"Absolutely the right choice..."

Commissioner Dan Esty’s Recusal List:  Anybody missing?  As of Oct. 3. new Office of Consumer Counsel
Alcoa, BP, CH2M Hill, Coca-Cola Enterprise, Connecticut Fund for the Environment, Disney, ESPN, Dow Chemical, FedEx, General Electric, IBM, Ingersoll-Rand, Johnson & Johnson, Motorola, Naya Waters, Nestle Waters, Nokia, Procter & Gamble, Personal Care Products Council, SC Johnson, Scotts Miracle-Gro, The Nature Conservancy, Timex, Unilever, Walmart, Waste Management, Yale University,  Xerox.

WATER SUPPLY OUR GREATEST ECONOMIC RESOURCE, JMO
Too busy "solving" the problems of Connecticut?  A "long view" of what kind of place CT should be?  The Haddam Land Swap may come back to bite this administration.


DEEP chief goes fishing, catches heat for land deal

Brookfield Patch, Nov 22. 2010 at Housatonic Valley Council of Elected Officials meeting
Housatonic Valley Looks at Environmental Issues From Watersheds to Bottles
A Superior Court decision to protect the Saugatuck Watershed has town officials including First Selectman Rudy Marconi considering the impact on public drinking water

Affordable housing efforts have benefited greatly from Section 8-30g of the state code as the law allows builders lenience when bringing the affordable units into town — but higher density is not always a good thing.

When it comes to protecting the watershed, Judge Henry S. Cohn of the State Superior Court writes, "The protection of a source of public drinking water clearly outweighs the need for affordable housing."

The court overruled an appeal by the Eureka building company to amend the zoning map in order to build units at a site on Bennett's Farm Road in Ridgefield because 67 acres of the property were in the Saugatuck Watershed, which supplies the public drinking water in the Saugatuck Reservoir.

Ridgefield First Selectman Rudy Marconi backed the decision at the Housatonic Valley Council of Elected Officials Thursday and introduced state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) representative MaryAnn Nusom Haverstock to speak about some of the region's efforts in terms of protecting watersheds.

"A watershed encompasses many towns," Haverstock said. "If we can get not one town but several towns coming together to look for funding, we can bring low-impact development to planning and zoning."

"The bottom line," Marconi said, "is that water is the next oil," with agreement from the HVCEO table, which included selectmen from New Milford, Brookfield, New Fairfield and other towns in the region.

Haverstock mentioned some initiatives to protect watersheds, such as creating a "low-impact development library" to make the towns' practices more consistent, a "green capitals initiative" to demonstrate in Hartford the importance of protection and increased funding for towns beginning December 1 to "pull together from each other's expertise and experiences."

Judge Cohn wrote in his October 20 decision, "[Z]oning regulations and local conservation and development plans are to be made with consideration for the protection of existing and potential surface and ground drinking water supplies."

He quoted the state's water resources policy "to preserve and protect water supply watershed lands and prevent degradation of surface water and groundwaters."

Also at the HVCEO meeting was a representative of the "Think Outside the Bottle Campaign," which urges municipalities as well as individuals to forgo bottled-water use for tap water whenever possible.

The two water-based environmental subjects fit together nicely.

The representative of Corporate Accountability International's program, Kristen Urquiza, said, "We ought to put more pride back in our public water system — people are under the impression that the water our towns are providing is not of a high quality, but it's not true."

Marconi made the effort back in early October to stop paying for bottled water in Ridgefield's town hall, where water fountains now provide town employees with water unless they decide to buy their own bottles — it's a symbolic gesture as well as a practical one, saving the town $6,000 dollars, according to Marconi.

"There's nothing wrong with the water we have at town hall," Marconi said. "A lot of people get used to bottled water, but the environmental impacts aren't worth it."

Not everyone at the table agreed, though.

"We have to be sensitive of individual towns' situations," said Redding First Selectman Natalie Ketcham, whose town hall recently installed a new well that isn't ready for consumption.

New Milford Mayor and HVCEO chair Patricia Murphy also mentioned that bottled-water companies provide jobs.

Brookfield Town Hall was recently connected to the newly completed Pocono waterline extension, eliminating the need for bottled water, which the town has been purchasing for some time. Water fountains are scheduled to be installed in the coming week.

Overall, the council was in support of the initiative, many saying they would make the effort to use Ridgefield as a model.

First Selectman Rudy Marconi of Ridgefield.

East Lyme — The developer who has twice wrangled with the town over putting housing in the Oswegatchie Hills has submitted a third application, this time for 840 condominiums in the Hills.  Glenn Russo, owner of Landmark Development LLC of Middletown, said the application addresses the issues of sewer, water and equality that have been of concern to the town's Zoning Commission.

“This application is exactly what the commission has requested during our previous two applications,” Russo said Thursday.  Of the 840 condos, 252 would be designated as affordable.

Russo has twice applied to the town to build condominiums and affordable housing in the north of the Hills, the approximately 700 acres of woodlands that fronts the Niantic River. Both times the town's Zoning Commission has denied his application.  Russo's first application in 2002 sought a zone change that included a conceptual plan for 894 housing units — 280 of which were designated as affordable.

His second, last year, called for phased development beginning with 352 units, of which affordable housing would comprise 120 units.  An appeal of the second decision is pending in state Superior Court — the court upheld the town in his first appeal — and a civil rights discrimination lawsuit Russo brought against East Lyme is pending in federal District Court.

This latest application seeks approval for a new section of the town's zoning regulations called “Special Use Affordable Housing District.” It also asks to rezone land that Russo owns or has options on.  The site development plan shows 24 buildings, all identical condominiums for sale.

In previous applications, the affordable housing was either in the form of rental units or in housing that was set apart and a different style than the market-rate units. Zoning Commission members had voiced their displeasure at the division.  The development would occur near the existing Deerfield Condominiums on 123 acres. Of that, 86 acres, or almost 70 percent, would be set aside for open space.

According to the drawings and to Russo, the condominiums would lie entirely within the sewer shed, meaning the condominiums would have access to water and sewer. Russo said he does not need to have on-site septic with this proposed development.  Issues surrounding the sewer shed, as well as the on-site septic system, were key in the commission's denials of the previous applications. The earlier applications each included development that fell outside the service area.  Russo said the entire development is also outside of the coastal management area and all the units are at least 1,000 feet from the water.

“As you can tell from the plans, it is located as far from the water as it can and still be on our property,” he said.

First Selectman Wayne Fraser said on Thursday that he has not yet seen the latest application. Fraser is also the chairman of the town's Water and Sewer Commission.

“We're still being sued in federal court and it's obvious that I'm a target of any kind of lawsuit that he can bring forward to disrupt the town's operation, so I'm staying out of it,” he said.

East Lyme — The developer who hopes to build condominiums and affordable housing in the Oswegatchie Hills has filed a lawsuit to appeal the Zoning Commission's denial of his most recent application.

Glenn Russo, the owner of Landmark Development LLC of Middletown, filed the lawsuit in New London Superior Court on Tuesday. It names the town's Zoning Commission as the defendant.

This is Russo's second attempt to build in the Hills. In June 2002 the commission denied his first application, which sought a zone change that included a conceptual plan for 894 housing units — 280 of which were designated as affordable.

Russo appealed that decision, but a Superior Court judge upheld the commission's decision in September 2004.

The application that is the subject of the suit calls for phased development beginning with 352 units. Affordable housing would comprise 120 units, or 34 percent of the first phase. The affordable housing would consist of rental apartments near the entrance of the development, with market-rate condominiums for sale in an opposite corner near the Niantic River and Latimer Brook.

Russo and his attorney contend that this application will prove to the court that the town used false information in its first rejection, and that the judge upheld the town's denial based on misinformation.

Specifically, the suit claims that when town officials said the site was completely outside the sewer shed, or sewer service area, and thus had no access to sewer and water service, they were misrepresenting the facts.

Russo and his attorney maintain that information the town presented about its Plan of Development, which outlines how much of the land should be preserved as open space, was also wrong and incorrectly influenced the judge's decision to uphold the commission's ruling.

“When we went in before, we had the Water and Sewer Commission saying that we were outside the sewer shed, which was false,” Russo's attorney, Michael Zizka, said by phone on Thursday. “It's very difficult to believe that they would have made a mistake about that. It's not rocket science to read a map, and it was their map. ... When the judge made her decision on the last appeal ... she relied on something they said that was flat-out not true.”

Zoning Commission chairman Mark Nickerson said he could not comment on the appeal other than to say he stands by the commission's decision and is confident it was based on facts. First Selectman Wayne Fraser called the appeal a “shame.”

Russo said Thursday that he hopes the town will accept his offer to sell it a majority of the property while allowing him to develop a part of it.

“Even though we feel as though we were forced into filing this appeal, we still have some hope that we can work with the town and they would reconsider the offer that we've presented to them,” he said.

The suit says the commission's reasons for denial do not meet its burden of proof. Under state law, a town cannot deny an affordable housing application simply based on its zoning regulations. Rather, the town must prove that the need to preserve the land outweighs the need for affordable housing.  The suit says there was substantial evidence in the record showing that the soil could support a community septic system and that the application “would not prevent the town from achieving its preservation goals for the Oswegatchie Hills.”

The suit also says the town's affordable-housing regulation, which says any affordable housing must prove that water and sewer are available to the site, “is an illegal pretext since the Commission does not require public water and sewer availability for any other multifamily housing in East Lyme.”

EAST LYME -- Perhaps the one thing people agree about when it comes to the Oswegatchie Hills is that their value is too great to measure.

Rising more than 200 feet above the briny estuary of the Niantic River on the border of East Lyme and Waterford, Oswegatchie is a pristine, 700-acre oasis of rocky forest hemmed in by highways, shopping centers and houses along the rapidly developing - and increasingly exclusive - Connecticut shore. There is no place like it in Connecticut, environmentalists say.

To Glenn Russo, the developer who owns or holds options on more than 200 acres and wants to build a large development including affordable housing on that land, Oswegatchie Hills represents his right to profit from his land. He says the town, improperly, is trying to take that right away.

To Wayne Fraser, East Lyme's first selectman, who grew up boating beside Oswegatchie Hills and hunting amid the trees, the land represents a quest to preserve the character, and the autonomy, of his town.

