Which Came First, The Aquifer or the Industrial Zone?

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(Note: This text below was originally written by HVCEO staff as an article in the July 2004 edition of the Greater Danbury Chamber's Inside Business Magazine).

Our story starts about 35 years ago. Most area municipalities were somewhat late in putting municipal zoning in place, New Milford was the last in 1970.

After World War II this was still something of a sleepy little area. But the regional growth rate of 1960 to 1970 was a shocking 56%, a pace that swept away the old conservatives opposition to adopting local planning and zoning (having now itself become a conservative force).

Boundaries for industrial zoning were laid out in the most logical locations, for the most part in the low lying relatively flat valley floors, adjacent to the rivers and major roadways that were in such locations. The early planners and industrialists took pride in creating balance, thinking ahead with adjacent residential areas, roads, water and sewer utilities, etc.

The first big shock to this nice initial system came in 1973. That year a tough statewide wetlands preservation law essentially cut holes in the zoning pattern. Suddenly, key lands planned for tax generating uses were eliminated from consideration or their use heavily conditioned.

The loss of industrial potential in southern New Milford along the Still River due to these new wetlands laws is still remembered as a particular sore point. Yes there is value in wetlands, but we cannot deny that the business zoning patterns of 1973, designed for economic growth, took a hit.

Then in the late seventies a second and graver challenge to industrial zoning suddenly appeared. At that time the first aquifer maps by the U. S. Geological Survey were finding their way into the municipalities, coupled with suggested federal and state protection strategies.

To aggravate the situation, more so than for wetlands, the region’s aquifers are located almost exclusively in the flat central valley areas, just those lands that were zoned for business and industry. The potential impact on business from aquifers was thus more concentrated than the more scattered limitations imposed by the recent wetlands law.

Having arrived on the zoning maps first in time, many felt that the still new and unfilled industrial zone boundaries should hold their ground against the aquifer challenge. “Don’t tell me we have to take yet another hit,” Chuck was heard to say.

So the industrial parks as the chickens in our story were clearly here first. But the aquifers as the eggs then of course made the same claim.

Aquifer advocates said their feature was 15,000 years older than the new commercial and industrial zoning, that much of the new industrial zoning over water supply aquifers should be considered to be a planning error and should be revised to residential or some other less risky use. As for the first aquifer maps arriving on the scene a little late, why, that was not their fault.

The big issue then, and remaining with us today, concerns proper containment of the synthetic organic chemicals used by much of business and industry. Resistant to biological breakdown, these substances are not digestible to the organisms that normally decompose natural wastes such as sewage.

Any slight mistake in their management, a spill in the parking lot or near a floor drain, and the underlying aquifer would be contaminated and thereby eliminated from future water supply use.

So, what is the correct answer to the original question, or better, who won? By and large, the old timers who laid out the original zoning won the day. Since the late 1970's, when this issue started in the Region, not a single commercial or industrial zone has been removed from a local zoning map due to a water supply aquifer having been certified to be beneath it.

But there was some significant protection action nonetheless. Some of the municipalities chose to set conditions on the types of industry allowed, rather than ban industry over their aquifers altogether.

Newtown’s Planning and Zoning Commission took the lead in 1981 with protection requirements for the Pootatuck Aquifer. Ridgefield and Brookfield followed suit.

Danbury took a broader approach and put in place a hazardous substances ordinance for all commercial and industrial zones, not just the more limited public water supply aquifer areas beneath them. Bethel and New Milford took no action for their aquifers.

The more outlying towns of Sherman, New Fairfield, Bridgewater and Redding, hilly areas with few aquifers and almost no industrial zoning, were largely outside of the debate.

Looking outside of the local regulatory sphere, we must give some credit to positive changes in recent decades by the industrial equipment manufacturing and building construction industries. They have sought to improve containment of hazardous materials and prevent leaks as groundwater contamination became a national topic. Municipal site plan reviews have also upgraded their watchfulness on this issue.

Then in the late 1980's the State of Connecticut grappled with the issue of requiring mandatory local protection for aquifer well fields. This debate extended on all through the 90's. It was not until 2004 that the question as to the stringency of this mandate was finally settled and a new regulation put in place.

The result in our area will be the adoption of aquifer protection regulations for well fields in New Milford and Bethel for the first time. The current Bethel aquifer well field, by the way, is the replacement of another along Route 53 in Bethel abandoned after it was polluted some years ago by synthetic organic chemicals.

As for the impact of the new mandate upon Danbury, Newtown and Ridgefield, they may need to tweak their regulatory mechanisms put in place in the 80's to make sure they meet the new state minimum standards.

Brookfield stands alone in having adopted aquifer protection years ago for future, not current, water supply use of its aquifers, and the Town it is not yet subject to the new state minimum standards.

So who wins, the aquifers or the industrial zones? Should we have accommodated the zoning lines better back in the seventies, when the aquifer maps came along, and when we still had the chance?

Or was the choice we made to just limit and condition industrial uses the long term and correct solution? I suspect that our residents a few decades ahead will see the answer quite clearly.