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Conn. ‘Blue Plan’ Will Assess Uses, Shape Future Of LI Sound

Charles Island in the Long Island Sound, just off the shore of Milford, Conn.
Joelle Schrock
/
WSHU
Charles Island in the Long Island Sound, just off the shore of Milford, Conn.

The state of Connecticut is working on a plan to inventory all of Long Island Sound’s natural resources and the ways people use it. It’s called the Blue Plan, and they’re starting to take public comment on it.

The Connecticut General Assembly approved the plan last year. Rob Klee, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, says they’re working on the plan with environmental groups from Connecticut and New York. He says the demands we’re putting on the Sound are growing.

“And some of those demands may be competing, or might be contradictory, or might have the potential for conflict.”

Klee says he wants to avoid those conflicts by having a map and inventory of the aquatic animal and plant life – plus the ways people use the Sound, like boating, fishing or commercial shipping.

“If you have that all mapped out and planned out, you can think proactively about, well, if there is a new proposal for development of offshore wind turbines or cross-Sound cables, let’s have that information beforehand.”

Parts of the plan were presented at a forum in Norwalk Wednesday night. The state is also taking public comments on the plan online. A draft version of the plan is scheduled to be done by 2019.

Copyright 2016 WSHU

Davis Dunavin loves telling stories, whether on the radio or around the campfire. He fell in love with sound-rich radio storytelling while working as an assistant reporter at KBIA public radio in Columbia, Missouri. Before coming back to radio, he worked in digital journalism as the editor of Newtown Patch. As a freelance reporter, his work for WSHU aired nationally on NPR. Davis is a proud graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism; he started in Missouri and ended up in Connecticut, which, he'd like to point out, is the same geographic trajectory taken by Mark Twain.

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