To John C. Brittain, perhaps the most prominent civil rights lawyer in Connecticut, Oswegatchie Hills represents the chance to attack what he calls the civil rights "barrier of the 21st century" - the growing economic segregation of neighborhoods and towns, reflected in Connecticut's housing patterns.

Brittain and other civil rights lawyers chose to postpone that fight during the landmark Sheff vs. O'Neill school desegregation lawsuit.

Now, Brittain has chosen his battleground - Oswegatchie Hills. He and two Hartford-area African American plaintiffs, Susan Barlow and Lisa Clemons, have sued East Lyme and several of its officials, including Fraser, in federal court. They say the town is using sewer regulations as a pretext to block affordable housing, therefore discriminating against lower-income people, and by extension, racial and ethnic minority groups.

"In the civil rights movement, there is a saying: `Freedom is good, but freedom ain't free.' It costs. Natural land use preservation, a land trust, is good, too. But it, too, is not free," Brittain said. "So you have two competing interests with the natural preservation of Oswegatchie Hills."

Competing Needs

Two of the state's most thorny problems - the preservation of open land from sprawling development, and the sifting of Connecticut's cities and towns into haves and have-nots - are colliding on the Oswegatchie Hills.

In a battle that has spilled into state and federal courts, the debate has invoked issues of racism, land rights, local control, affordable housing and the preservation of sensitive coastal ecosystems. It has prompted accusations of lying, and worse, by both sides.

It is a battle that could resonate beyond East Lyme, if Brittain can prove his claims in U.S. District Court in Hartford that the town discriminated in its attempt to block Russo from building affordable housing, by preventing him from tying into the town's sewers.

There currently is no statutory requirement for Connecticut towns to allow affordable housing. However, if a town has less than 10 percent of its housing stock within the low- and moderate-income range - as is the case in East Lyme - developers can ask a judge to overturn a community's rejection of their applications for affordable housing.

"If John Brittain prevails, it certainly will be a wake-up call to towns that they should proactively promote affordable housing and not wait for the courts to make those decisions for them," said Jeff Freiser, executive director of the Connecticut Housing Coalition.

Connecticut's shoreline isn't only heavily developed, Brittain said, it's also highly exclusive, as past campaigns to open private beaches and even municipal parks to the public have shown.

Teachers, cops, casino employees and other working-class people also should have the chance to live somewhere beautiful near the water, he said.

"What is the greater need?" Brittain asked. "The somewhat luxury of the environmental preservation and land trust, or to meet the housing needs of the developing area?"

East Lyme has a median household income 24 percent higher than the state's median income, according to the 2000 Census. It is the fourth most affluent town in New London County, its median income trailing only Lyme, Salem and Old Lyme.

About 4 percent of East Lyme's housing is classified "affordable" by the state, subsidized for low- or moderate-income people, and the town has added 12 affordable homes over the past decade, according to state Department of Economic and Community Development data. Towns with similar shares of affordable housing include Greenwich, Suffield and Stonington.

Fraser, the East Lyme first selectman, said affordable housing is not the issue; Oswegatchie Hills is about the town's ability to protect its natural heritage.

"We don't need to be told what to do by a developer who has no interest in our community," Fraser said. "I'm going to do the best I can do, with whatever means I have while I'm in this position, and even if I'm out of this position, to support the preservation, with a fair price to be paid for the land."

The furor over Oswegatchie is matched, perhaps, only by the beauty of the land.

"It's a very, very dramatic piece of land," said David Leff, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection. He said the DEP has offered to spend as much as $3.2 million to buy the 230 acres controlled or owned by Russo, but the two sides never agreed on a price.

"There are between 600 and 700 undeveloped acres. For sheer size, there's nothing like it," Leff said. "There are no undeveloped patches of land that large along the Connecticut coast."

Because it includes so much contiguous forest on the shore, Oswegatchie is an important stopover for migratory birds, and DEP officials are concerned that its development could cause problems for shellfish in the Niantic River through runoff of sediment and nitrogen into the estuary, Leff said.

Fraser has organized a partnership of private groups and public officials, including the Trust for Public Land, to raise at least $8 million in private and public funds for preserving as much of Oswegatchie Hills as they can, no matter what happens to the 230 acres Russo wants to develop.

"It's a one-time opportunity to keep it like it is," said Michael Dunn, vice president of Friends of the Oswegatchie Hills Nature Preserve, one of the groups raising money to preserve the hills.

Misled?

Efforts to preserve the Oswegatchie Hills have been going on since at least the 1980s, when the state approved $1 million to acquire the open space. But at the time, the town declined to act.

"Our problem was, we didn't back that up with money," Fraser said. "When the state legislature put up $1 million, our big failure was the town didn't have enough people pushing it to come up with a matching million. Otherwise we wouldn't be talking today."

Russo has been fighting the town almost since he bought the first piece of Oswegatchie more than five years ago. The Middletown developer initially proposed a luxury housing development and a golf course, but the East Lyme zoning board rejected that plan.

The town later changed the zoning on Russo's property, enacting a regulation that 90 percent of the land be retained as open space. Russo appealed in court, saying that action constituted an unlawful government taking of property without compensation. A Superior Court judge found that the town acted improperly and threw out the zone change.

Changing his tactics, Russo proposed the first of several affordable housing plans on Oswegatchie Hills in 2001. When the town in 2002 rejected Russo's proposed zoning changes that could have allowed nearly 900 homes, about 300 of which would have been affordable, he appealed under the state's affordable housing appeals law.

Russo lost that battle in September when a Superior Court judge ruled that the public interest in preservation of the natural resources of the hills and the estuary outweighed the need for affordable housing.

The question is whether the judge based that ruling on correct information that the development could not be connected to the sewer system.

A DEP official wrote in a 2002 memo that based on his conversations with East Lyme officials, Oswegatchie Hills is not part of the town's sewer service area, and partly for that reason, could not be connected to municipal sewers.

In papers filed in U.S. District Court, Brittain and co-counsel William H. Clendenen Jr. said East Lyme officials "misled" the official, Dennis J. Greci, providing incorrect information that ultimately formed one basis of the court's decision to reject Russo's affordable housing appeal.

Reached this week, Greci said he received "inadequate" information from town officials in 2002.

"I wouldn't use the term `misled,'" Greci said. "They said [the development] was not in the sewer service area, and I took them at their word."

Motives Questioned

The most recent milestone in the battle for the hills came Jan. 6, when the East Lyme Zoning Commission rejected a downsized plan to build 352 homes, including 120 affordable units, on Oswegatchie Hills.

This time, however, the zoning commission acknowledged that 42 acres of Russo's proposed development were in the town's water and sewer service area. Russo plans to appeal that rejection.

"Now, we're going to be able to go into court and say this is the kind of thing we're dealing with. Town officials are making inaccurate statements" that are forming the basis of court decisions, said Michael A. Zizka, the Hartford lawyer representing Russo in his land-use proposals.

As the legal battles stretch on, each side accuses the other of concealing its true motives.

"This is a case where affordable housing is used to increase property values so that a person can make himself a few million dollars more," Fraser said. The town supports affordable housing, he said, built in a place with water, sewers and roads to serve it.

Fraser questioned the true intent of Brittain, a professor at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University in Houston. Brittain was a professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law from 1977 to 1999, a period in which he was a prominent lawyer in the Sheff case.

"It's done for publicity, done to play the race card," Fraser said. "People in this town were offended by it, by the allegations ... and if nothing else, it helped to unite probably 99 percent of the people in this region."

Brittain said he believes many people in East Lyme support the affordable housing proposal.

"I have received numerous telephone calls and letters from people in East Lyme and in the surrounding area in support of the basic proposition that these local shoreline communities are too exclusive, and they are pricing everyday, working people out of the housing market," he said.

Brittain said there's nothing wrong with Russo's company, Landmark Development, making money while civil rights interests pursue their goals.

"The latter, I say, is an example of mutually converging interests, and that's a part of the American landscape," Brittain said. "Landmark has a market-rate project in which they want to make a profit from the sale of houses. The civil rights interests can get in, so to speak, on the ground floor, with affordable housing units that they otherwise could not finance."

“This is the Oswegatchie Hills,” he said, stretching the name to “Ozz-a-wa-gat-chie,” rolling out the syllables like a jazz song. A faux
flower arrangement, he decided, would represent a hypothetical cluster of homes, and the table itself the town's watershed. With
these pieces set, Brittain, a law professor at Texas Southern University, began to explain the next legal battle he's prepared to wage — one focused on housing for minorities in East Lyme. For him, it will be another strategic campaign in an on-going fight for racial equality.

“The Hills” are Brittain's chess king. A 236-acre piece of the rocky woodland perched above the Niantic River's west bank is at the center of a federal discrimination lawsuit that Brittain and Hartford attorney M.H. Reese Norris have launched against East Lyme and several town officials. They were hired by Landmark Development LLC, a Middletown developer that wants to build a housing complex with some affordable units in the Hills. The town's Zoning Commission vetoed the proposal in June 2002, saying the land could not support the nearly 900 homes Landmark envisioned there. It also said the town's water and sewer systems could not be extended to that site.

Brittain, the lead attorney on the historic Sheff vs. O'Neill school desegregation case, says that town officials are lying, that the commission fabricated the water and sewer dilemma as an excuse. The town, he says, wants to remain a predominantly white, upper-middle class community and keep out lower-income minorities by denying housing they could afford. The town recently filed a motion to dismiss the federal lawsuit, and it is preparing to defend an earlier lawsuit Landmark filed in state Superior Court to allow the housing.

Brittain thinks most people support the concept of equality in housing, just as they do in education, as long as their lives don't change
because of it. It took the Sheff lawsuit, he says, to force the state to create programs that put inner-city and suburban students in the same schools.

“Connecticut is clearly on record, aggressively so, in support of affordable housing,” he said.  “They're also on record as supporting integrated education. (But) like the typical sociological dimension, called NIMBY — Not In My Back Yard - the difference comes when
(deciding) who has to bear the burden of implementing it.”

