Advisory group seeks stronger ‘protect and steward’ language and clearer municipal notification for source-water protection

A majority of members of the Water Planning Council advisory group on Wednesday moved to tighten language in the state water plan and to press regulators for clearer project-notification procedures to protect drinking-water supply areas.

Alicia Sharmitt, co-chair of the Water Planning Council advisory group, told members the watershed protection work group recommends replacing soft language in Section 5.2.0301 of the state water plan. “We want to protect and steward these particular sources,” she said, arguing that “reaffirm support” is too weak for Class I and II lands and other watershed property owned or relied upon by utilities.

The proposed change grew out of an extended review by the watershed protection work group, which spent more than an hour debating whether the plan should simply reference the EPA definition of “source water protection areas” or prompt Connecticut to adopt its own statutory or regulatory definition. Steve Vico, co-chair and environmental planning manager at the Regional Water Authority, said the absence of a Connecticut codified definition opened a “can of worms” and could become an action item for the state water plan’s recommendations.

Members said the practical effect of stronger wording would be to give regulators and local planners clearer expectations when reviewing land use that overlaps mapped drinking-water supply watersheds and aquifer protection areas. Denise Savageau, president of the Connecticut Association of Conservation Districts, urged careful wordsmithing so the change would create actionable items rather than vague statements.

Alongside the wording change, the work group endorsed distribution of a series of guidance documents from the Department of Public Health (DPH) on A3I notification procedures—site-plan notification steps utilities and DPH are supposed to receive for projects within mapped protection areas. “DPH put together multiple documents,” the co-chair said; the materials are regulatory in nature but intended as outreach tools utilities can share with municipalities.

Members recommended attaching data and practical examples to the DPH one-pager before widely distributing it and asked the co-chairs to solicit comments ahead of a September workshop on source-water protection activity. The outreach and education committee also plans to route the guidance through established utility-municipality channels so municipalities understand notification obligations.

The group also raised shortcomings at the Connecticut Siting Council, which currently does not have an automated step to notify water utilities when an application may affect a public drinking-water supply watershed. Members suggested a notification requirement—similar in function to the DPH A3I process—so utilities would not need to manually search the siting council’s docket each month for projects in their watersheds.

Next steps: the watershed protection co-chairs will circulate a redraft of the proposed state water-plan language and the DPH materials to the work group for comment, with the goal of presenting a refined recommendation to the advisory group ahead of the fall workshop. The group set no formal deadline for regulatory action; distribution and workshop scheduling are anticipated this summer and fall.