Environmental Group Organizes To Protect Pootatuck River, Watershed, Aquifer

By Andrew Gorosko

In conjunction with Earth Day, April 22, Potatuck Club members announced this week the formation of a new nonprofit environmental protection organization, whose goal will be the protection of the Pootatuck River, the Pootatuck River watershed, and the Pootatuck aquifer.

The Potatuck Club is a private fish-and-game club that owns about 250 acres of undeveloped land lying in a corridor on either side of the Pootatuck River, in the area situated between Wasserman Way and South Main Street.

(The club, which formed in 1888, adopted the archaic spelling of the river’s name, Potatuck.)

Initially conceived as the Pootatuck Aquifer and Watershed Conservation Association, the nascent organization’s current working name is the Pootatuck River Conservation Association. That name may change before the group assumes its final form, according to Michael Osborne, Potatuck Club president.

Mr Osborne of Sandy Hook and Richard Bell of New Haven, who is the club’s secretary, described the new association’s formation.

 Mr Osborne said the group would be similar to other river watershed protection groups, such as the Housatonic Valley Association (HVA). HVA, a nonprofit organization that formed in 1941, advocates environmental protection for the Housatonic River Watershed, which extends 150 miles southward from the Berkshires in Massachusetts to Long Island Sound. The 26-square-mile Pootatuck River Watershed lies within the larger Housatonic River Watershed, which covers 1,948 square miles.

Like the HVA, which focuses on environmental protection issues within the Housatonic River Watershed, the new organization will focus on such issues within the Pootatuck River Watershed, Mr Osborne said. He said he expects the new group to offer individual, family, corporate, and government memberships.

The specific functioning of the organization is expected to stem from the composition of its eventual membership, according to Mr Bell.

The three principal objectives of the group will be the environmental protection the Pootatuck River, the Pootatuck River watershed, and the Pootatuck aquifer, Mr Bell said. “The river’s so uniquely a Newtown creature,” he said.

In strategic terms, the organization would stress the importance of watershed management, Mr Osborne said. “It will be another voice,” which will comment on development issues within the Pootatuck River Watershed, he added.

“I would hope we have a very responsible and knowledgeable voice” that comments on what constitutes sensible conservation and sensible development, Mr Bell said.

The group would eventually hire a director, have an office, and conduct a public education program.

 “A lot of this process is educational,” Mr Osborne said.

By the end of 2005, the group’s nucleus should be formed, Mr Bell said. “It’ll take a few years to get [the organization] going well,” he added.

 “This organization should be the voice of the river and the watershed,” Mr Bell said.

Pootatuck Domain

The Pootatuck River Watershed collects rainwater falling across a broad swath of central Newtown, channeling that drainage both eastward and westward, and then eventually northward into the main trunk of the Pootatuck River near Sandy Hook Center.

The combined flow of the river system is detained in two old millponds behind dams in Rocky Glen. The northward-flowing river then deposits its water and its sediment load at a delta at its confluence with the larger Housatonic River, near Silver Bridge.

The Pootatuck River’s 26-square-mile watershed lies almost entirely within Newtown, covering approximately 40 percent of the town’s 60-square-mile area. A small section of the river’s watershed, including its headwaters, lie in adjacent Monroe, in the area where Hattertown Road and Huntingtown Road enter Monroe.

The watershed’s easternmost point lies near the intersection of Route 34 and Gray’s Plain Road. The watershed’s westernmost point lies near the intersection of Birch Hill Road and Cannon Drive.

Within the roughly diamond-shaped watershed lies the Pootatuck aquifer, the subterranean source of two public water supplies, one of which supplies United Water’s central public water supply, and  the other which provides drinking water for Fairfield Hills and adjacent properties.

Besides the dozens of brooks and streams that channel water through the Pootatuck River Watershed, the drainage basin contains several ponds whose waters eventually drain into the Housatonic. These include Hattertown Pond, Warner Pond, Curtis Pond, Hawley Pond, and a cluster of ponds near Button Shop Road.

Besides the water that enters the river system as rainfall and snowmelt, much water enters the river system from the underlying Pootatuck Aquifer.

The area where the tributary Deep Brook joins the Pootatuck River is a state-regulated wild trout management area, where brook trout reproduce naturally. It is one of only eight such areas in the state, where anglers fish for over wintering native trout. That area has catch-and-release fishing, in which anglers must return caught trout to the water.

People who are interested in learning more about the Pootatuck River Conservation Association may contact Mr Osborne at PO Box 704, Sandy Hook, CT, 06482.