With blacks and Hispanics comprising about 11 percent of East Lyme's population of 18,118 and with virtually no affordable housing, the town must change, Brittain contends.  Through the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People he found two women who say they want to live in East Lyme and send their children to its schools. Susan Barlow of Hartford and Lisa Clemons of Windsor say they cannot find affordable housing in East Lyme but have pledged to live in Landmark homes if they are built. The women signed on as plaintiffs, along with Landmark and a real estate company, Jarvis of Cheshire LLC, in the lawsuit seeking millions of dollars in compensatory damages.

Seated in the Hilton lounge, 1,000 miles away from the Connecticut shoreline community he plans to invade, Brittain talked of how he's going to mobilize his forces — the NAACP and other leaders in the black community — to march on East Lyme, to protest in the streets of Niantic and Flanders.

“The NAACP will soon be coming in,” he said, “to rally the troops, to rally African-Americans. We might get more plaintiffs to raise the political issue with the state elected officials, the local elected officials. And to make it a civil rights case, to make it a civil rights demonstration, if necessary, in East Lyme. We'll crank it up slowly, but we will crank up this issue.”

As he greeted colleagues in the lounge and then the lobby of the hotel last weekend, the spry 59-year-old bounded over to them with a hearty handshake and vigorous “My man!” He chatted for a moment before making plans to catch up with them later, to fill them in “on the case I'm dropping on the town of East Lyme.”

                       •••

Civil rights advocates say it's no surprise that Brittain, who lives in Houston, has taken on the issue of affordable housing.  “He is one who recognizes that integrated neighborhoods support integrated schools,” said Hartford City Councilwoman Elizabeth Horton Sheff, whose son Milo Sheff was among the plaintiffs and the namesake of the school desegregation case.

Sheff vs. O'Neill, filed in 1989 and decided in favor of the plaintiffs in 1996, originally included a housing component. That part of the argument fizzled before the case got off the ground. It would have taken too long, Brittain says, for enough affordable housing to be
built to make a dent in school segregation.

“Now,” he said, “I am saying that residential housing opportunities is a key remedy to integrate the local schools by finding permanent housing for racial and language minorities in suburban, predominantly white neighborhoods.”  The case against East Lyme, filed on Oct. 27, is not Brittain's first foray into the fair housing war.  In 1984, he sued the city of Norwalk in federal court on behalf of the local chapter of the NAACP. Brittan says that Norwalk officials nixed a proposal for affordable housing in a predominantly white neighborhood but then approved the housing in a section of town populated mostly by minorities. About 74 percent of Norwalk's nearly 83,000 residents are white, according to U.S. Census statistics from 2000.

The city and the NAACP settled the case in 1986, creating a fair housing commission and a quasi-governmental Fair Housing Office. Both sides, Brittain says, agreed to support affordable housing in both minority and predominantly white neighborhoods.  Brittain brought a second federal lawsuit against Norwalk in 1999, saying the city violated the agreement by not doing enough to keep its end of the bargain. The city and the NAACP came up with another agreement in December, and the case is headed for settlement.

In East Lyme, however, there is no minority section of town, no obvious double standard.  And this time, Brittain's dealing with a piece of land that has for years been on the town's watch list for preservation.  The Zoning Commission has routinely denied proposals for large-scale developments in the Hills. The property falls within the town's Greenway Conservation District, established to preserve land by allowing only one single-family home on every five acres.

The 236-acre parcel is owned by two entities — Sargent's Head Realty Corp, with 151 acres, and Jarvis of Cheshire LLC, a subsidiary of Landmark, with the other 85. Landmark has an option to buy the Sargent's property.  East Lyme and state officials and some townspeople are not disputing Brittain's argument that the community needs more affordable housing. But they say he picked the wrong fight with Oswegatchie Hills.

“I've been involved on this for years, but this latest thing with Brittain doesn't make any sense to me,” said state Rep. Gary Orefice, D-East Lyme. “It is not a racial thing. You could make a basis for low-cost housing, but this particular approach to it has no basis.”

In denying Landmark's application, the commission said the public's health and the environmental interest in Oswegatchie Hills outweigh the need for affordable housing there.  First Selectman Wayne Fraser said Russo has visited his office on seven or eight occasions over the last couple of years, each time with different ideas for Oswegatchie Hills.  On the last visit, Fraser said, Russo proposed horse barns. Brittain says Landmark still intends to build homes.

“Landmark submitted a broader concept for an affordable housing and conservation zone change,” Brittain said. “So it's going to have housing, and it's going to have conservation built into it.”

                       •••

Born in Connecticut and raised in Norwalk, Brittain got his undergraduate and law degrees from Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, D.C. As a young lawyer, he did civil rights work in Mississippi, where he spent four years before moving to San
Francisco to open a private practice. He returned to his home state when the University of Connecticut offered him a full-time job teaching law. He and his wife have two grown children.

Brittain says he couldn't sue East Lyme on his own. In Norwalk, he had the backing of the NAACP and the city's fair housing coalition. To attack East Lyme, he needed a willing knight.  “This is unique, because the lead advocate is a developer who has a strong civil rights interest and commitment,” Brittain said.

Brittain didn't go looking for Landmark. Russo, he says, called him in Texas, where he went after his 22-year tenure at the UConn law school. “He said, ‘I saw what you did in Sheff vs. O'Neill. I've watched your development over the years in civil rights, and I want you to take a look at this issue in East Lyme and make your legal assessment. And if you think that it's a ripe action, I'd like to retain you,' ” Brittain recounted.

Russo, reached by phone at his Middletown office last week, declined to talk about the arrangement.  Until he accepted Russo's offer, Brittain knew Oswegatchie Hills only as a landmark he ran past in the East Lyme marathon. He hiked the property last December for a more thorough look.

Brittain returns to Connecticut for a few days every other month, and says he usually spends about two or three hours on the Landmark case during a week. In that time, he consults on the phone with the plaintiffs, with Russo, or with Norris, the lawyer for the
Meriden mother blamed in the hanging suicide of her 12-year-old son last year.  Brittain has consulted on other civil rights lawsuits since Sheff vs. O'Neill, but this is his first high-profile case in Connecticut since.

He told the Connecticut Law Tribune in 1997 that he “needed anonymity and obscurity” after the eight-year Sheff case. He began moving out of the Connecticut spotlight when he agreed to teach a course at Texas Southern University in 1997. He eventually became
dean of the university's Thurgood Marshall School of Law but returned to teaching last year. The Landmark lawsuit is his only active court case.

“It's a fate, in which it seems to go, where I am continually drawn back to the Nutmeg state,” Brittain said, perched on the edge of a couch in the Hilton lounge. “Connecticut flows through my veins like the blood in my body. And no matter where I go, I cannot seem to
avoid coming back.”

                       •••

In Atlanta, without his Landmark files in front of him, Brittain found that some details about the case eluded him. He fumbled with the name of the real estate company that owns the bulk of the Oswegatchie Hills property, but he could rattle off the racial makeup of several towns in Connecticut and their school districts.

“John is very focused,” said Horton Sheff. “He thinks before he makes a decision, and he's very meticulous in that process. When he goes into something, he goes into it to win. Not just to make a social justice statement, but to win.”  Brittain's battle plan for East Lyme is based on theories he uses in his classroom to teach students to recognize discrimination. Indicators, he said, are harder to discern than they were in the era of the civil rights movement, and immediately after, when he worked as a civil rights lawyer in Mississippi.

“Discrimination today,” he said, “has become more subtle and more sophisticated, and people do not express a blatant bias.”  The case against East Lyme, he says, will largely be based on circumstantial facts.  As he sees it, the Zoning Commission's denial of Landmark's proposal adversely affected blacks and Hispanics because those two minority groups dominate Connecticut's affordable housing market.

“In order to link discrimination with affordable housing, you have to look at who are likely to occupy the homes,” he said. “This piece of property is unimproved, natural wooded land, and has often been mentioned for senior citizen homes with no intense objection. Yet when affordable housing is mentioned, there has been an objection.”

When Brittain heard that some people in East Lyme, like Orefice, think he's creating a racial issue where there is none, he leaned back in the lounge couch and folded his arms tightly across his chest. Quiet for a moment, he stared over his glasses.  “When people come to me and say I'm playing ‘the race card,' I ask them to look around East Lyme and look at its racial and ethnic composition. And I ask, what are they doing to “And then they're going to say anyone who speaks up about that, or anyone who uses any litigation, particularly in a public interest capacity, is playing the race card, when the race card is embedded in the very conditions that exist there.”

Brittain says he finds justification for the lawsuit in a principle at the heart of the Sheff victory and the mandate to correct inequality in the schools.  “Just because you didn't cause it ... doesn't mean you're not responsible for fixing it.”                “Just because you didn't cause it ... doesn't mean you're not responsible for fixing it.”From 

“I think that we will prevail in court,” Russo said Thursday.  Landmark filed the appeal Monday in New London Superior Court.  Since Connecticut adopted its affordable housing law in 1989, courts have overturned local zoning commission denials much more frequently than they have upheld them.

“In Stratford, it's not 100 percent, but it's pretty close,” said Kevin Nelson, executive director of the Stratford Housing Authority and an officer of the Connecticut chapter of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials.  Still, some in town hoped they could keep development out of Oswegatchie Hills.

“I think the town presented very good arguments for why that area should not be developed,” Zoning Commission Chairman Mark C. Nickerson said.  Nickerson did acknow-ledge that “an astronomical percentage gets overturned in the appeals process.”

“I've got to think most all of them do not have the environmental sensitivity that this one does,” he said. “Let's see what happens.”

Landmark asked the Zoning Commission to designate its property for affordable housing after the commission denied a previous application to build a golf course and senior housing there. State law makes it difficult for towns to block affordable housing developments if less than 10 percent of a town's existing housing is “affordable” — within the price range of people earning 60 to 80 percent of the median income. East Lyme falls well below that threshold.

In its appeal, Landmark argues that the Zoning Commission did not meet its burden to show that the development would pose health, safety or other problems that clearly outweigh the state's policy of promoting affordable housing.  In its decision, the Zoning Commission argued that since the site could not be connected to public water and sewers it was inappropriate for high-density housing. Russo said he believed that was the most vulnerable part of the commission's decision.

During six nights of hearings on the affordable housing application, Landmark argued that the town Water and Sewer Commission was denying service to the area because it did not want to see the area developed. Landmark also argued that the availability of public water and sewer need not be a requirement for affordable-housing developments.  Lawyers anticipated the court appeals of the decision would take at least six months.

