills on pristine trout-laden streams; the dynamics of the Pootatuck Aquifer and the Pootatuck River Watershed; the planting of restorative vegetation near the Pootatuck River, and an explanation of a planned townwide water quality sampling program.

Mr Belden has explained that the PWA is seeking to ensure that the town has a clean, abundant water supply for the future. The group seeks to protect aquatic and wildlife habitats. It wants to create a public forum for discussion of the scientific, educational, administrative, and financial aspects of watershed management.

The Pootatuck River Watershed is almost entirely located in Newtown, with a small section of the watershed in Monroe. The Pootatuck River’s watershed covers approximately 40 percent of Newtown’s 60-square-mile area. The 26-square-mile Pootatuck River Watershed lies within the larger Housatonic River Watershed.

The Pootatuck River Watershed collects rainwater falling across a broad swath of central Newtown, channeling that drainage both eastward and westward, and then eventually northward into the main trunk of the Pootatuck River near Sandy Hook Center. The northward-flowing river deposits its water and its sediment load at the delta at its confluence with the larger Housatonic River, near Silver Bridge.

Within the roughly diamond-shaped watershed lies the Pootatuck aquifer, the subterranean source of two public water supplies, one of which supplies United Water’s central public water system, and the other which provides drinking water for Fairfield Hills and adjacent properties.

The area where the tributary Deep Brook joins the Pootatuck River is a state-regulated wild trout management area, where brook trout reproduce naturally. It is one of only eight such areas in the state, where anglers fish for over-wintering native trout. That area has catch-and-release fishing, in which anglers must return caught trout to the water.