By Ralph Urban
President, Middlesex Land Trust
The 2024 Annual Report of the Connecticut Council on Environmental Quality, issued last April, describes a mixture of successes and inadequacies in summing up the state of the environment in Connecticut.
The statutorily created council, administratively housed at the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, in its transmission letter to the Governor ominously noted federal abdication and backtracking on environmental issues, observing that “[o]ur federal government is at serious odds with Connecticut’s environment as it haphazardly slashes funding, manpower, environmental protection regulations and access to justice.” Given this state of affairs, the letter goes on to assert that Connecticut “must rise and fill the gap, and lead by example.”
Using some forty measures of environmental health and human activity, the report itself goes on to describe both where Connecticut is succeeding and where it is falling short in protecting its natural environment and resources. Broken out into sections covering air quality, land stewardship, water, wildlife, “invasive disruptors,” “materials, energy and transportation,” and compliance, the report concludes with specific recommendations.
Noting that while air and water quality has generally improved, the report observes that climate change poses significant challenges for Connecticut and its plants, animals, birds, and human population, increasing droughts, extreme rainfall and invasive plants and insects. And while certain species appear to be thriving, others, like the Long Island lobster are in grave danger of disappearing. In fact, the report, in just a few distinct pages, succinctly describes precisely how climate change is affecting all the different areas and measures of environmental quality.
Greenhouse gases and other pollutants remain a serious problem, even in the face of slow, incremental progress. The report notes that even while hypoxic conditions in Long Island Sound are decreasing, the Sound’s health is challenged by sea level rise and increasing warmth. The report also skillfully assesses the state of Connecticut’s solid waste issues and carbon-neutral energy production.
Most significantly for the Land Trust’s core mission, the report notes that the pace of open
space and farmland protection is currently too slow to meet previously agreed upon state goals set many years ago.
Finally, in one clear and concise page, the report makes some twenty-three general recommendations around five general areas: i) reducing ozone and greenhouse gases; ii)
promoting nature-based solutions; iii) protecting watersheds and water quality; iv) enhancing land preservation; and v) increasing environmental protection resources.
The report is an important, well-written and informative read for anyone concerned about the health of Connecticut’s natural environment.