First Selectman Wayne Fraser and many others in town have opposed development of Oswegatchie Hills, on the west shore of the Niantic River, because they say it is a fragile ecosystem that should be preserved for passive recreation.  But despite decades of concern with the area neither the town nor the state has been able to purchase the property. The state Department of
Environmental Protection made preserving open space a priority only in 1998. The DEP engaged Landmark in a series of negotiations to buy the property, but they were never able to come to terms. 

Oswegatchie Hills debate leans toward development:  Affordable-housing plan could end hopes for land preservation
By Michael Kolber, New London DAY, 10-2-02
East Lyme —The fight over development in Oswegatchie Hills that has consumed East Lyme for years will come to an end, of sorts, on Thursday night.  But regardless of the outcome of this week's Zoning Commission vote, the decades-long debate is likely to have an afterlife of months, if not years.

The Oswegatchie Hills complex proposed by a Middletown developer last year became a lightning rod for local interest because it would provide affordable housing, of which there is an acute shortage in the region, and because the developers appear to have a good shot at being allowed to build on a tract that town residents had long hoped to preserve as open space.

Town residents fondly remember taking their children to Oswegatchie Hills — hundreds of hilly, rocky undeveloped acres that line the west shore of the Niantic River. As the developer's lawyer pointed out this week, these daytrippers were also trespassers, since — despite decades of concern — the land has never become parkland.

Now the chance to preserve the space may be gone forever. Stymied by the town in his effort to develop the 228-acre area as a golf and senior community, Glen Russo, a principal in Landmark Development Group, is seeking to build an apartment complex in which 30 percent of the units would be affordable to residents who earn 60 to 80 percent of the town's median income.

Landmark hasn't submitted a site plan, so it is difficult to say what the development might look like. At this point, Landmark is only asking to have its site zoned for affordable housing. It says this will allow the community more input in what will be built, but it also
puts the commission in a position of having to vote on an application without knowing what the developer plans to build.

Russo's planners did provide a conceptual site plan earlier this year that showed up to 894 housing units, but a modified proposal now being considered would put more constraints on development. The units would be clustered on the site, and 40 to 45 percent of the area would remain as open space in a conceptual plan Landmark submitted to the commission Monday.

Much of the site is unusable for development because it has a slope greater than 25 percent or is wetland.

Landmark, which has built a number of commercial and residential projects in Middletown, chose to build affordable housing because state law makes it difficult for towns to block such developments. In June, the Zoning Commission rejected Landmark's request to zone the site for affordable housing. On Aug. 1, Landmark submitted the modified proposal on which the commission will vote Thursday.

Even if the commission rejects the modifications, the dispute could be far from over.  Landmark could appeal to a Superior Court judge, who would consider whether public health, safety or other concerns outweigh the town's responsibilities to build affordable housing. State law puts the burden on towns to defend a rejection of an affordable-housing proposal, and developers often prevail in court.  Since many suburban towns have affordable-housing shortages, developers have been able to use the 1989 affordable-housing law to push unpopular developments through planning and zoning commissions.

Lawyers say the court appeal, at best, would take six months and possibly much longer.

Although he has stridently opposed development in Oswegatchie Hills, First Selectman Wayne Fraser said he has encouraged developers to consider building affordable housing in other parts of town.

Frequent uses, and some say abuses, of the affordable housing law have built momentum in Fairfield and New Haven counties to alter it. The law was written to encourage suburban towns to shoulder some of the burden of low-income housing, which tends to contribute little to the tax base and to cost municipalities more in education and social services. But since the state's cities still maintain an overwhelming portion of affordable housing, the Democrat-controlled General Assembly has been loathe to change the law.

Rep. Jim Amman, D-Milford, a key opponent of the law, said as more communities are adversely impacted, more legislators will agree to reform the law. He admitted change could be a decade away.  “It's a facade for big-pocket developers doing these projects in every community,” Amman said.

Amman said the state does have an affordable housing shortage — in southeastern Connecticut, the Council of Governments estimates new construction will need to double by 2005 to keep pace with the demand for housing, much of it affordable — but the state
should provide incentives for towns to build affordable housing, not give developers so much power over local planning boards.

Fraser doesn't think the current hubbub is even about affordable housing. The first selectman said he thinks Landmark is only trying to change the zoning so the property will become more valuable, justifying the state to pay more to preserve the land as open space.

The state has offered to buy the land, but Landmark was dissatisfied with how much the state was willing to pay. Fraser said he has lined up private benefactors who would be willing to pay Landmark more to preserve the property.

Russo said he hasn't heard from these new benefactors — and is no longer interested in selling the property.  Fraser insists the whole thing is a ruse.  “He's lying,” Fraser said.

But at a hearing on Monday, Landmark provided a conceptual site plan of what its development could be, and last week Russo insisted that he would build affordable housing.  The project only became an affordable-housing proposal last November, after the Zoning
Commission changed the site's zoning to prevent a golf course from being built there.

“I believe this zone change was not proper and amounted to an unconstitutional taking of my client's property rights,” lawyer Michael F. Dowley, who represented Landmark last year, wrote to the town zoning officer.  At that point, Landmark appears to have made a decision to take its gloves off.

“We have studied the Connecticut statutes to see if there is any way to properly use our property,” Dowley wrote. “There is a real need for affordable housing in Connecticut. ... Your town must approve such applications unless the town proves by weighty evidence
that my client's application is not appropriate.”

Russo insists he hoped all along to develop the property, but was willing to negotiate with the Department of Environmental Protection after the state and town asked that the site be preserved.

The town has been asking the state to buy the site since at least the 1980s, but the site was not considered a high priority for acquisition until 1998, when Gov. John G. Rowland told the DEP to put more emphasis on programs to preserve open space.

But through four years of negotiations that ended in June, the DEP and Russo were not able to agree on a price. Landmark owns much of the site and has a long-term option to buy the rest of it. The rest is owned by Sargent's Head Corporation, which has allowed Russo to negotiate on its behalf for development or sale.

In 2000, two appraisers hired by the state found that 423 acres of the property was worth either $2.54 million or $3 million. The DEP offered Russo $2.5 million. He declined and made a $5.9 million counteroffer to sell a 229-acre parcel.  The state declined this offer, since it could not justify paying more for a smaller parcel.

In December 2001, the DEP offered to buy 236 acres for $2.1 million. Russo, claiming the property was worth $8.5 million, offered to sell it for $5.3 million. Again, the negotiators could not come to terms. In February, Russo offered to sell 110 acres of waterfront property for $2.8 million, but no agreement could be reached.

Now, the lovers of the Hills are racing to acquire some 700 acres of undeveloped land along the Niantic River before developers do.  “The town has taken it for granted,” said Michael Dunn, vice president of the nonprofit Friends of the Oswegatchie Hills Nature Preserve. “People have hiked it for decades and decades and never even thought anything of it. The public's general thought has been, ‘It's undevelopable.'”

“I never knew,” said Friends President Marvin Schutt, “who owned those hills.”  Several public and private entities have come together to form Partnership for Preservation. Conceived by East Lyme First Selectman Wayne Fraser, the partnership seeks to pay “fair compensation” for nine    targeted parcels in the Hills and preserve them as open space.  Included are one owned by Russo and two others for which he has options to purchase. Russo is head of Landmark Development LLC of Middletown.

Two properties already acquired by the East Lyme Land Conservation Trust — a group not affiliated with the town — and a town-owned parcel at the southern edge of the Hills could potentially form a network of 12 properties connected by trails and forest that could be preserved as open space.

Initially, the partnership wants to raise $8 million.

“Is it going to take $8 million to buy it? We don't know,” Fraser said. “But is $8 million a fair price to negotiate with people and make them offers? We think so.”

“I hope it happens. That's a tall order,” said Fred Grimsey, president of Save the River—Save the Hills, a nonprofit advocacy group. “If he can make that happen, it's wonderful. I'm interested to see how he proposes to do it, because I don't have it.”

Fraser said he plans to ask town residents to approve allocating $2 million as early as January, which would match $2 million in open space grant money he will seek from the state. He hopes the federal government will provide $3 million, which U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd District, agreed to seek. Fraser would then aim to get another $2 million from outside donations.

“In three years or less, we should be 90 to 95 percent secured on this land,” he said at a Friends meeting last week.

•••

So far the preservation partnership consists simply of a group of like-minded people. It has no legal status.  The members' idea is for the component groups to pool their skills and to stay in communication.  “When we target a piece of property,” Fraser said, “we don't want three different entities going in there negotiating.”

Last Wednesday, 16 people gathered at East Lyme Town Hall to discuss the partnership. They included members of Friends and Save the River—Save the Hills; recently elected state Rep. Edward Jutila of East Lyme and Sen. Andrea Stillman of Waterford; Old Lyme First Selectman Timothy Griswold; representatives from the offices of the governor and Simmons; a deputy commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection; and representatives from the Mashantucket Pequot tribe and the Trust for Public Land.

Their first priority, which the group has already set to work on, is purchase of properties adjacent to parcels that have already been preserved. That is expected to help in obtaining grant money, because it gives evidence of intent to form a large green parcel.  For now, the partnership has determined to ignore Russo's land, which is tied up in a federal lawsuit that claims the Zoning Commission's denial was racially motivated because it perpetuates a lack of affordable housing in East Lyme. Fraser said it is time to put Russo's properties “on the back burner and focus on the remaining land.”

“What the real focus is, is that there is other land involved, and that the other land is under development pressure,” he said.  It is nearly impossible to put a price tag on the Oswegatchie Hills.  The town assessor's office lists assessment and appraisal values for each parcel, but the last revaluation was done in 2001, before real estate prices skyrocketed. Also, each property carries with it the unknown variable of a landowner's incentive to sell or not to sell.

Badge Blackett, of the Trust for Public Land, said Thursday that the best initial approach is as a representative of a charitable organization, appealing to an owner's desire to preserve the land.  The Friends have already had success with that approach. Last week they signed an agreement to purchase an option on 65 acres in the Hills owned by Alan Gardiner of Waterford, who agreed to a price somewhat below fair market value.

With Glenn Russo it will likely be different.

