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| 9/23/2005 5:44:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article | The Housatonic River is Not Having a Good Year -- and Both the Trout and Local Businesses are Feeling the Affects
By David Parker
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| The Housy flows quietly under Bull's Bridge |
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CORNWALL - It has been a long, hot, dry summer on the Housatonic River -- tough on fish, and tough on some local businesses.
And many locals blame the problem on new policies adopted by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
The brown trout, prized by anglers from throughout the Northeast, have fared badly, some perishing as heat and shallow water changed their habitat. The Department of Environmental Protection recorded at least one fish kill as early as June.
As fishing conditions declined, the number of fishermen dropped, hurting the shops that serve them, such as Harold McMillan's Housatonic River Outfitters in Cornwall Bridge.
The impact on entrepreneurs who rent rafts, kayaks and canoes and lead outings on the river has been harsh. Jennifer Clarke of Clarke Outdoors in West Cornwall says overall business is down 40 percent and the number of customers she's put into the river between Falls Village and Cornwall Bridge is down far more than that.
Power Company is Generating Minimum Power
At the upper end of the economic scale, Northeast Utilities is getting absolutely no low-cost electricity right now from its hydro stations in Falls Village and at Bull's Bridge, or even from its larger Stevenson Dam at the outlet of Lake Zoar.
Hot dry summers do come along every so often, of course. But is something else to blame for some of the woes experienced this year?
Clarke has no doubts on the matter. Neither does Lou Timolat, first selectman of Falls Village. Both put some of the blame not on nature but on what they see as a misguided regulation imposed on the power company by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
For many years, Northeast Utilities employed a "pond-and-release" system to manage the flow of water to its generators along the Housatonic. Water stored behind the dams could be used for two purposes. It could be released to generate cheap power at times of peak demand and it could be released at certain times seasonally into the main riverbed to help recreational boating when water levels would otherwise be too low.
Last year FERC, in re-licensing the hydro plants, barred pond and release in favor of a run of river or "natural flow" regime favored by many environmentalists, some fishermen, by the Housatonic River Commission and the state Department of Environmental Protection.
The DEP Takes Control
The state agency in fact played a crucial role in shaping FERC's order. A DEP water quality order in effect requiring run of river flow took priority over recommendations of FERC staff that a modified pond-and-release system be retained.
Under run-of-river, which was launched briefly last summer and has been in full effect this year, Northeast Utilities still uses the Housatonic's southward flow to generate inexpensive power but cannot store water behind its dams for timed release. And the utility must continually release enough water into the riverbeds below the dams to maintain a level judged necessary for a healthy river ecology and fish habitat.
"Anytime you tamper with a river system that's been working, the odds are great that you're going to do some harm," said Timolate this week.
In the case of the change imposed by FERC some harmful results are showing up, he said, including:
local businesses are hurting
the Falls Village power plant, a key piece of his town's tax base, isn't able to function as efficiently;
and, Timolat said, "and even so the fish are dying."
Falls Village Seeks Court Relief
Falls Village, under Timolat's leadership, has taken the DEP to court to secure a change in their policies. The suit, which was filed last year and still awaiting trial, claims the agency failed to hold a legal public hearing before issuing its "run of river" water quality order. Such a hearing would allow a number of "environmental, electric power and social issues" to come to light, Timolat said.
Clarke, meanwhile, is trying to round up local support to change the current policy, hoping to enlist Cornwall selectmen to help generate pressure on the DEP. She recently gave selectmen a letter outlining the damage "run of river" flow is causing.
For Clarke Outdoors, the stretch of the Housatonic between the Falls Village dam and Cornwall Bridge is vital.
In 1997, Clarke said, the most recent season for which she has numbers, "we put 6,201 people into that stretch of river." This year to date, she said, the comparable number is 1,239.
"The falloff started early in the year, directly because of run of river. Without timed releases, we couldn't promise groups that we'd have water at any certain time."
Clarke does run outings north of the Falls Village dam as well, but overall, business is down 40 percent this year, she said. A dry summer takes part of the blame, she conceded, but "in a drought year, without run of river, the damage would normally be about 20 percent."
Other businesses also have suffered damage, Clarke said, especially in the village of West Cornwall, where boaters can take a break in their journey to buy snacks or lunch.
