Yale Farm Comments

[Kirt Mayland]

Flyaddict members,


As some of you may have read, DEP recently (tentatively) issued two critical water permits for the highly controversial Yale Farm Golf Course development in the NW corner of the state at the top of the Housatonic River watershed.

Written comments on DEP's tentative decisions on the water quality and water diversion applications for Yale Farm are due by February 13th to the following e-mail address:


DEP.YaleFarmsComments@ct.gov

If you do comment on this decisions and the proposal - which we firmly believe will adversely affect several coldwater brooks - please also copy the following on your comments:


Representative Richard Roy: richard.roy@cga.ct.gov

Senator Ed Meyer: Meyer@senatedems.ct.gov

Congressman Chris Murphy: chris@murphyforcongress.org

Governor Rell: Governor.Rell@ct.gov

IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO GET A LOT OF COMMENTS INTO DEP ON THIS.

Ultimately, it will be Commissioner McCarthy who will make the final decision on these permits following a period of written comments, a public hearing, and a recommended decision to her by a hearing officer.

For those of you who are note familiar with this project, here is a brief summary. Also, please feel free to contact me with any questions (kmayland@tu.org)



Project Summary:

The developer is Roland Betts, Bush's best friend from their Yale days continuing on to when they were partners with the Texas Rangers. They remain very close. He is the owner of Chelsea Piers in NYC and is a very rare weekender to Canaan, CT. He proposed in 2002 to build an 18-hole world-class golf course on top of a ridgeline in Canaan on a 760 property and to put up 62 homes alongside the course. The property is surrounded by conserved land and a state park (Campbell Falls State Park). The project has come under intense scrutiny and media attention for several reasons (described below) and has been turned down once officially by the DEP once already. The New Yorker, the NYT, Fish & Stream, The NY Post, etc. have all written about it. The course would be ultra-exclusive - invites only to people who can afford the $250,000 or so initiation fee and similar annual fees in operating costs. Few locals would be able to use it and studies show there would be little or no economic benefit to the towns from construction of the course.


The principal concerns are the following:


Water Withdrawals: The developer has chosen a site above 1200 feet, at the absolute top of a watershed. Therefore the only source of water available for the course is groundwater, and that can only be recharged by rain and snow. There are no big rivers feeding the aquifer up there, just a series of small brook trout streams and intermittent streams flowing off of it. The amount of water the developer is proposing to take is constantly in flux - he started with 300,000 gallons per day, and now, following a DEP rejection, has chosen to construct 2 irrigation ponds (with incredibly high evaporation rates) and only pump 150,000 gpd however all year around and not just during the irrigation season. We are concerned about the withdrawals for the temperature and flow impacts they will have on Ginger Creek and Hollow Brook which feed the Whiting River - all of of which are coldwater fisheries. Also, the pumping tests that the developer's team has conducted to determine the impact on streamflows from the groundwater pumping actually indicate a constant decline in the water table - basically an unsustainable situation for the watershed.


Housing. In Connecticut, unlike in MA, for instance, developers can "segment" applications. Therefore when Betts realized there was opposition to the housing component, he buried it. He knows that he can come back and do the housing separately once he gets his permits and not necessarily have to go through state or federal review. Therefore the project is not getting the full environmental review it deserves. AG Blumenthal is furious that the DEP is not dealing with the housing issue up front in the water diversion application. Betts has acknowledged in the press that he still plans to build homes - he just will not acknowledge this to the regulators. It can only be assumed that 62 or more 4-bedroom macmansions with large swaths of pristine turf will use upwards of 1,000 gallons of water a day (for lawn watering alone). Combined, this is a tremendous amount of water that deservers DEP review - something it will not get now that Betts has not provided the agency with a complete application.


Conservation Property. The land, in general, is one of the most highly treasured in the state for its conservation value. It is surrounded (literally) by conserved properties and is part of a contiguous 4-state tract of wildlife habitat that is federally recognized as the Highlands Region - valued for its brook trout populations. The streams are all Class A water quality, containing coldwater fish and ultimately feed a WTMW 3 (the Blackberry River).

There are a lot of other issues with the property with respect to extensive alteration of wetlands (they have to move around 460,000 cubic tons of soil to construct the course) and destruction of open fields and bird habitat (Audubon is opposed to the project). There was a federally threatened bog turtle on the property spotted several years ago prompting an Endangered Species Act Review by Fish and Wildlife Service and then the Army Corps.

There are about a dozen environmental groups opposing the project along with almost all the locals: (over a 1100 signatures on http://www.petitiononline.com/yalefarm/petition.html).

Thanks again for submitting comments on this.



Kirt

[The Fisherman]

This one's a no-brainer, folks. Let's get those emails rolling in!

[Apache Trout]

Comments Sent.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

[The Fisherman]

You've got under three hours to take a stand. If you haven't yet, please do!