Five years ago, the state DEP tried to buy Russo's property. The DEP appraised at $2.1 million an area of 423 acres in the Hills. That area was: 86 acres owned by a subsidiary of Landmark called Jarvis and managed by Russo's wife, Alicia; the two parcels on which he holds options – owned by Sargent's Head Realty Corp.; and 194 additional acres on which Russo previously held options.

In 2001, negotiations between the DEP and Russo stalled. Russo wanted more money, while the DEP maintained that it had offered him fair market value, which by law is the most the state can pay.  David Leff, deputy DEP commissioner, said Thursday that Russo factored in potential development in obtaining his own appraisal.

“He gives hypotheticals to his appraisers,” Leff said. “They came in with a higher rate.”  Leff said the DEP tried to accommodate Russo by calculating hypothetical development in a subsequent appraisal, but Russo wanted three times more than the offer.  Dunn, of the nonprofit Friends, said he talked with Russo in the parking lot of East Lyme Town Hall after a meeting one night this fall and asked why he was fighting so hard. Why not travel the smoother route, Dunn asked, and sell the land to the town?

“He looked me in the eye and said, ‘I wouldn't sell that land to the town for 100 million dollars,'” Dunn said in an interview last month.  Russo said in a phone interview Thursday, “I don't remember saying that to him.”

“I had a private conversation with Mr. Dunn, and I don't think it's appropriate to discuss a private conversation between individuals in the newspaper,” Russo said.  Russo referred to an offer he has already extended, under which he would sell the town all the land it wants to designate as open space with the exception of the land Landmark wants for Phase I of its most recent proposal, which is about 150 acres. He said the town has not responded to that offer.

That proposal calls for 352 housing units, including 120 affordable housing apartments.

•••

Prior to the announcement of the partnership, three local nonprofit groups in town were each pursuing their own preservation goals and only sometimes crossed paths. Two have said they are actively engaged in the partnership's new idea of teamwork.  Save the River–Save the Hills has no intentions of buying land. Rather, it advocates for preserving land and works on river pollution problems.

“I'll be standing on the sidelines cheering,” Grimsey, its president, said.

The Friends of the Oswegatchie Hills Nature Preserve, a nonprofit group, formed for the purpose of raising money. It is incorporated, with a board of directors. Dunn, its vice president, is the principal of Dunn Associates, which buys and sells land. He has also developed properties in Groton and Waterford and said he understands how to eye land the way a developer would.

The East Lyme Land Conservation Trust has been around the longest, more than 30 years. Its current president, Kathryn Burton, said the agency applies for grant money and does some fundraising. The trust already owns about 130 acres in the Hills, acquired through donations. The trust is not participating in the partnership.

Burton said that while she applauds the group's efforts, she considers “partnership” a legal term that could put the agency at risk should someone sue the partnership.

“We have really been working quietly,” Burton said. “Three years ago I told people to not go out there and scream ‘I love Oswegatchie Hills' because Glenn Russo is the type who will raise the price. The more he knows people want it, the more he will raise the price.”

Burton said all the property owners have been approached, and that only two might be interested in selling. The rest, she said, have owned their land for generations and prefer to hold onto it.  Dunn said the effort to buy the other properties would still be worth it, even if Russo succeeds in his plans to build a housing development.

“We've got the seed of a nature preserve right here, right now,” he said. “The more we can get, the better. The waterfront is a gorgeous, unique area that we want to get, but without it, we could still have a beautiful nature preserve. We'll take as much as we can get.” 

The goal is to purchase 10 privately owned, undeveloped parcels at fair market value. The land would become a nature preserve that would include a mile of waterfront and would stretch from Veterans Memorial Field in East Lyme north to The Golden Spur, adjacent to Route 1. The linked properties would include walking trails and access to the water.

The targeted acreage includes a 230-acre parcel owned by Glenn Russo of Landmark Development Group, LLC. Russo is currently suing the town to allow him to build a housing complex with designated affordable units there.  The East Lyme Land Conservation Trust has already acquired 130 of the 700 acres.

Meeting with members of local preservation groups and The Nature Conservancy were the first selectmen of East Lyme, Waterford, Old Lyme and Salem; U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd District; and David K. Leff, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection.

East Lyme First Selectman Wayne Fraser said the town has been preoccupied with the Landmark lawsuits and has lost sight of how much more land in the Hills is available and potentially threatened by development.  “We were starting to lose focus that there was another large tract of land, with actually more acreage, that would be slipping away from us if we kept waiting a few more years,” Fraser said after the rally.

Fraser said he would ask East Lyme voters to approve $2 million in the town's capital budget to start the process, adding that he hoped for matching donations and grants.  Fraser said the partnership would form and hold its first meeting within a couple of weeks.

“For me, this whole thing is a dream come true,” said Marvin Schutt, president of the Friends of the Oswegatchie Hills Nature Preserve.  Schutt said there has been no widespread success at preserving land in the Hills because of a lack of grassroots organization. He added that there is also a lack of understanding of the land's significance.

“There are a lot of people in town who don't even know where Oswegatchie Hills is, and it's going to be our job to tell them where it is and why it should be preserved,” he said.

Simmons pledged his help in finding federal money. Leff said the DEP's role would be to help the partnership wend its way through the process of finding money and resources to acquire the land.  “I think funds are going to continue to be tight, but people need to make their voices heard if they believe in protecting open space, that this is a priority,” Leff said. “To the extent that the public makes its voice heard, the money will be available. It's really dependent on the average citizen.”

Fraser said the preservation partnership would copy the efforts of towns like Lyme and Salem, which have worked to preserve the Eightmile River watershed. It would also emulate Lyme and Old Lyme in the way those towns have partnered with various groups to buy hundreds of acres for open space.

Paul Eccard, Waterford first selectman, said after the rally that his town could help provide additional public access to the Niantic River.

“Because the Oswegatchie Hills could be one of the most important walking trails along the water in all of the Connecticut (trail) system if preserved, we have to develop access points on the Waterford side of the estuary,” Eccard said.

A congressional subcommittee will hear testimony next week on why the unsullied Eightmile River, which winds its way through East Haddam, Salem and Lyme, should be protected as part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.

U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd District, announced this week that the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Recreation and Public Lands will conduct a hearing Tuesday on his bill authorizing the National Park Service to study granting the Eightmile River the special designation.

The bill, co-sponsored by Simmons' fellow House members from Connecticut, also includes an unnamed sum to conduct the study, which could take two to four years.

“We are very pleasantly surprised to see it come along this far,” said Sue Merrow, the East Haddam first selectman. Simmons, Merrow and Nathan Frohling, the tidelands program director for the Nature Conservancy of Connecticut, will testify at the hearing.

Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., will submit a similar bill in the Senate on Monday. His spokesman, Marvin Fast, said it is a plus to have legislation in both chambers of Congress. Dodd's proposal is co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn.

Merrow said she plans Tuesday to describe to members of Congress what she calls “East Haddam's most remarkable resource,” which flows through hemlock gorges, over a spectacular waterfall, alongside forests and fields and farms on its way to the Connecticut River. The watershed also touches parts of East Lyme and Colchester.

“Through a combination of serendipity and the fortunate foresight of our town forefathers, the Eightmile River flows unrestricted and pure through an almost completely untrammeled landscape, a remarkable greenway,” reads Merrow's testimony, which she had to send ahead of time to the subcommittee.

About six years ago, the Eightmile River Watershed Committee, made up of local officials and citizens, and assisted by the University of Connecticut Cooperative Extension System and the Connecticut Nature Conservancy, was created to pursue the watershed project.

Merrow and her fellow first selectmen from Salem and Lyme have signed a “conservation compact” to work together to protect the river, known for its diversity of fish, vegetation and freshwater wetlands.

In addition to the selectmen, the three towns' planning and zoning commissions, wetlands commissions, land trusts, economic development commissions and historic district commissions support studying the Eightmile River for the “wild and scenic designation.”

Congress established the concept in 1968 as a means of protecting free-flowing rivers or river segments from federal projects, such as dams or diversions that could harm them. The designation would offer such protections not available through local or state laws.

In order to receive the special designation, the river must possess remarkable scenic, recreational, geologic, fish and wildlife, historic, cultural or similar attributes. Such studies, which typically cost about $250,000, take about two to four years to conduct.

Six years ago, a 14-mile length of the Farmington River from Hartland to Canton and New Hartford became the first awarded the “wild and scenic” protection in Connecticut. The Eightmile would be the second.

“I believe the Eightmile River possesses all the qualities required by the Wild and Scenic Rivers System,” Simmons said.

Following next week's hearing, the bill could proceed to a full committee hearing before the House Resources Committee, or else committee members could make changes to the bill and prepare it for consideration on the House floor.

NEW BRITAIN -- The plaintiffs in the landmark Sheff vs. O'Neill lawsuit to desegregate Hartford's schools were in court Monday accusing the state of breaching the settlement in the long-running case by falling woefully behind in enrolling students in new Hartford magnet schools.

After hearing arguments in Superior Court in New Britain, Judge A. Susan Peck deferred making a decision - but not before making it clear she is inclined to side with the state.  "Based on what I have before me, I can't find that the state is in breach of this agreement," Peck said.

The settlement reached between the state and the plaintiffs in January 2003 requires the state to open two interdistrict magnet schools in Hartford of 600 students each year for four years. The plaintiffs assert that the state must fill those schools as they come on line and that it is far behind. The state contends that the settlement simply requires a capacity for 600 students in each school, but that its method of phasing in students by adding new grades each year is in compliance with the agreement.

"It was always the state's intent that the schools would open with a capacity of 600 and grow," said Ralph E. Urban, assistant attorney general. "Magnet schools don't open just like that with four grades and full capacity."

"Nobody wants to go to their senior year in high school in a new school," he said, explaining that new schools start with students in the lowest grades and then refill that grade each year as the first class moves through the grades. "There is a plan. There is a scheme. It's working."

Sheff attorney Wesley W. Horton argued that the settlement stipulation did not refer to the word `capacity.' The language, he said, stated that the schools would be "host magnets of 600. It did not say `with a capacity of 600' or `600 seats.'"

With hundreds of students on the waiting lists each year, Horton said, the state could surely fill the schools.

