Town Begins Marking Open Space Holdings

By Andrew Gorosko

The town has started installing orange open space marker posts along its open space holdings to identify areas that are open to the public for passive recreation.

C. Stephen Driver, who is the town’s conservation official, Judy Holmes, chairman of the town open space committee, and Martha Wright, an open space committee member, Tuesday installed the first such marker in a wooded area off the end of Old Purdy Station Road. The marker identifies a town open space area near an abandoned mica mine.

The six-foot-long orange Fiberglas marker posts are pounded about two feet into the ground. The posts bear the legend “Newtown Open Space.”

Ms Holmes, who also is a member of the town’s Conservation Commission, said the posts initially will be installed in selected open space areas to clearly indicate that those areas are open for public use.

Open space areas and easements near Old Purdy Station Road have been a source of conflict during the past several years, with some adjacent private property owners disputing the public’s right to use those areas near their properties.

When the Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) approves residential subdivisions, the developer typically designates 10 percent or more of the area in those subdivisions as open space and donates that land to the town or to a land conservation group. The public uses for those areas for passive recreation, such as hiking, horseback riding, and nature study.

The open space markers will be installed along sections of the town open space network that provide important linkages among municipal open space holdings.

The markers, which are directly adjacent to surveyors’ monuments, clearly identify areas as being in the town’s open space network and open for public use, Ms Wright said. Surveyors’ monuments typically are steel posts that have been driven into the ground.

Mr Driver said the town’s open space holdings in the vicinity of the mica mine are important linkages in the town’s open space network. Several open space parcels meet in that area, providing a connection for trails that lead to Poverty Hollow and the sprawling Huntington State Park in Redding.

The town will install the orange markers only next to existing surveyors’ monuments, Mr Driver said, stressing that the town is not seeking to re-survey the land in installing the markers. The monuments are used as reference points in surveyors’ descriptions of properties.

The orange marker installed Tuesday is near the town-owned 10-acre Torrence property, which is considered a key piece of the town’s open space network, Mr Driver said. The marker also is near a 6.5-acre abandoned mica mine, which the town is in the process of buying.

The P&Z is now requiring developers to clearly mark open space areas in new subdivisions, as deemed necessary, to make the location of open space areas obvious to the public.