Trio of Commissioners Call MDC “Environmentally Irresponsible” For Failing to Release More Water into Farmington River. Businesses, Tourism and Fish Suffer.

Three Lamont administration commissioners have asked the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) to release more water from its Colebrook reservoir into the Farmington River. Failing to do so is “environmentally irresponsible,” claimed David Lehman of the Department of Economic and Community Development, Katherine Dykes of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and Brian Hurlburt of the Department of Agriculture.

“The Farmington is one of the only major rivers in Connecticut that hosts a robust, naturally reproducing wild trout population. Boating/fishing is the largest contributing sector to Connecticut’s $3.3 billion outdoor recreation economy. Current flows are approximately half of median levels and do not support these recreation opportunities during the peak summer tourism season,” the trio of commissioners wrote in an August 8th letter to MDC CEO Scott W. Jellison. The commissioners declined to included the word “drought” in their bossy missive. The letter was copied to Governor Ned Lamont.

Jellison pointed out in an email reply to the commissioners and others that the quasi-public agency that provides water to towns in greater Hartford has been meeting its required releases into the river during the drought. It has been releasing between as much as 128 million gallons a day into the Farmington River. With the 2019 expiration of MDC’s agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers, the water supplier no longer has access to a significant source of water in the Colebrook damns and reservoirs.

The MDC, Jellison informed the commissioners, has a storage allocation in Colebrook of 3.5 billion gallons. It has been drawn down to 1.4 million gallons. That water is “ potential emergency drinking water” as well as essential to aquatic life in the reservoir.

Jellison artfully pointed out in his reply that the commissioners ought to know that Dykes possesses the authority to request the Army Corps of Engineers to release more water from the 10 billion gallons under its control in the Colebrook reservoir system. Significant releases from the Army Corps would help the fish but do not enough to allow “for recreational canoeing, kayaks and tubing for very long.”

Published August 19, 2022.