[Z Fisher]

Sent my comments out earlier in the week

[Kirt Mayland]

As of yesterday, the local/night public hearing regarding the DEP
water quality and water diversion permits for the Yale Farm Golf
Course will be held on May 12, 2009 at the North Canaan Town Hall
(subject to change). Please save this date, pass this notice around,
and make sure you can attend to voice your concerns about the proposed
against numerous aspects of the proposed development.

Atty General Blumenthal will be attending along with hundreds of others to speak out against the recent DEP decisions.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions.

Sincerely,

Kirt Mayland
Director of the Eastern Water Project
Trout Unlimited
PO Box 681
206 Pleasant Street
Housatonic, MA 01236
(413) 274-6329 (w)
(646) 302-3639 (c)

[Todd K]

PLease add to calendar on FlyAddict.

[Todd K]

Dead project. Just heard on NPR that this project died. Due to the economy mostly.

[southpaw526]

Yeah, let's all just keep our ears and eyes open, because thre are a ton of projects getting back burnered temporarily. But they will be happening as soon as funding is available. I'll bet the developers are hoping interest from the environmentalist groups wanes while the project sits dormant waiting to proceed at the best possible time.

[Kierran]

Kirt is no longer with TU unfortunately, but he deserves many thanks for his tireless work on this.

[The Fisherman]

Yeah, baby! For once I feel like writing letters to Editor may have actually done some good. :-)

This is great news. :-)

[Dave Underwood]

YALE FARM
Yale Farm Golf Course Plan Withdrawn

By MARK SPENCER | The Hartford Courant April 28, 2009 Wheaton Byers was on his North Canaan farm Monday tinkering with a tractor when he got a call on his cellphone about 4 p.m. that, though unexpected, filled him with "joy and relief."

For the better part of seven years, Byers, 83, has been a thorn in the side of Roland Betts, the New York developer and friend of former President George W. Bush (http://www.courant.com/topic/politics/government/presidents-of-the-united-states/george-bush-PEPLT000857.topic), who wanted to build an 18-hole luxury golf course on the neighboring 780-acre Yale Farm, a former mountainside estate in Norfolk and North Canaan.

With yet another round of land-use hearings scheduled to begin next month, Betts and his partners announced Monday they were calling it quits. Environmentalists who fought the proposal were "long on hysteria" and the permitting process had become a "circus," but none of that mattered in the end, they said in a statement.

"The collapse of America's economy doomed Yale Farm," they said.




Byers was past caring what killed the project, which he said threatened wildlife and wetlands in a pristine part of the Canaan Valley, his home since 1938. After getting the call Monday, he spent four solid hours in a flurry of calls with fellow opponents.

"We are just all delighted," he said.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (http://www.courant.com/topic/politics/richard-blumenthal-hpp4069.topic), who had been preparing to oppose the development at state Department of Environment Protection hearings scheduled to start May 12, said the efforts of environmental groups and individual activists played an important role in the decision to abandon the proposal.

"I think this result is a profound and enduring victory for citizen activism," he said.

In addition to aesthetic concerns, a key battle was over the impact the golf course would have on groundwater levels, streams and wetlands. In addition to the water demands of the golf course, opponents also pointed to the 61 luxury homes that were part of the original concept, but were not included in later permit applications.

Blumenthal emerged from a meeting with Betts earlier this year convinced that Betts intended to build the homes eventually. Regulators needed to consider both present and projected uses of water before issuing permits, he said.

Blumenthal said Betts displayed no concern about the economic viability of the project during their meeting, despite the fact that many golf courses around the nation are struggling financially.

Betts and his Hartford attorney could not be reached for comment Monday, but in the statement Betts defended the project, noting that the DEP had given it preliminary approval.

"We are equally as dedicated to the environment as those who opposed the project," the statement said.

While much had been written about housing as part of the project, the statement said, that aspect "was the tail not the dog."

Elizabeth Gilson, a lawyer for the Connecticut Fund for the Environment, said the developers tried to "slip through the golf course" while not mentioning the future housing, in part leading to inaccurate estimates of how much water it would consume.

"The fact of the matter is that the application was grossly deficient," Gilson said.

Betts developed the Chelsea Piers complex in New York City and rescued the Texas Rangers with his old college buddy, Bush. He and his wife, Lois, have a country estate just miles from Yale Farm on the Connecticut-Massachusetts border. His partners are Slade Mead, whose family has owned Yale Farm for 90 years, and David Tewksbury, who has lived next to Yale Farm for 16 years.

The partners said they were withdrawing from the permitting process and "discontinuing our efforts with respect to the project." But even as opponents celebrated Monday, their thoughts turned to whether the project could return in better economic times.

"It's not out of the question," Gilson said.