By Chris Donnelly
The City of Middletown’s Urban Forestry Commission is conducting a street tree inventory. This effort is being funded by a grant from CT DEEP. Professionals have been contracted to inventory the trees. However, we need volunteers willing to survey potential street tree planting sites. Are you interested in helping? Here are the basic details:
Mike Thomas (the rower standing in this picture) prepares to receive plants from a paddler. Photo credit Phil LeMontagne.
The Jonah Center is looking for able-bodied individuals who have or are willing to obtain a CT Safe Boating Certificate to provide motorboat support for work parties removing invasive water chestnut plants (Trapa natans) in the Floating Meadows (Mattabesset River) next summer. Motorboat operators pilot our 14-foot flat-bottomed Jon boat equipped with a 6 hp motor. Taking the bagged plants from kayakers and canoeists greatly increases the productivity of the work party. Motorboat operators dispose of the plants on shore where they quickly die and dry out. Continue reading
If you are in favor of preserving historic buildings, then pay attention to the ballot questions on the Middletown and Portland ballots. In both cases, the future of beautiful stone schools will be affected. The re-use of such buildings is beneficial environmentally, culturally, and often financially. Continue reading
This 1-minute video was recorded by Phil LeMontagne on the Coginchaug River on September 6, 2024. Each year in late summer, Red-winged Blackbirds feast upon the ripening wild rice in the Floating Meadows of Middletown and Cromwell. The Meadows, a rare freshwater tidal marshland, provides habitat for a wide variety of plants and animals, and nutrition for these wonderful migrating birds. Click on the image above or here to view.
This summer, the Town of Portland constructed almost 1 mile of new sidewalk along Main Street, replacing the uneven and broken sidewalks between Arvid Street and Gildersleeve School. Before construction began, John Hall expressed concern about the danger that excavation would present to the roots of a majestic pin oak tree. With the support of residents Beau and Holly Doherty, Portland’s First Selectman Ryan Curley, and Director of Public Works Ryan O’Halpin, the original construction plan was modified to save this historic shade tree.
We thank all who responded to the Jonah Center’s February 2024 survey on Automated Traffic Enforcement Safety Devices (ATESDs) also known as speed and red-light cameras. We submitted to the City of Middletown the list of names and addresses of those in favor of using this technology to make our streets safer. Read more about the issue here.
On September 3, 2024, Middletown’s Common Council passed an ordinance allowing the use of ATESDs. (Such an ordinance is required by state law prior to implementation by a municipality.) The Middletown Police Department must now apply to CT DOT for a permit to use ATESDs in specific locations justified by crash other safety data.
Shown above is Patch C in Pecausett Pond, before and after our evening work party in June,
This summer, Jonah Center volunteers and field workers removed approximately 24,000 pounds of invasive water chestnut plants from the Floating Meadows (Mattabesset River), Pecausett Pond, and the Connecticut River between Rocky Hill and Middle Haddam. Continue reading
The Jonah Center Board invites you to help celebrate our 20th Anniversary at our Forest and Garden Party on Saturday, June 22 from 3:00 to 5:00 PM at the South Middletown home of Jon Morris and Pam Frost.
Over the past 14 years, they have transformed their thirty-acre property into a beautiful and inspiring model of sustainable living, with highly productive vegetable gardens, fruit trees, a woodlot that they harvest selectively and keep free of invasive plants, a solar-heated swimming pool, perennial borders, solar panels, and decorative use of stone and wood. Continue reading
Please let us know your thoughts about the use of “automated traffic enforcement safety devices” (i.e. cameras) to reduce deaths and serious injuries of pedestrians and bicyclists. (Read the article “How To Reduce Speeding” posted earlier on our website.) If you support such use, please add your name, street address, and town to a petition to the governing body of your town of residence (especially Middletown and Portland) requesting the adoption of a local ordinance that would permit the use of these devices in limited, prescribed locations.
by Krishna Winston
Currently president of the Jonah Center Board and chair of Middletown’s Resource Recycling Advisory Commission, Krishna Winston has been committed to environmental conservation since long before recycling became mandatory in the State of Connecticut in 1991. She served on the task force that designed Middletown’s first recycling program. In October of this year she spent sixteen hours going door to door on Middletown’s north side to inform residents about the new co-collection program beginning in November.
The Context
Connecticut’s waste crisis became impossible to ignore once the MIRA trash-to-energy plant shut down in the summer of 2022, leaving 49 towns—representing about a third of the state’s trash—in the lurch. But the crisis has been in the making far longer. For decades the state DEP (now DEEP) has been setting targets for reducing waste, and time and again those targets have been missed. With more and more disposable and single-use items, along with packaging, much of it difficult or impossible to recycle, many residents’ trash carts are filled to overflowing. Because of contamination, single-stream recycling, originally intended to simplify and promote more recycling, has actually lowered the value of the material collected. To separate mixed recyclables into marketable commodities, material-recovery facilities (MRFs), like the one recently inaugurated by Murphy Road Recycling in Berlin’s industrial park, must be equipped with sophisticated and costly equipment imported from other countries. Whereas recycling once brought in some revenue, in recent years municipalities and hauling companies have been paying for recycling, and the cost keeps going up. Continue reading
Connecticut has a problem: What are we going to do with all our municipal solid waste?
Send us a message with the words “waste reduction campaign” by clicking here. We will get you the information you need to send testimony to the state legislature.
Here is the background:
The Hartford trash-to-energy plant (MIRA) has closed. The main reasons for that closure were: the huge financial investment that would have been required to keep the plant operating; and the harmful air-quality impacts that came from the plant. Governor Lamont and DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes agree that we need to find another solution – one that reduces the volume of trash, maximizes recycling, and does not burden low-income communities that have suffered the serious health effects of living near incinerators and landfills. Continue reading
As you probably know, electricity rates in Connecticut have risen sharply, due in large part to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The conflict is putting pressure on the price of natural gas. The “standard offer” through Eversource for the generation portion of your bill has gone from 12.2 to 24.17 cents per kWh. Here’s what you can do. Continue reading