Next school year - the third year of the four-year settlement plan - the agreement calls for 3,600 spots for students in magnet schools, and Horton said each seat should be filled. The actual capacity will exceed the stipulated agreement, according to state projections, with places for 4,080 students but enrollment is expected to be 1,750. The waiting lists are for the lower grades, which are filled to capacity.

The settlement sets forth a goal of enrolling 30 percent of Hartford's children in racially integrated magnet schools or in suburban schools through the school choice program. Urban said that the state is on track to have 25 percent of the city students enrolled in integrated schools and will ultimately achieve 30 percent.

Horton said goals are not legally enforceable but that the specific enrollment figures for the magnet schools - 600 per school - is enforceable.

For the first half of the hearing, attorneys for each side took turns arguing their points. After Peck made it clear that she thought the state was meeting its obligations, Urban sat quietly while Peck and Horton debated.

"I don't know how I could find [the state] in material breach based on this language unless they didn't have a game plan or they didn't open the schools or they failed to operate two new magnet schools each year," Peck said. "How do you open two schools and expect that on day one they will be filled to capacity or even to substantial capacity? They're untested. They're untried."

Horton suggested that Peck was interpreting the settlement in a way that it was not written. "You're reading `capacity' into it."

"I'm not reading `capacity' into it," Peck said. The wording, she said, could mean that the school must open for 600 students, anticipating that they will be accommodated.

"Under that reading, there wouldn't have to be one student," Horton said.

"That's not true," Peck said. "There's good faith and fair dealing expected in every contract."

Peck suggested that if Horton wanted to try to prove that the state is not doing all that it can in planning and developing the schools and hiring enough staff, then she would permit a hearing.  Horton said he'd like to consider the option and would let Peck know by July 1 whether he would request a hearing.

Elizabeth Horton Sheff, the plaintiff's mother and a Hartford city council member, expressed deep frustration after the arguments closed.

NEW BRITAIN, Conn. (AP) -- A judge is weighing complaints that the state has breached a settlement in a landmark school desegregation case because it has lagged in enrolling students in new Hartford magnet schools.

Plaintiffs in Sheff vs. O'Neill lawsuit to desegregate Hartford's schools returned to court Monday to argue their contentions before Judge A. Susan Peck. She did not make a decision but indicated she is leaning toward the state.

"Based on what I have before me, I can't find that the state is in breach of this agreement," Peck said.

The settlement in January 2003 requires the state to open two interdistrict magnet schools in Hartford of 600 students each year for four years. The plaintiffs argued the state must fill those schools as they come on line and that it is far behind.  But state officials contend that the settlement simply requires a capacity for 600 students in each school. Its method of phasing in students by adding new grades each year is in compliance with the agreement.

"It was always the state's intent that the schools would open with a capacity of 600 and grow," said Ralph E. Urban, assistant attorney general. "Magnet schools don't open just like that with four grades and full capacity."  The city and state have been adding grades gradually. They said they need time to build the culture of the magnet schools.

Magnet schools offer specialized programs designed to draw students from both suburbs and cities.

Sheff attorney Wesley W. Horton argued that the settlement stipulation did not refer to the word 'capacity.' The language, he said, stated that the schools would be "host magnets of 600. It did not say 'with a capacity of 600' or '600 seats.'"  The arguments are just one more round in longstanding case that's nearly a decade old.

The state Supreme Court ruled in 1996 that racial, ethnic and economic isolation in Hartford schools was unconstitutional. The original case was brought in 1989 on behalf of Milo Sheff, a 10-year-old student in Hartford's Annie Fisher School.

The settlement required Hartford to open two new racially integrated magnet schools a year for four years.

August 3, 2004
By ROBERT A. FRAHM, Courant Staff Writer

Plaintiffs in a Hartford school desegregation case will return to court today to contend that the state has failed to enroll enough children in new city magnet schools to comply with a court-approved settlement last year.

Those schools are falling hundreds of students short of requirements of a plan designed to resolve the long-running Sheff vs. O'Neill case, city Councilwoman Elizabeth Horton Sheff said Monday.

The plaintiffs have scheduled a noon press conference to announce they are filing a motion in Superior Court in New Britain asking the court to determine whether the state is in breach of the settlement and, if so, to enforce the agreement.

A timetable in the settlement calls for Hartford to enroll 2,400 children by this fall in two new magnet schools that opened last year and three others scheduled to open this year, but the Sheff plaintiffs estimate that fewer than 900 students will enroll at those schools this fall.

A study commissioned by the plaintiffs earlier this year says overall enrollment in Hartford's public schools - and even some of the magnet schools themselves - remains overwhelmingly black and Latino and that progress by the state has been too slow.

"They've fallen short of the entire agreement. ...The state has not, as agreed, given enough money to even get [the new magnet schools] going," said Horton Sheff, the mother of lead plaintiff Milo Sheff, who was a city fourth-grader when the case was filed 15 years ago.

In contrast to the upbeat mood surrounding the announcement of a settlement with the state early in 2003, today's action reflects a growing sense of pessimism among the civil rights groups that make up the Sheff coalition.

State officials, however, contend the outlook for the magnet schools is improving, citing trends showing that the schools are attracting an increasing proportion of white suburban children.

"We're doing everything in our capacity to meet the requirements" of the settlement, state Education Commissioner Betty J. Sternberg said. "From an educational point of view, we think we're moving in the right direction. The legal issue will have to be decided in court."

The Sheff settlement was reached 18 months ago after years of disagreements between the plaintiffs and state officials over how to meet the terms of a 1996 state Supreme Court ruling ordering the state to desegregate Hartford's public schools. About 95 percent of the city's student body is black or Latino.

The settlement called for Hartford to open eight new magnet schools by 2007, two each year starting last fall. It also called for expansion of a school choice program allowing city parents to enroll their children in suburban schools.

Under the agreement, at least 30 percent of the city's schoolchildren should be enrolled in racially integrated magnet or suburban schools by 2007. But consultant Leonard B. Stevens, who helped design the magnet plan for the plaintiffs, said the state has made little progress toward that goal.

The magnet schools, where enrollment is voluntary, are designed to attract white suburban students into the city to improve the racial mix, but the numbers are falling short, Stevens said in a report issued in March.

Each of the new magnet schools was to have a racially integrated student body of about 600 students, but neither of the two magnet schools that opened last fall, nor any of the three scheduled to open this fall, will reach that goal, Stevens' report said.

For example, state figures show that at the Greater Hartford Classical Magnet School opened last fall with 450 students while another magnet, Pathways to Technology, had just 82 students.

In addition, the Stevens report said those schools remained racially imbalanced, with minority students accounting for about 95 percent of the enrollment. At the Classical Magnet, for example, only nine students last fall came from the suburbs. Of those nine, not one was white.

Stevens' report said the state's plan is short of money, lacking leadership and unlikely to meet its goals.

The report also found a mixed record for racial integration at several other magnet schools that existed before the Sheff settlement.

Some schools, such as the Breakthrough Magnet School in Hartford, have been able to attract substantial interest from white suburban families, but others have had difficulty attracting whites, the report found.

According to a formula in the Sheff agreement, magnet schools as of last fall could meet racial integration standards if they had white enrollments of at least 28 percent.

However, only a few magnet schools met that standard, and in several cases the schools actually attracted larger numbers of suburban minority children than whites, Stevens found.

"These schools represent a desegregation anomaly," Stevens wrote. 

East Lyme — The town's Zoning Commission on Thursday night unanimously rejected a controversial application for 352 units of housing in the sprawling Oswegatchie Hills woodlands alongside the Niantic River.

But, unlike its previous denial of a similar application, the commission's decision left open the possibility that a portion of the land could be developed.

The application was for a phased development by Landmark LLC, starting with the 352 units. Affordable housing would comprise 120 units, or 34 percent of the development. The affordable housing would be rental apartments near the entrance of the development, with market-rate condominiums for sale in an opposite corner near the Niantic River and Latimer Brook.

Landmark owner Glenn Russo of Middletown said after the decision he would appeal it in court.

“It's obvious to me and has been obvious to the state of Connecticut for some time that towns like East Lyme do not want the type of people who live in affordable housing units to live in their town,” Russo said. “That's why the state of Connecticut felt compelled to create an affordable housing statute to give the state the right to oversee and review decisions made by local boards.

“We intend to use that review process through an appeal of the zoning commission's denial.”

The zoning commission divided the lengthy denial into three segments, each with its own list of reasons. The sections include an amendment to the town's zoning regulations; a zone change request; and an affordable housing application.

Among its reasons to deny, the commission said the development would “unreasonably” pollute the hills; that water and sewer service are not available and that on-site septic is an unacceptable alternative; that there is no right of way allowing Landmark access to the proposed development; and that the affordable housing is different from and “less desirable” than the market-rate condos.

“As we sat here for six public hearings, it became very clear that it's the wrong development on the wrong piece of land,” said commission Chairman Mark Nickerson. “It's an intense development. It would represent, if not the biggest development in East Lyme, one of the biggest developments, on one of the most sensitive pieces of land. It just doesn't add up.”

Nickerson added, “This puzzle piece didn't fit in this puzzle here. That's not to say that this piece, affordable housing, doesn't fit in East Lyme, because it does. ... We do want affordable housing in East Lyme, but this land is too precious. It needs to be preserved.”

The zoning commission said Thursday night that if Landmark reapplies for a zone change, it should restrict its application to the portion of the site where water and sewer are available.

That was a marked difference from the decision on Landmarks' first application, in which the commission said sewer and water were not available on any part of the land. That application was for a change of zone and included plans for 894 units, of which 280 were designated as affordable. It was denied on June 26, 2002.

The commission also rejected a modified proposal by Landmark in July 2002. Russo appealed the decisions to the state Superior Court, which upheld the commission's decisions in a ruling issued last September.

Last September, during the hearings on the most recent application, an employee in the state Department of Environmental Protection wrote a letter concluding that the property is partially within the town's sewer shed.

Dennis Greci, a supervising sanitary engineer with the DEP, wrote that about 42 acres of the proposed development “lie within the proposed sewer service area known as Golden Spur...” Greci said that meant about 24 proposed residential units would receive sewer service.

In a November letter Greci also disputed one of Russo's main arguments by writing that the property outside the sewer shed cannot hook into the service. Greci also refuted Russo's claim that he has a right of way to the sewer because some of the property proposed for development abuts land that falls within the sewer shed.

