Growing A Greener Real Estate Market

If you are keeping a catalog of silver linings to the economic downturn, add this to the list: the dramatic slowdown in the housing market has cleared the agendas of local land use agencies sufficiently for some stock-taking and reassessment of Newtown’s land use policies and practices. Have we done a good job of managing Newtown’s astonishing growth over the past 20 years? Can we do better? As it paused this year, Newtown’s Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) looked around and seemed to answer those two questions: mostly and yes.

Last spring, P&Z created a new set of regulations intended to preserve archaeological, cultural, and historic features in the path of residential development. Except in Newtown’s historic districts, much of the town’s historic record — written in the vernacular of structure, stone wall, and artifact — has been dismantled and plowed under without question or second thought.

Earlier this month, the commission began its consideration of another step that would add a layer of environmental regulation to the review of environmental impacts to wetlands and watercourses already conducted by the Inland Wetlands Commission. The proposal, presented to P&Z on October 1 by its director of planning and land use, George Benson, would extend regulatory protections to ecosystems including plant and animal habitats, wildlife corridors, and forests. The intent is to maintain a healthy balance of flora and fauna, predator and prey, and to preserve native plant species and the diversity of wildlife that sustains a healthy ecosystem. (How nice it would be to have our growing deer population controlled by bobcats and coyotes rather than by cars.)

Development proposals on two large tracts in town — Hunter Ridge off Taunton Lake and Sherman Woods in Sandy Hook — may be signaling a resumption of full bore residential development in Newtown, so the commission’s consideration of additional environmental protections may be coming none too soon. While there may be a temptation to rush the review and implementation of new rules, P&Z should take the time to craft a process of environmental review that does not thwart development simply by being burdensome.

The commission could use this as an opportunity to forge a coordinated study of environmental issues that is something more than mandatory tree hugging, benefiting both developers and the community. Healthy and balanced ecosystems are the hallmark of valuable property, whether you build a house on it or hike through it. Land that is contaminated by carelessness, choked and isolated and stripped of its wildlife and native plants, and left to suffer the unfortunate natural consequences of all abused places is not going to be on anyone’s list of preferred places to live. The best developers know this.

Simply requiring residential developers to go off on their own to produce an environmental impact statement for their subdivision applications will likely produce perfunctory and predictable reports by experts-for-hire paid to rationalize a desired result that may not reflect the highest and best use of the land. Alternatively, the commission could take a more active role, working with developers to understand and enhance the value of property through careful stewardship, enlisting the best ideas and advice of the town’s own environmental experts in the land use office and on the Conservation Commission for the benefit of the town and the developer. The result might be a new “green” era of residential development in Newtown that respects and preserve our ecosystems and builds a desirable and profitable local real estate market.