Cornwall First Selectman Gordon Ridgway, whose board discussed Clarke's letter earlier this month, said members were concerned, and that he'd alerted legislators, including Rep. Roberta Willis, D-Salisbury, to the possible harm being caused to local enterprises.
Ridgway didn't take a position on the environmental merits of run-of-river flow. But he said it may be true that "federal and state regulators are required to look at the health of the river and not at the health of our local economy."
State Lawmakers React
Willis said she's now trying to determine whether the harm to business described by Clarke and others may be partially due to a this year's cutback in state support of tourism promotion efforts specifically targeted to the Litchfield Hills region.
A "streamlining" of budgets and agencies, she said, now has those dollars and promotion efforts shared with a much larger Greater Waterbury tourism district.
Dan Bolognoni of Lakeville is chairman of that 48-town Northwest Connecticut Convention and Visitors Bureau, which includes the cities of Waterbury and Danbury as well as the rural parts of Litchfield County.
"From our perspective we haven't noticed a change in the level of overall tourism activity," he said this week. "In fact we've had a very strong summer season."
Bolognoni added, however, that people visit northwest Connecticut for many different reasons and purposes, of which fishing and recreational boating are only two.
McMillan, the owner of Housatonic River Ouytfitters, said the decline in his fly fishing business this summer has been very real. He also sells canoes and kayaks and runs some "drift boat" trips on the river.
But McMillan attributes the damage he's suffered mainly to the dry conditions, not to run-of-river.
"It's the Nature of the Busines on this River",/b>
"We're in a drought," McMillan said. "It's the nature of the business on this river; Some years are good, some years are bad."
And even if "run of river did have a slight negative impact, he added, he'd still support it, "not because it's good or bad for my business; it's good for the river."
FERC's run-of-river regimen doesn't affect total power generation at Falls Village, Bull's Bridge or the other hydro stations, according to Bob Gates of Northeast Generating Systems, a Northeast Utilities-owned company.
"It does affect the timing" of that generation, Gates added, because without the ability to withhold water for times of peak demand, the utility can't time production at the local plants to cut its need for more expensive power from other sources.
This summer, with so little rainfall in the upper Housatonic valley, Gates said, stream flow and hence power generation "has been very low. At Stevenson Dam, he said, "we're struggling to meet our minimum flow requirements" under FERC's relicensing order.
And at Falls Village and Bull's Bridge, "we're not generating at this point, just passing water through."
Power operations at Falls Village ceased Sept. 7, according to Joe Fraser, Northeast Generating's station chief.
Over the years mean water flow at Falls Village in September has been 502.3 cubic feet per second; currently it is 144 cfs. At Bull's Bridge the September mean is 564.2 cfs; currently the flow is 153 cfs, still nearly twice the required minimum of 83 cfs.
Brown Trout Try to Survive
Even with run-of-river flow, much of the Housatonic has been too shallow and too warm for many of the brown trout stocked by the DEP, said Mike Humphreys, a fisheries biologist for the DEP based in Litchfield.
"The hot, dry summer and the extended droughthave been tough on trout populations in most trout streams," Humprheys said Friday. "Luckily on the Housatonic there are a couple of very good thermal refuges where there's deeper, cooler water. And when the trout get stressed they tend to find those areas."
Humphreys said the DEP found hundreds of fish collected there in late August but that "by the end of the summer they were somewhat reduced" as drought conditions persisted.
As a result, Humphreys said, the DEP decided to stock about 600 large brown trout in the river "so that we'll have good quality fishing this fall."
What about the impact of natural flow versus timed releases of water into the river at Falls Village and Bull's Bridge?
Humprheys noted that in recent years Northeast Utilities had discontinued timed releases during periods of stressful conditions for trout and their habitat.
"But if they were doing pond and release during the hot periods," he said, the river would have come up and gone down rapidly, and we probably could have expected more of the trout to have died."
What are the chances that run-of-the-river flow will be revoked in favor of pond and release?
Clarke said she'd like to be optimistic that pressure from local businesses and officials along the Housatonic may lead to change of heart at the DEP.
But realistically, she said, the suit brought by Falls Village may have a better chance.
Meanwhile, all parties are hoping for more rain next year.
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