In Connecticut, an affordable housing application is not subject to the same rules as other applications. The onus is on the town to prove that the need to preserve the land is greater than the good that would come from building affordable housing.

Russo said Thursday that a new affordable housing district regulation enacted last year by the town is discriminatory because it requires an applicant to prove that sewer and water are available.

“This commission has approved multi-family developments on community septic systems,” he said. “We are proposing a multi-family unit on community septic. The only difference between multi-family units on septic systems that they denied and multi-family developments that they approved are the people who live in the units.”

Russo still has a federal discrimination lawsuit pending against the town, the zoning and the water and sewer commissions, and four town officials. In it, he claims that the denial to allow the development of affordable housing was racially motivated.

East Lyme— A representative for Landmark LLC Thursday offered to sell the town some of the land the company owns in the Oswegatchie Hills.

During a Zoning Commission public hearing, Michael Zizka, an attorney representing Landmark, said the development corporation plans to move forward with phase one of its plans but would consider giving the town a large portion of the designated open space East Lyme has been trying to acquire for 30 years.

Members of the commission did not respond to the offer.

The plan before the commission calls for phased development of the area, starting with a 352-unit housing complex. Affordable housing would comprise 34 percent, or 120 units, of the development. The affordable housing would be rental apartments near the entrance of the development, with market-rate condominiums for sale in an opposite corner near the Niantic River and Latimer Brook.

Glen Russo, Landmark's owner, said additional phases would include affordable condominiums for sale, as well as market-rate apartments for rent.

The new proposal will encroach on only a small area that the town wants reserved for open space, Zizka said. Most of the proposed units would lie outside that area, he said.

The commission, which Landmark is suing along with several town officials, complained that it did not have enough information to make an informed decision about the plan. The applicant had not answered questions of environmental impact, handicapped accessibility, water and sewer management or traffic flow, they said.

Russo said Landmark has been working with town officials, and the town had not given the company enough time before the hearing to respond to the questions.

The public hearing began two weeks ago and went on for about five hours before being adjourned until Thursday.

At the first meeting, Zizka and Russo explained the new phased proposal and often emphasized that the town was not interested in the property until Landmark expressed interest in developing it.

After comments from Zizka, Russo and town officials, residents were able to speak about the project Thursday.

Members of environmental groups said the Niantic River could be damaged by potential runoff from the development. They also said many species of animals and plants would lose their habitat if the hills are developed.

No residents spoke in favor of the plan.

Landmark will have a final opportunity to answer town officials' questions on Sept. 2, when the public hearing concludes.

The Zoning Commission denied Landmark's application in 2002 to build a 230-acre housing complex with affordable housing.

In October 2003, Landmark filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the town, the Zoning and the Water and Sewer commissions, and four town officials, claiming that the denial to allow the development of affordable housing was racially motivated. Landmark hired John C. Brittain, a high-profile civil rights attorney, and argued that the town was trying to keep blacks and Hispanics out by denying affordable housing.

The company is also suing the Zoning Commission in state court, alleging that the commission used false information about the town's water and sewer systems when denying Landmark's application.

The town, which has spent more than $50,000 in legal fees, has argued that runoff could pollute the Niantic River and has said that preserving the land is more important than establishing affordable housing there.

e.rouen@theday.com

East Lyme— The Zoning Commission heard a revised proposal Thursday from Landmark LLC to develop land in Oswegatchie Hills.

The new plan calls for phased development of the area, starting with a 352-unit housing complex. Affordable housing would comprise 34 percent, or 120 units, of the development.

The commission, which is currently being sued by Landmark, and representatives of several town and state organizations questioned the application, saying it was similar to the one that was rejected earlier.

“Exactly what is being applied for is not clear to us,” wrote Marcy Balint of the Office of Long Island Sound Programs, in a letter to the board. “The current proposal is identical, except it is being phased in.”

Letters to the commission from Balint's office, the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments, the town Planning Commission, First Selectman Wayne Fraser and the town Harbor Management/Shellfish Commission urged commission members to deny Landmark's application.

Michael Zizka, an attorney representing Landmark, said the new proposal will encroach on only a small area that the town wants reserved for open space. Most of the units proposed at Thursday's meeting lie outside that open space, he said.

He also reiterated that the town was not interested in protecting Oswegatchie Hills until Landmark showed interest in development.

The commission denied Landmark's application in 2002 to build a 230-acre housing complex with affordable housing.

In October 2003, Landmark, owned by Glen Russo of Middletown, filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the town, the zoning and the water and sewer commissions, and four town officials, claiming that the denial to allow the development of affordable housing was racially motivated. Landmark hired John C. Brittain, a high-profile civil rights attorney, and argued that the town was trying to keep blacks and Hispanics out by denying affordable housing.

The company is also suing the Zoning Commission in state court, alleging that the commission used false information about the town's water and sewer systems when denying Landmark's application.

The town, which has spent more than $50,000 in legal fees, has argued that runoff from the development could pollute the Niantic River. It has also said that preserving the land is more important than establishing affordable housing there.

About 4.5 percent of East Lyme's housing is considered affordable. The state recommends a 10 percent minimum. Affordable housing is available to individuals earning between 60 and 80 percent of a community's median income. East Lyme's median household income was about $69,000 in 2000.

The Zoning Commission last summer added an Affordable Housing District to its regulations but has received no applicants.

The public hearing Thursday was still going on at press time.

East Lyme — A Department of Environmental Protection official has determined that part of the proposed development in the Oswegatchie Hills falls within the town's sewer-service area, contradicting one of the town's strongest arguments against developing the land.

In a letter to town Planning Director Meg Parulis that was read into the record at a Zoning Commission public hearing Wednesday, a DEP engineer said his 2002 assessment that the hills were not in the sewer-service area was incorrect.

“I can now state that a portion of the project known as Riverview Heights is within the ultimate tributary area ... for the East Lyme sewer system,” wrote Dennis Greci, the DEP engineer.

Landmark, which owns or has options on about 230 acres in the hills, applied to the Zoning Commission in 2002 to build an 894-unit housing complex with affordable housing in the hills. The commission denied the application, citing a lack of the water and sewer services and a desire to protect the land as open space.

In response, Landmark and its owner, Glen Russo, filed two lawsuits against the town. The first was decided last month in Superior Court in favor of the town. Russo argued that the town used false information about its water and sewer systems when denying the application. In her ruling, Judge Barbara Quinn wrote that the commission's decision, based on potential environmental damage, a lack of sewer and water resources, and traffic problems, was correct, and that the potential harm to the land outweighed the town's need for affordable housing.

Landmark also has a federal discrimination lawsuit against the town, the Zoning and Water and Sewer commissions and four town officials, claiming that the Zoning Commission's denial of the proposed housing complex was racially motivated. Blacks and Hispanics dominate Connecticut's affordable-housing market.

Some town officials have insisted for several years that Russo's property is not within the sewer- service area, known as the sewer shed. Greci said his initial findings on the hills were based on information provided by the town.

In letters from 2002 and August 2004, First Selectman Wayne Fraser said the area is excluded from the sewer shed.

Frederick Thumm, the director of public works, said in a 2001 letter that the hills were not in the sewer shed, but wrote in an August letter that, “my review suggests that a majority of the area is outside the sewer shed.”

“That goes to show how misinformation led to that decision,” said Russo's attorney, Michael Zizka, of the Superior Court's ruling.

The Zoning Commission is currently examining an application from Landmark to build a phased housing development in the hills. The first phase, which is currently under consideration, would have 352 housing units, including 120 affordable-housing apartments.

According to the DEP's letter, 90 acres with about one-third of the buildings would fall within the sewer shed. Russo said a town ordinance that says buildings can connect with town sewer systems if they abut a road or right-of-way with sewers would allow sewers to be extended to the rest of the buildings.

Fraser said the area included in the sewer shed is about 20 acres, and Russo misinterpreted the scale. The town ordinance applies only to land within the shed, he said.

“He interprets things much differently than anyone else does,” Fraser said of Russo.

In the fourth continuation of the public hearing Wednesday, town officials looked surprised when Zizka read DEP's letter into the record.

The arguments at the hearing, which have included about 20 hours of testimony from engineers, lawyers, environmentalists and residents, have often been repetitious. The commission and town officials have argued that Russo has not provided enough information, while Russo has countered that the commission has not provided sufficient time to answer its questions.

Commission members and Russo have traded heated remarks at times, and frustration with the issue was evident during Wednesday's hearing.

At one point, commission Chairman Mark Nickerson questioned Russo's dedication to affordable housing, asking why he did not simply build homes on three-acre lots, which is what the land is currently zoned for.

“You'd make a ton of money selling castles up there,” Nickerson said.

“We believe the state believes that affordable housing is needed in certain parts of the state,” Russo responded.

East Lyme -- For the generations of hikers who scrambled along the ledges and explored the trails of Oswegatchie Hills, one assumption prevailed: The Hills would never change.

So when developer Glenn Russo came to town with plans for a development of hundreds of condominiums and then challenged the Zoning Commission's denial of his application in state and federal courts, it sent a jolt throughout the community.

Now, the lovers of the Hills are racing to acquire some 700 acres of undeveloped land along the Niantic River before developers do.

“The town has taken it for granted,” said Michael Dunn, vice president of the nonprofit Friends of the Oswegatchie Hills Nature Preserve. “People have hiked it for decades and decades and never even thought anything of it. The public's general thought has been, ‘It's undevelopable.'”

“I never knew,” said Friends President Marvin Schutt, “who owned those hills.”

Several public and private entities have come together to form Partnership for Preservation. Conceived by East Lyme First Selectman Wayne Fraser, the partnership seeks to pay “fair compensation” for nine targeted parcels in the Hills and preserve them as open space.

Included are one owned by Russo and two others for which he has options to purchase. Russo is head of Landmark Development LLC of Middletown.

Two properties already acquired by the East Lyme Land Conservation Trust — a group not affiliated with the town — and a town-owned parcel at the southern edge of the Hills could potentially form a network of 12 properties connected by trails and forest that could be preserved as open space.

Initially, the partnership wants to raise $8 million.

“Is it going to take $8 million to buy it? We don't know,” Fraser said. “But is $8 million a fair price to negotiate with people and make them offers? We think so.”

