Once we get more reliable data, we’ll be able to assess impacts such as safety, noise, air quality, cumulative damage to roads, and energy used. Invenergy will pay for the water, but all these other costs associated with health, safety, and diminished quality of life will be borne by the communities the trucks pass through. And it all depends on how much water is trucked on any given day.
“Charlestown’s interest, therefore, is the potential of a material, adverse impact on Charlestown’s water supply as a consequence of the operation of the proposed Power Plant. To this extent, the Town of Charlestown is an “affected community” … “As such, a public hearing must be conducted in Charlestown, with notice at least 30 days prior, and prior to the final hearing on the Application.”
The Energy Facilities Siting Board should not allow the developers of the Invenergy power plant to use an agreement to withdraw groundwater from within the Town of Charlestown to satisfy any requirement for a backup water supply because of insufficient notice to the Town of Charlestown, insufficient information provided to the Town, and a need for the Siting Board to seek additional legal advice.
Westerly Sun: “You may now become an affected community under the Energy Facility Siting Board’s regulations and if that’s the case they may need to amend the proceeding that they’re in now and have a hearing in Charlestown, but only if we’re allowed to intervene,” Ruggiero said.
Westerly Sun: “We haven’t been notified, we’ve had no calls from the state agencies, and no calls from the tribe,” council President Virginia Lee said Friday. “We have no information so we’re going to discuss with our lawyers how to go about getting the documents we haven’t been provided and how to get the data.”
ecoRI News: “John Brown, Narragansett Indian Tribe medicine man, gave ecoRI News a list of reasons for agreeing to work with what could be one of the biggest polluters in the state.”
The eclipse in Rhode Island may have only been 67%, but the crowds at Frosty Drew Observatory in Ninigret Park on August 21 were full! Estimates on attendance range from […]
The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at The University of Rhode Island is the place for those over 50 with the desire to learn just for the joy of learning. OLLI has courses and events year round with the next semester beginning in early September 2017. Registration for the fall semester opens on August 22!
Over 75 Charlestown residents attended the Solarize Charlestown program at Cross Mills Library on June 27 to learn about the State Incentives, Federal Tax Credits, and group purchasing power made possible by the partnership of the State of Rhode Island and the Town of Charlestown that make this an affordable time to add solar panels to your roof.
If you missed the program or just want to review the June 27 presentation, we have put together a slide show with a short summary of what we learned.
We can’t really think of any reason to mention these ‘dropped’ routes specifically in the Record of Decision, other than to guide later planning, and to assure that plans for the Kenyon to Old Saybrook Bypass, and Quadtracking between Branford and Guilford are reintroduced into decision making at a later date.
“Just in Charlestown, we had 19 pieces of open space that would have been affected, and we counted upwards of almost 100 pieces of private property,” said Filippi. “The rerouting in northern Charlestown was going to save about one minute of time and cost over a billion dollars to do. And it just didn’t make sense.” Video included
“We now place our faith in RIDOT and CTDOT to work with the FRA on a good-faith process to evaluate the New Haven to Providence corridor and impacts of the various route alternatives.”
Greg Stroud, “And let me say that the entire Northeast Corridor owes a debt of gratitude to the leadership and work, late in coming, but remarkably effective, from the Charlestown Citizens Alliance, and the Charlestown government. It has been a model effort on their part as a local government. Let us all learn from them.”
Now, the new plan is calling for a studies in both Connecticut and Rhode Island to examine ways to improve service on this stretch. The FRA said those studies will be conducted by the states in conjunction with the FRA and other “stakeholders,” but the agency did not offer specifics on funding, costs or a timeframe.
Bowing to local pressure, the Federal Railroad Administration has dropped plans for a controversial new rail line from Old Saybrook CT to Richmond RI from its ambitious project to overhaul the railroad system in the Northeast corridor.
The official waiting period after the release of the Federal Railroad Administrations’s (FRA) Final Tier 1 Environmental Impact Statement ended on January 31. The FRA could have published a Record […]
This beautiful essay by Ken Payne makes the case that keeping our curvy train tracks and the natural and historic landscapes the train passes through are vital to Rhode Island’s […]
Hamden, CT – (May 4) – With a final Record of Decision on NEC Future expected as soon as late May, the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation is reaching out […]
Since 2010, Charlestown Town Councils have worked well with most commissions by practicing the philosophy of government that recommends you keep your political opposition close and work with them to reduce acrimony and find common ground. But a small faction of the Parks and Recreation Commission has used their appointments to politicize the commission to attack the Town Council.
