Why the Preserve Matters
by First Selectman Philip Miller

The Old Saybrook Planning Commission is deliberating on whether to grant an initial approval to one aspect of the Preserve development put forward by Riversound LLC, a subsidiary of Lehman Brothers. This application involves a 1000 acre property that is mostly in Old Saybrook. It also matters enough to Essex and Westbrook that both towns Boards of Selectmen each unanimously voted to send resolutions against the proposal, and Essex has gone one step further, and that is to be a legal intervener, which would guarantee that we would be notified of all meetings, hearings, and decisions.

So what is all the fuss about? On the surface, the proposal seems to have a lot of merit: a corporation as renowned as Lehman Brothers coming to our region and willing to invest millions into our local economy, a well designed golf course for recreation, 250 townhouses of golfside living in beautiful suburban coastal Connecticut, a perfect solution for empty nesters seeking to downsize, and Old Saybrook gets more than half the property to land bank for the future.

Residents of Old Saybrook and Westbrook have been surfeited with marketing which extols the virtues of the proposal being good for the community and the environment. Essex has been disregarded, and this time around, there is no development presently planned for the 70 plus acres in Essex. A previous plan for this property did indeed include some activity in Essex, and the groundswell of Essex residents against the earlier project helped to defeat that plan. This time around, the new promoters have sought to exclude any Essex activity, for now, perhaps to keep the opposition quiet.

Certainly Lehman Brothers has private rights, but defending the public trust is just as time honored a tradition, dating back to the Codes of Justinian. Many interested citizens of Old Saybrook, Westbrook, and Essex have looked carefully at the proposal. There have been some concerns that became reservations, and reservations which became objections.

Here are some main concerns: first, this isn't a high and dry 1000 acre parcel with an incidental stream or river running through it. It is predominately rocky forested bottom land, kind of like a giant broken up rocky sponge. From this property, there are three separate watersheds that flow into the three towns: the Oyster River in Old Saybrook, which flows directly into Long Island Sound, Westbrook's Trout Brook watershed, which flows into the Patchogue River and then into the Sound, and the Mud River, which flows into Essex, to the Connecticut River and into the Sound. The Trout Brook watershed contains the Holbrook and Westbrook wells, which are both important public water supplies. Within this watershed is the planned Zenon MBR community sewer system. The Mud River watershed is an extensive aquifer, the source of hundreds of private wells, and containing one important really clean pond in particular that Essex is developing into a high quality public swimming area.

If one were to look at a map of this property, you might come to the conclusion that the most logical entrance would be Ingham Hill Road in Old Saybrook. That won't happen, though, because the people of Saybrook voted to make this road a scenic designated road to help protect it from the likely resulting traffic. So the developers sought to have two entrances, one on Route 153 in Westbrook, and one on Bokum Road, near the Essex town line. So Old Saybrook would reap the taxation, while still having to subsidize substantial infrastructure costs, and Westbrook and Essex get the traffic liabilities. We would have to spend a lot of Essex tax dollars, for example, to remediate Bokum Road, an old and already overburdened thoroughfare.

Make no mistake about it, the construction would be on a massive scale, because to develop such a property, it would take digging, filling, and blasting on a huge scale. And the least desirable land goes to Old Saybrook. You only need to look at the example in Killingworth of the Bosco property, a similar rocky bottom land that the citizens of that town thought to land bank for a future school, until they realized that the costs to manipulate the land were too exorbitant for a municipality to absorb. Of course, Lehman Brothers has the resources, and they would reap the retail housing dollars.

Our region has several successful golf courses, but golf courses are typically susceptible to an over reliance on unnatural petrochemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. Anything that is applied in water, to the surface, either transpirates through the vegetation, or evaporates, or percolates down through the soils to recharge the underground aquifers. So keeping your surface waters ecologically healthy better assures groundwater quality. Again, there are three separate highly functioning, relatively pristine watersheds that originate here and provide important public water supply.

So here we are. I recently received a letter that accused me of using "environmental scare tactics" and engaging in "fear mongering at best". The writer was an Essex senior who is considering downsizing, and this is a common theme throughout Connecticut right now. Many municipalities are listening to such concerns and possible solutions. In fact, in Essex right now, there are two serious inquiries being made about fixing up already existing places with this type of housing. This also fits Old Saybrook's Plan of Conservation and Development guidelines, as well. As these places already have existing infrastructure, these are much more promising than tearing down an ecologically functional wetland forest for the same goal.

Some have suggested that Essex should bargain with Lehman Brothers to purchase the Essex land to protect ourselves. It also ignores the threat to the Mud River, whose watershed and drainage extends well upstream from Old Saybrook. We have avoided this myopic view, and we have purposefully chosen to take a regional approach with the citizens of Westbrook and Old Saybrook. This is fitting, as they are our oldest and most important neighbors and trading partners.

I can tell you that as an elected official, it is my responsibility to safeguard our town and to assure future viability and sustainability. People in the 22nd century won't remember our names, but I'd like to think that they'd look back and conclude that we were good stewards.