Stand anywhere along the coast of Connecticut facing south and the miles of seemingly empty blue space stretching before you can be deceiving, according to Nathan Frohling.
Frohling, a Guilford resident and staffer at the Nature Conservancy, said that’s what he realized after examining a trove of data recently mapped and published by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection as part of a years-long effort to better understand Long Island Sound.
“When you start overlaying the different uses, you start saying, ‘Oh My God, it’s extremely busy,” Frohling said. “There’s barely a space in the Sound that doesn’t have some use at some time.”
That catalog of information, the Long Island Sound Blue Plan, was formally blessed by state lawmakers earlier this month. It comes more than five years after lawmakers ordered an inventory of the Sound’s natural features as well as human uses — everything from the habitats of whales and sea turtles to underground cables and lighthouses — to help aid decision makers planning for the Sound’s future.
Through dozens of interactive maps now published online, users can view this data as a lens into the Sound’s most important ecological, commercial and historical areas.
Look at one map, for example, and the routes of ships crisscrossing the Sound appear like highways jammed at rush hour. Toggle another switch, and the locations of shipwrecks dot the seafloor nearby.
“Marine spatial planning is a concept that’s been kicking around for a decade or so,” said David Blatt, an environmental analyst at DEEP, who worked on the plan. Similar projects have already been completed in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, he said.
“What it does is it compiles a lot of information and gives guidance and policies on how to apply that information to new uses of the offshore area of Long Island Sound,” Blatt said.
Lawmakers first took action to inventory the Sound in 2015, voting to establish the Blue Plan Advisory Committee, which got underway collecting data and holding a series of forums to gather input from the public and stakeholders.
Frohling, who helped pioneer the project and later served on the advisory committee, said much of the work was undertaken by DEEP, the Nature Conservancy and the Connecticut Sea Grant program to reach out to researchers, fishermen, local governments and other interested groups.
“It has been a very thorough stakeholder inclusion [process],” Frohling said. “Because it’s so important that people buy into this and feel good about it.
A final draft of the plan was submitted to lawmakers early last year, however, approval was stalled when the pandemic forced lawmakers to abandon plans for a full legislative session.
The resolution to formally adopt the plan was re-submitted this year and passed without opposition by the General Assembly, with the Senate taking final action on May 14.
“This is just another example of what can be done with teamwork and collaboration in Connecticut,” Gov. Ned Lamont said in a statement hailing passage of the plan. “Environmentalists, businesses, legislators, regulators, academics, scientists, and citizens, all pursuing a common vision that balances the protection of our state’s most vital resource, while ensuring its value as a contributor to Connecticut’s economy and quality of life.”
In testimony submitted to the legislature’s Environment Committee, the plan received accolades from conservation-minded groups such as the Sierra Club and the Connecticut Audubon Society, who heralded the inclusion of data on important areas for birds, fish, seals and other marine animals.
Commercial operators on the Sound also supported the plan, expressing hopes that it would streamline the regulatory process.
Stephen Plant, owner of Noank-based Connecticut Cultured Oysters, said in testimony that the plan would “minimize conflict between these and proposed new projects, allowing for intelligent and proactive management of one of Connecticut and New York’s greatest natural resources.”
Other supporters of the plan included the Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk and the Mystic Aquarium.
“There are no outright prohibitions, it doesn’t reserve any area of the Sound for particular uses, but it brings the important values to different areas of the Sound to the fore for consideration in existing regulatory programs,” Blatt said. “It keeps people from putting, say, a kelp farm in the middle of a sailboat racing area.”
The sponsor of the resolution to adopt the Blue Plan, state Rep. Joe Gresko, D- Stratford, said last week that the plan would aid both regulators and citizens applying for permits by giving both access to the same sets of data.
“We’re helping individuals who are interested in using the Sound … to have an idea of what people who are issuing the permits will be looking at,” Gresko said.
The chair of the Environment Committee, state Sen. Christine Cohen, D-Guilford, said the plan would promote a “mindful” approach toward utilizing the Sound at a time when the state is striving for both economic development and environmental preservation.
“I think this was pretty progressive in terms of recognizing that we have this beautiful resource that is the Long Island Sound and that there’s an incredible amount of human uses for it as well as ecologically significant spaces,” Cohen said. “But nobody really had an inventory of all of that.”
According to DEEP, there are more than 23.8 million people living within 50 miles of Long Island Sounds, which is split between New York and Connecticut, contributing $9.4 billion to the local economy.
Some of the data was analyzed by scientists on the New York side of the Sound, said Blatt, and the plan itself includes information about areas in both states. The 2015 law that ordered the creation of the plan also called for coordination “to the maximum extent feasible” with New York state officials.
The collection of data and its inclusion into the plan remains ongoing, Blatt added.
“The Blue Plan is not a product, it’s a process,” he said. “It’s a process and it’s never going to be done, it will always evolve.”
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What are the uses of the Long Island Sound? New maps provide all the details. - Middletown Press
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