Lawsuits accuse four municipalities in CT of violating Clean Water Act
The environmental advocacy group Save the Sound filed lawsuits against four Connecticut municipalities, accusing them of violating state and federal laws by failing to properly keep track of stormwater systems that flow into nearly a dozen rivers and streams already threatened by pollution.
Ridgefield, Redding, Middletown and Burlington failed to file required paperwork regarding their stormwater systems with state regulators over the past three years, according to the lawsuits filed this week.
Those reports, which require municipal officials to map and inventory stormwater systems, identify sources of harmful discharges and detail for regulators how they are working to implement best practices, are vital to efforts to reduce stormwater pollution and improve water quality, the lawsuits state.
“If you don’t have an inventory of all the infrastructure that your town is responsible for, that is known to cause pollution because your streams and lakes are on the impaired waters list, there’s no way you’re going to be able to start addressing the problem,” said Bill Lucey, who is the Long Island Soundkeeper at Save the Sound.
Leaders in two of the municipalities highlighted their own environmental initiatives to rebuff some of the claims made by New Havenbased Save the Sound, which the leaders said took legal action before they could negotiate another resolution.
Ridgefield First Selectman Rudy Marconi pointed to a recent $55 million investment to upgrade sewer lines and a treatment plant as evidence of the town’s commitment to addressing water quality and environmental issues. The town engineer who had been in charge of filing annual stormwater reports retired in 2018, he said, and the position has not been filed, though the town recently contracted with an outside firm to manage some of the work.
“They have no idea what we’ve done, and that’s the most disappointing part,” Marconi said. “To file a lawsuit is disappointing, because we fell behind on a couple of forms.”
Brig Smith, general counsel for the city of Middletown, said he disagreed with some of the allegations in the lawsuit, noting that Save the Sound praised Middletown’s environmental record earlier this month after the Common Council voted in support of a regional climate initiative.
“We have been working with Save the Sound to address their concerns prior to litigation, but time ran out before we could reach an agreement as Save the Sound has done with other municipalities,” Smith said in an email. “We plan to continue that work now that a suit has been filed and hope to reach a resolution on these issues quickly.”
Representatives of the towns of Burlington and Redding did not respond to a request for comment.
Marconi also derided Save the Sound’s lawsuit as a “publicity stunt.” After receiving notice of the group’s concerns in early October, Marconi said he attempted to contact the group’s president, Curt Johnson, but was told that he was on vacation.
Lucey and an attorney for Save the Sound, Roger Reynolds, said the group made repeated efforts to notify towns of any noncompliance with the law, including sending reminders of filing deadlines earlier this year as well as a 60-day notice of their intent to file a complaint over alleged violations.
After Marconi reached out unsuccessfully to Johnson, the group made two more attempts to reach the first selectman, to no avail, Lucey said.
Two of the towns that received the notice, New Milford and Southington, have since been in contact with Save the Sound to rectify the group’s concerns, Lucey and Reynolds said.
“We communicated with the towns before the 60-day notice and after the notice as well, because our view is always to work collaboratively,” Reynolds said.
In a statement announcing the lawsuits on Tuesday, the group said it had targeted “the most blatant violations” of the state’s stormwater permit requirements and federal regulations under the Clean Water Act. Noncompliance with those regulations appeared to be “widespread” in cities and towns around the state, the group warned.
The towns contacted by the group, in part, were chosen because their stormwater systems impacted rivers and streams on the state’s list of impaired bodies of water, Lucey said. The lawsuits mention nearly a dozen bodies of water impacted by the towns’ stormwater systems, including the Norwalk and Connecticut rivers and Crystal Lake in Middletown.
Most of those bodies of water eventually flow into Long Island Sound, impacting a vast area of the watershed, Lucey said.
The Environmental Protection Agency referred comment Wednesday to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, which oversees stormwater permitting. Will Healey, a DEEP spokesman, said in an email that the agency takes noncompliance issues “very seriously,” and noted other programs available to municipalities to combat stormwater issues.
“While we have not thoroughly reviewed the legal action filed by Save the Sound, we encourage all parties to the lawsuit to work together to address any noncompliance as soon as possible,” Healey said.
The lawsuits, which seek to force the municipalities into compliance with the Clean Water Act and state permitting regulations, were each filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.