CCA is an alliance of concerned citizens who are dedicated to protecting Charlestown’s environment, economy, and future. CCA was founded on the principle of environmental protection in 2006. Individuals who would go on to found CCA have led our community on these issues for more than fifty years, and CCA is committed to working to protect the beautiful, natural character of our community for future generations. Responsible management of the natural resources entrusted to our care strengthens our local economy, contributes to our rural character, protects our relatively low tax rate, and is key to our future success as a community. Please join us in this effort!
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Decades ago, forward-looking individuals who would go on to found CCA saw the need to preserve and protect our community’s natural resources. They dedicated themselves to this effort, organizing community members, founding the Charlestown Land Trust, writing grants, and negotiating land purchases.
Over 5,000 acres of open space in Charlestown—open space for recreation; access to the Pawcatuck River; protection of aquifers, ponds, and wetlands; and the preservation of wildlife habitat—have been permanently protected by these efforts. These lands absorb stormwater and pollutants, clean our drinking water, and give our town its beautiful natural character. The purchases have been more than paid for because they support our tourist economy, stabilize our tax rate and reduce flood insurance premiums.
When you stop to appreciate Charlestown’s natural areas and our rural character, please remember that there are those who have opposed nearly every one of these open space acquisitions. Our political opposition continues to block most land preservation efforts in Charlestown, advocating instead for developing land in Charlestown at a rate far greater than the land can naturally support.
To learn more about Charlestown’s open space visit our Guide to Public Recreation/Conservation/Hiking Areas in Charlestown.
Unlike other communities along the East Coast between Boston and New York, Charlestown possesses a magnificent natural resource—our incredibly dark skies. Our truly dark location protects our health and supports wildlife. Our dark skies also serve as an important economic asset, year-round.
With Charlestown’s dark skies and an observatory outfitted with extraordinary telescopes, our town is an important location for the study and viewing of the cosmos. The Frosty Drew Observatory and Science Center in Ninigret Park is well-known as a respected educational institution, with internship programs for young people.
The Observatory enjoys the reputation as New England’s gateway to the Milky Way and the wonders of the Universe. Many people live and die without ever seeing the Milky Way. However, in Charlestown, we are so lucky to still have a spectacular view. Our children can see the beauty and mystery of the universe with their own eyes, and that’s a priceless gift worth preserving for future generations.
Among other initiatives to protect our dark skies, CCA leaders wrote and passed our Dark Sky Ordinance, which regulates new commercial lighting in town. They launched a streetlight project, state-wide, that allowed Charlestown and other communities to purchase their streetlights from National Grid and install dark sky-compliant LED streetlights, saving money, reducing CO2 emissions, and keeping our skies dark when lighting streets. In addition, most of the lighting at town-owned buildings has been replaced with dark sky-compliant lighting as the town led by example.
CCA continues to advocate for our beautiful starlit sky and resist our political opposition’s efforts to “light up” Charlestown.
You can learn more about Charlestown’s amazing night sky at our Dark Sky page.
Clean groundwater is a precious natural resource. We rely solely on groundwater for our drinking water through private wells that tap into deep aquifers and shallow groundwater deposits. Both need to be protected.
An overwhelming majority of residents agree that protecting groundwater is a priority and support the innovative work being done by our town staff and the Planning Commission in protecting our environment.
Essentially all 1,000 cesspools have been removed. In addition, a number of failing and substandard septic systems have been replaced with modern onsite sewage disposal systems, runoff into one of our coastal ponds has been diverted, a program to reduce the use of fertilizers and pesticides for lawn care was instituted, and ways to reduce nitrates from household wastewater disposal have been developed.
The most effective way to protect our groundwater is to preserve large, forested areas; maintain low-density development; and carefully manage stormwater and wastewater. Compared to the cost of a septic facility/sewers and town water, these steps are much more affordable for taxpayers.
CCA’s members have been the leaders in protecting Charlestown’s groundwater. However, those efforts are being challenged by the majority of the current Town Council who oppose protecting open space and who promote significant increases in residential densities and population growth beyond what the land can support.
One of the main routes in the Atlantic Flyway, for both the north and south bird migrations, passes through Charlestown at the Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge. Along with darkness, the Refuge offers migrating birds the first true respite and a gateway to miles of relatively unfragmented open space on their journey north in the spring. In the fall it offers a place to rest and fatten up before embarking south on this same path along an urban coastline.
Since 1970, North America has lost 3 billion breeding adult birds from the total bird population. Across the continent, that’s one in four birds gone. For shorebirds and all birds using the Atlantic Flyway, of which Charlestown is a part, things are even worse, with one in three birds gone.
Not so long ago, members of CCA’s political opposition proposed erecting three industrial-scale wind turbines and lighted football fields in Charlestown’s Ninigret Park. Both of these proposals were stopped by the US National Park Service because they threatened to cause migrating and nesting birds to avoid the Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge. Other incompatibilities are again being proposed in Ninigret Park.
Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge is permanently protected, but more intense development on nearby public land and thoughtless destruction of forests and shrubland elsewhere would chip away at the value of the refuge to those species it was created to protect.
Charlestown’s salt ponds are coastal lagoons that represent an ecosystem of diverse habitats consisting of barrier beaches, salt marshes, intertidal flats, and adjacent shorelines with tributary streams and ponds. The relatively shallow coastal ponds are fed by freshwater from springs and streams, and by seawater through narrow breachways. They are vulnerable to water quality and habitat degradation from human use, including contamination from sewage, and from storms.
Protecting the town’s salt ponds was a top priority, as was preserving the rural nature of the town. To protect this state-wide resource, critical for our economy, CCA leaders worked with town staff to adopt a long-overdue Harbor Management Plan and to obtain funding and grants to restore marshland, replenish beaches, improve navigation, and study methods to reduce nitrates in the watershed.
One of CCA’s leaders, Virginia Lee, has made it her life’s work to study the coastal ponds. She was an original co-author of the Salt Pond Region Special Area Management Plan (known as the Salt Pond SAMP) adopted by the RI Coastal Resource Management Council and a co-founder of the Salt Ponds Coalition. Leo Mainelli, CCA’s current President, is a longtime member of the Board of Directors of the Salt Ponds Coalition. Another CCA leader, Susan Cooper, worked diligently to establish a Climate Resiliency Commission to consider ways to plan for and mitigate the effects of sea level rise and climate change.
The salt ponds are a foundation of our tourism economy and our tax base. This work is essential to support erosion resistance and the ecological functions of the salt marshes, as well as the economic vitality of recreational tourism associated with swimming, boating, and fishing along our coastal shores.
The Pawcatuck River forms the entire northern border of our town. The Pawcatuck River offers exceptional recreational opportunities and protects wildlife habitat.
The CCA-led Town Council and its Planning Commission were the first in Rhode Island to support the designation by the US Congress of the Pawtucket River as a National Wild and Scenic River. For ten years, in partnership with the Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association and other groups, CCA leaders worked to gain national recognition for the Pawcatuck and other rivers in the Wood-Pawcatuck watershed as National Wild and Scenic Rivers. More rare and endangered species are associated with these rivers than anywhere else in the region.
The designation provides increased protection for the Pawcatuck and provides access to federal funding. It also increases awareness of the recreational opportunities the river provides, supporting both the environment and tourism.
The future of the Pawcatuck depends on improving and conserving water quality and water quantity; conserving open space, woodlands, and wetlands; and protecting native plant and animal species. All of these are priorities for CCA and all of these are threatened by our political opposition.
Our abundant outdoor recreational activities support tourism, the main source of economic activity in our town, and enhance the quality of life for both residents and visitors. Activities like swimming, beach combing, boating, fishing, bicycling, hiking, sightseeing, stargazing, and bird watching make the community attractive to visitors and tourists and support businesses.
The former head of the South County Tourism Council, Myrna George, once wrote about the still-quiet charm of Rhode Island—the unique sense of place in the coastal communities of South County—versus the sprawling hodgepodge one finds in other places.
Ms. George offered the following advice:
Tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place, its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage and the well-being of its residents, will become in future years the only sustainable economy.”
We are stewards of Charlestown’s unique combination of natural resources and our cultural history. Preserving and protecting them will be the key to our economy in the future.
Most of Charlestown’s protected natural areas are the result of the work of present and past CCA leaders. Our political opposition objects to continued land conservation and instead proposes an economy based on increased development of both public and private land. This may advance the personal economies of a few, but it will be to the long-term detriment of our community’s beautiful character and tourist economy.
We are united in the belief that the character of Charlestown needs to be preserved for future generations.
CCA leaders worked with residents and experts to develop a Comprehensive Plan that can serve as the blueprint for our town for the next twenty years. The Plan’s overall vision serves as the basis of the goals and objectives for our future:
Charlestown will be a community united by its desire to provide a healthy, high quality of life which depends upon the protection of its natural, cultural and historic resources. These resources also protect wildlife and mitigate future climate change, and provide economic benefits in terms of tourism. Limited facilities and service demands keep our property taxes low and thoughtful land stewardship and careful land regulation will ensure the same quality of life and experiences for future generations.”
Our Comprehensive Plan, written in 2020 and adopted by the Town Council and certified by the state of Rhode Island in 2021, has solidified how the use of land will unfold in our community.
Our opposition has complained that the 2021 Comprehensive Plan emphasizes environmental protection and should be rewritten to promote development.
Finally, our children are our future. CCA has always supported the highest qualified candidates to represent Charlestown on the Chariho School Committee by recruiting experienced educators with Masters or Doctorates in Education. We have made funding our award-winning schools a priority.
The above topics don’t include every environmental or economic issue that Charlestown has faced and that CCA has taken a lead on, but we hope they demonstrate our deep commitment to our town, its land, and its people.