Shoreline Plan, Potential Fees Reconsidered

By Kendra Bobowick

The battle is over for the moment for residents arguing against a shoreline plan that proposed registration fees and other costs for structures on lakeshore properties along the Housatonic River.

“This ends a year of us fighting with them, this is major news,” said Bridge End Farm Lane resident Dan O’Donnell. This week the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) rescinded its earlier approval of a Shoreline Management Plan (SMP) submitted by hydro company owner FirstLight Power. The plan and licensing are mandatory for the company controlling the Shepaug and Stevenson dams, among other properties. The plan is now again pending approval. Recent meetings are part of public and local and state officials’ protests to FERC’s decision earlier this summer to approve the SMP. The outcry at meetings held with FirstLight and FERC in past months weighed in FERC’s decision to rescind approval.

Commission Chairman Joseph T. Kelliher said the record in the (approval) proceeding was not complete, according to FERC spokeswoman Celeste Miller, who issued the statement: “I credit the stakeholders involved in this matter for bringing this to light.”

Part of FERC’s approval process includes public comment. “Input is part of our consideration,” Ms Miller added.

Is this reversal common? “It’s unusual, it is fair to say,” Ms Miller explained. The SMP is once again pending. FERC’s attention now rests on FirstLight.

“We anticipate asking for more information from FirstLight,” she said. “When that request is made it will be public, I can’t anticipate it would not be.”

Friends of the Lake (Lillinonah) executive board members have been concerned about potential fees for personal property along the shore, and have issued a statement. “It is clear that this action was taken in response to the outpouring of objections to the SMP as previously approved. Accordingly, we hope and expect that the new plan will reflect substantial changes responsive to those objections.

“We owe a debt of thanks to our elected officials, in particular Attorney General Blumenthal, Congressman Chris Murphy, Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, and New Fairfield First Selectman John Hodge, for their support of this effort.”

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who had joined the grassroots outcry from individual residents and groups including the Lake Lillinonah Authority and Friends of the Lake among others, expressed his relief this week.

“I am delighted that FERC has seen the light and rescinded this fatally flawed shoreline management plan,” Mr Blumenthal stated in a release drafted on Monday, October 29.

For more than a year residents living along Lakes Lillinonah and Candlewood had been concerned about management and registration fees for docks, gazebos, and other structures along the waterline as proposed by the shoreline plan. In July the regulatory commission approved the SMP, and fees would have become due in the future. Mr Blumenthal, Congressman Chris Murphy, and citizen protests increased, however. In past months, FERC representatives met with residents and town and state officials who specified their disapproval for the shoreline plan.

The attorney general believes that the regulatory commission “heard and heeded residents and the facts, leading it to correctly conclude that the current plan is unfair and unworkable… The commission’s action hopefully shows that it will heed concerns about environmental issues such as water levels and the ecosystems, and economic impacts in unfair fees and property rights.”

Among arguments against the shoreline plan were concerns about the company’s water use. Residents had worried that the company would choose to raise the lakes’ regular operating levels, for example. Environmentalists had stressed that the waters up the lakes’ banks and into the tree line would be harmful for the ecosystem.