The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
‘It’s really a nature preserve’
A healthier Naugatuck River bolsters wildlife, recreation
TORRINGTON — On the banks of the Naugatuck River on Franklin Street, a fearless duck named Clarence sometimes eats out of Brian Corringham’s hand.
“He did it several days running last summer,” said Corringham, a Long Island native now living near the Naugatuck River here. Of the hundreds of ducks he feeds daily from a coffee can filled with cracked corn, only Clarence, a loner with no tail feathers, has dared to get close to him.
“They’re wild animals,” Corringham said. “They talk, they cluck when they get excited. It’s happy clucking. I read that somewhere. Feed them, and they’re happy.”
Several species of ducks and other waterfowl feed and nest near the river. Native and stocked fish, wood turtles, American eels and other aquatic creatures populate the stream, which joins the Housatonic River in Derby. It is the only major river that is completely contained within the borders of Connecticut, according to naugatuckriver.net.
The Naugatuck River has seen a remarkable recovery in the last half-century. It still has a ways to go, and recent events are encouraging to environmentalists.
Between Torrington and Derby, the river drops 540 feet, about 13 feet per mile. “The river’s size and steep gradient, made it ideal for hydropower development, causing a surge in industrial development in the 1700 and 1800s,” the website states. “Unfortunately centuries of industrial abuse left the river essentially lifeless for most of the 20th century, ranking it among the most polluted rivers in the nation.”
But citizen groups and action by the state of Connecticut have altered the current of events. As the website further states, “The adoption of Connecticut’s Clean Water Act in 1967 and the adoption of the federal Water Pollution Control Act in 1972, gave the State the legal authority necessary to finally address water quality degradation in the river. By 1976, … all eight municipal wastewater treatment plants discharging to the Naugatuck River had installed secondary waste treatment.”
Cleaning up pollution was only part of the problem. Dams along the river still prevented fish from swimming upstream to spawn. Many unused dams were destroyed, and fish ladders were constructed, but the Kinneytown Dam in Seymour remained a barrier, according to Save the Sound and the Naugatuck Valley Council of Governments, which represents 19 municipalities along the river.
In a mid-December 2022 release, NVCOG announced that $15 million had been made available from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Restoring Fish Passage through Barrier Removal grant program. The funds are intended for the removal of Kinneytown Dam, which is owned by HydroLand, a hydroelectric facility that is offline.
“A lot of that dam removal comes from focusing on migratory species coming from the ocean,” said Nate Nardi-Cyrus, assistant city planner for Torrington. “So, things like herring, shad, those things that would be more downstream. They don't jump very well, so it's not like a salmon situation where they're, you know, flying over waterfalls.”
He said the American eel is one species that would benefit from the removal of barriers such as the Kinneytown Dam. “They are a somewhat imperiled species that is actually the opposite of a salmon or shad. They breed in the ocean, and then they kind of ride currents as these tiny little eels.” Only about 10 percent get past barriers, but they are so numerous that some have been observed in Torrington, he said. They live to adulthood, then return downstream to the ocean to spawn and die, he said.
The river's rebirth has also spawned the Naugatuck River Greenway, a cooperative venture among river communities to encourage hiking and bicycling along the river. “The end of the greenway is in Torrington, and it goes all the way down to Derby,” he said. Torrington's section begins at Franklin Street and eventually will reach Bogue Road, where Litchfield will take over, he said.
The return of waterfowl is also a success story, he said. “I remember having a wildlife professor when I was in school not that long ago, like 10 years ago. And, you know, he said when he was a little boy, seeing a flock of geese was like, you just never saw them. It was the highlight.”
Brian Corringham took a break from feeding Clarence and other ducks and pointed to several businesses near Franklin Plaza. “It's good for people that come here to visit the businesses to be aware that this is kind of a nature preserve here. Yeah, it's not just an old dingy river. It's really a nature preserve.”
Canada geese honked, and a hundred ducks clucked, apparently in agreement.