“I hope it happens. That's a tall order,” said Fred Grimsey, president of Save the River—Save the Hills, a nonprofit advocacy group. “If he can make that happen, it's wonderful. I'm interested to see how he proposes to do it, because I don't have it.”

Fraser said he plans to ask town residents to approve allocating $2 million as early as January, which would match $2 million in open space grant money he will seek from the state. He hopes the federal government will provide $3 million, which U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd District, agreed to seek. Fraser would then aim to get another $2 million from outside donations.

“In three years or less, we should be 90 to 95 percent secured on this land,” he said at a Friends meeting last week.

•••

So far the preservation partnership consists simply of a group of like-minded people. It has no legal status.

The members' idea is for the component groups to pool their skills and to stay in communication.

“When we target a piece of property,” Fraser said, “we don't want three different entities going in there negotiating.”

Last Wednesday, 16 people gathered at East Lyme Town Hall to discuss the partnership. They included members of Friends and Save the River—Save the Hills; recently elected state Rep. Edward Jutila of East Lyme and Sen. Andrea Stillman of Waterford; Old Lyme First Selectman Timothy Griswold; representatives from the offices of the governor and Simmons; a deputy commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection; and representatives from the Mashantucket Pequot tribe and the Trust for Public Land.

Their first priority, which the group has already set to work on, is purchase of properties adjacent to parcels that have already been preserved. That is expected to help in obtaining grant money, because it gives evidence of intent to form a large green parcel.

For now, the partnership has determined to ignore Russo's land, which is tied up in a federal lawsuit that claims the Zoning Commission's denial was racially motivated because it perpetuates a lack of affordable housing in East Lyme. Fraser said it is time to put Russo's properties “on the back burner and focus on the remaining land.”

“What the real focus is, is that there is other land involved, and that the other land is under development pressure,” he said.

It is nearly impossible to put a price tag on the Oswegatchie Hills.

The town assessor's office lists assessment and appraisal values for each parcel, but the last revaluation was done in 2001, before real estate prices skyrocketed. Also, each property carries with it the unknown variable of a landowner's incentive to sell or not to sell.

Badge Blackett, of the Trust for Public Land, said Thursday that the best initial approach is as a representative of a charitable organization, appealing to an owner's desire to preserve the land.

The Friends have already had success with that approach. Last week they signed an agreement to purchase an option on 65 acres in the Hills owned by Alan Gardiner of Waterford, who agreed to a price somewhat below fair market value.

With Glenn Russo it will likely be different.

Five years ago, the state DEP tried to buy Russo's property. The DEP appraised at $2.1 million an area of 423 acres in the Hills. That area was: 86 acres owned by a subsidiary of Landmark called Jarvis and managed by Russo's wife, Alicia; the two parcels on which he holds options – owned by Sargent's Head Realty Corp.; and 194 additional acres on which Russo previously held options.

In 2001, negotiations between the DEP and Russo stalled. Russo wanted more money, while the DEP maintained that it had offered him fair market value, which by law is the most the state can pay.

David Leff, deputy DEP commissioner, said Thursday that Russo factored in potential development in obtaining his own appraisal.

“He gives hypotheticals to his appraisers,” Leff said. “They came in with a higher rate.”

Leff said the DEP tried to accommodate Russo by calculating hypothetical development in a subsequent appraisal, but Russo wanted three times more than the offer.

Dunn, of the nonprofit Friends, said he talked with Russo in the parking lot of East Lyme Town Hall after a meeting one night this fall and asked why he was fighting so hard. Why not travel the smoother route, Dunn asked, and sell the land to the town?

“He looked me in the eye and said, ‘I wouldn't sell that land to the town for 100 million dollars,'” Dunn said in an interview last month.

Russo said in a phone interview Thursday, “I don't remember saying that to him.”

“I had a private conversation with Mr. Dunn, and I don't think it's appropriate to discuss a private conversation between individuals in the newspaper,” Russo said.

Russo referred to an offer he has already extended, under which he would sell the town all the land it wants to designate as open space with the exception of the land Landmark wants for Phase I of its most recent proposal, which is about 150 acres. He said the town has not responded to that offer.

That proposal calls for 352 housing units, including 120 affordable housing apartments.

•••

Prior to the announcement of the partnership, three local nonprofit groups in town were each pursuing their own preservation goals and only sometimes crossed paths. Two have said they are actively engaged in the partnership's new idea of teamwork.

Save the River–Save the Hills has no intentions of buying land. Rather, it advocates for preserving land and works on river pollution problems.

“I'll be standing on the sidelines cheering,” Grimsey, its president, said.

The Friends of the Oswegatchie Hills Nature Preserve, a nonprofit group, formed for the purpose of raising money. It is incorporated, with a board of directors. Dunn, its vice president, is the principal of Dunn Associates, which buys and sells land. He has also developed properties in Groton and Waterford and said he understands how to eye land the way a developer would.

The East Lyme Land Conservation Trust has been around the longest, more than 30 years. Its current president, Kathryn Burton, said the agency applies for grant money and does some fundraising. The trust already owns about 130 acres in the Hills, acquired through donations. The trust is not participating in the partnership.

Burton said that while she applauds the group's efforts, she considers “partnership” a legal term that could put the agency at risk should someone sue the partnership.

“We have really been working quietly,” Burton said. “Three years ago I told people to not go out there and scream ‘I love Oswegatchie Hills' because Glenn Russo is the type who will raise the price. The more he knows people want it, the more he will raise the price.”

Burton said all the property owners have been approached, and that only two might be interested in selling. The rest, she said, have owned their land for generations and prefer to hold onto it.

Dunn said the effort to buy the other properties would still be worth it, even if Russo succeeds in his plans to build a housing development.

“We've got the seed of a nature preserve right here, right now,” he said. “The more we can get, the better. The waterfront is a gorgeous, unique area that we want to get, but without it, we could still have a beautiful nature preserve. We'll take as much as we can get.”

In the past several years, Lyme voters have approved the purchase of several large tracts of land with the intent of preserving them as open space forever.

Tony Irving, past president of the Lyme Land Trust, knows that some people believe town residents want to buy land just to keep people out, but the opposite is true, he said.

“If anything, this is the closest thing to socialism that we've come to,” Irving said. “Rather than individuals owning it and locking it up, the public has bought the property and it now becomes public ownership, which is about as far from elitism as you can get, especially if that public is larger than the property.”

Irving said Lyme's conservation efforts would fulfill a sorely needed role in the region.

“You can't look at Lyme in a vacuum,” he said. “You have to look at Lyme in the context of southeastern Connecticut. Different towns are taking on different roles. Waterford is the mall town. New London is the seacoast town. Each has its character and reason for being. There's got to be a place like Lyme that is an open space area.

“With Salem and East Haddam, we have a ‘developed' area of natural resources, and it's going to serve the greater community as a whole,” he said.

Lyme partnered with The Nature Conservancy to buy 434 acres known as the Jewett property, closing on the sale late last week. Adjacent is the Mount Archer property, a 270-acre parcel the town bought two years ago. Voters last month approved the purchase of 90 acres known as the Blackwell property, although the town does not yet know whether it will keep or sell it.

Combined, the town, the state, The Nature Conservancy and the Lyme Land Trust own numerous properties that are preserved as open space. Some are as small as a backyard conservation easement. Major pieces include the 100-acre Chauncey Eno preserve, next to Mount Archer; the Nehantic State Forest, more than 4,000 acres; the 207-acre Selden Creek preserve; the 235-acre Pleasant Valley preserve; and the 300-acre Hartman Park.

“About 42 percent of Lyme is in some form of open space,” Irving said. “There are over 8,000 acres in some kind of open space.”

•••With the flurry of land purchases comes a new responsibility: The state dictates that land bought with state grant money must offer passive recreation, said William Koch Jr., the first selectman.

At last week's Board of Selectmen meeting, Koch suggested that the town hire a coordinator of volunteer efforts on the various properties. He recommended paying someone on an hourly basis, perhaps using $3,500 that is already in the town's budget for open space management.

“Some people have said that now that the taxpayers have bought this, we have a responsibility and an obligation to put trails in and do whatever we're going to do with it, not just let it sit there. We've been talking about it, trying to figure out what to do,” he said.

One goal is to put in a trail system that crosses seamlessly among properties owned by the various organizations. Irving said he would like a trail booklet with descriptions and maps of all publicly accessible properties in Lyme.

“We've got a lot of volunteers, and the Lyme Land Trust has a whole list of volunteers from other areas of town,” Koch said. “We just need somebody to kind of take inventory of Hartman Park, the Jewett Property, Mount Archer, even the Blackwell property, and come up with a plan. It's going to be different for each one.”

As early as this week, town officials will meet with representatives of the conservancy to work on a management agreement for the Jewett property.

They already agree that horses and forestry — maintenance of the forest — are the two major concerns. Horse trails will likely co-exist with walking trails, Koch said.

The Jewett property was made affordable to the town by a mixture of state grant money, fund-raising, a monetary donation from the Jewett family and a unique partnership with The Nature Conservancy. The conservancy was a co-applicant for the state grant and is splitting the cost with Lyme on a 50-50 basis.

“It's incredible,” Koch said. “It's going to maybe cost us, for 434 acres, about $1.2 million. That's amazing, right? You can't buy a house on Lyme Street for that.”

Nathan Frohling, Lower Connecticut River program director for The Nature Conservancy, said the conservancy rated the Jewett purchase as a high priority.

“If not the top, it was one of the very top projects (in the state),” Irving said. “It was probably the most significant project we've done in the history of the program for the lower Connecticut River.

“My goal or my dream is that in 50 years, this part of southeastern Connecticut becomes like an ecotourism destination, because there won't be anything else left.”

Golf Course Proposal Hits Bump

In a major setback for one of America's blue-chip developers, the state Department of Environmental Protection filed a tentative determination on Monday to deny the water permits needed for the controversial Yale Farm Golf Course in Litchfield County.

Roland W. Betts, a close personal friend and former business associate of President Bush, has spent the past four years attempting to secure permits for a championship, 18-hole course on the grounds of a historic, 780-acre estate in Norfolk and North Canaan. The property straddles two crucial brooks feeding the Housatonic River watershed and scenic Campbell Falls State Park.