Environment Committee Schedules Hearing on Open Space Bill

The Connecticut General Assembly’s Environment Committee will hold a hearing on Friday, March 16, on a bill to revise the state’s method of acquiring open space. Connecticut Audubon Society is a supporter of the bill and has been advocating for a number of its provisions for several years, through the recommendations of our annual Connecticut State of the Birds report.

The bill is number SB 347, and is called An Act Concerning the State’s Open Space Plan. You can read the text of the bill here.

The bill requires the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to identify lands that are the highest priorities for open space acquisition, including wildlife habitat and ecological resources, and the general locations of these highest priorities.

The legislation also requires the DEEP to work with other state agencies to identify state-owned lands that are important for conservation but which are not protected open space, and to plan a strategy for preserving them in perpetuity.

The legislation also broadens the number of stakeholders that the DEEP must consult when it works on these projects. Added to the list are municipalities and regional planning agencies, in addition to the Council on Environmental Quality and private nonprofit land conservation organizations such as CAS.

These revisions to Connecticut’s open space acquisition process are among many that we have enumerated over the years in our Connecticut State of the Birds reports. This year’s legislation was drafted by the Council on Environmental Quality and is supported by other conservation organizations as well.

The proposed legislation is important, we believe, because it will help focus the state’s land acquisition program as we move toward the goal of preserving 21 percent of the land in Connecticut by 2023. As things stand now, state officials know how much land has been preserved but they do not have a good idea of what kinds of lands have been preserved — whether it be conservation land, farmland, recreation land, etc.

The proposed legislation also is important because it will require the DEEP to make careful judgments about what kinds of lands should be preserved and to identify in general where those lands are located, so they can be viewed in the larger landscape context that is essential to serious conservation.

In addition, we know that state agencies other than the DEEP own large tracts of land, some of which have habitats that are rare or play an important role in a larger mosaic of habitats. This legislation will require the DEEP to work with its sister agencies to find and evaluate those lands. Because they are already state-owned, it would be a relatively-easy next step to protect them with conservation easements so they remain preserved forever.