With just weeks remaining before the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) completes a five-year NEC Future planning process, finalizing a ‘once-in-a-generation’ blueprint for rail travel and investment along the Northeast Corridor, advocates of historic, cultural and environmental resources in Connecticut are responding warily to recent statements from Connecticut DOT and FRA officials.
The charge that the Town Council appointed party loyalists does not bear up to close scrutiny. Only one has a history of ties to the Charlestown Citizens Alliance that endorsed all current members of Town Council. No evidence of a political litmus test for appointment to the commission has been offered, and I don’t think such evidence exists.
Their consensus was that the people along the Old Saybrook to Kenyon ByPass have to remain vigilant in their opposition and continue to document their positions in both town and state plans. Those currently in positions of power will not be those who make decisions in the future, and regardless of the current decisions, the communities must create documentation that protects historic buildings, open space, farms, and tribal lands. The struggle continues.
When: Thursday, March 30 at 7PM
Where: Kettle Pond Visitor Center, 50 Bend Rd., Charlestown
What: Status Update and Discussion on “Old Saybrook to Kenyon Bypass”
Our guest speaker is Gregory Stroud, Ph.D., Director of Special Projects at the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation. Greg is also the founder of the grassroots advocacy group on High-Speed Rail, SECoast.
Links below are to letters of opposition written by organizations or officials to the Federal Railroad Administration. We don’t yet have links to all documents. If we’ve missed anything, please […]
The following post was published by SECoast and is shared with us here by the Executive Director of SECoast Gregory Stroud. Greg has summed up all the new developments in […]
The portion of the project along the coast of Connecticut and Rhode Island would be devastating to historic communities … In addition, we wish to emphasize that, in our view, the proposed project fails to comply with Section 4(f) of the Department of Transportation Act.
In sum, we urge the Federal Railroad Administration to remove from its Tier 1 Record of Decision the portions of the project in Connecticut and Rhode Island that involve bypasses on new alignment and other draconian impacts on historic resources. Instead, the agency should conduct more detailed reviews to develop feasible and prudent alternatives that would avoid and minimize harm to these resources.
The “Old Saybrook to Kenyon Bypass” portion of the proposal lies within or runs immediately adjacent to the focus area for the Great Thicket National Wildlife Refuge, where land acquisition authority has been granted to conserve important fish and wildlife resources.
The proposal could have substantial effects on managing these species over time, including impacts to habitat connectivity, direct habitat loss, reduction in habitat quality adjacent to the rail lines, and the direct reduction in available habitat.
We believe that it would be an error to embed the bypass in the NEC Future project in Tier 1. The impacts in Rhode Island and its extraordinary costs balanced against its actual benefits in our state do not appear to warrant it. The requisite level of detailed environmental review in Tier 1 is not present; therefore it is critical not to have the bypass embedded in the project through a Tier 1 ROD. Your openness to taking our position into account is appreciated.
On behalf of the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, Connecticut’s statewide historic preservation advocacy organization, and SECoast, our special project dedicated to organizing and educating the public to protect Southeastern Connecticut and the Lower Connecticut River Valley, we submit the following comments to provide feedback on the Preferred Alternative and the contents of the Tier 1 Final EIS for NEC Future.
We have organized a notable volume of informed commentary on the NEC Future Plan, but remain concerned that the Federal Railroad Administration has not acknowledged public, municipal, legislative, or Congressional concerns expressed in two states about their fundamentally flawed planning process, insufficient public outreach, or un-substantiated inclusion of the Old Saybrook to Kenyon bypass in the F-EIS.
We seek your explanation as to whether you can legally alter the selected alternative in the ROD and remove the Westerly-Hopkinton-Charlestown-South Kingstown bypass as the state and communities have requested. If the FRA has the authority to remove the bypass as part of the alternative selected in the Tier I EIS ROD, we would ask that you exercise that authority.
We also write to reiterate that Rhode Island, specifically Providence, must remain a central part of the NEC. Any alternative that results in service bypassing the state is completely unacceptable.