DEP instructed to revise proposed regulations for protecting freshwater

After five years, what's another month or so?

Proposed regulations that would set the first comprehensive standards for water flow levels for the state's rivers and streams, called for in a law passed by the state legislature five years ago, were "rejected without prejudice" last week by the legislative panel charged with approving them.

The Regulation Review Committee directed the state Department of Environmental Protection to revise and resubmit the regulations, meant to manage and protect the state's freshwater resources.
The revisions would respond to concerns raised by legislative staff attorneys and a coalition of public water companies, agriculture, municipal and business groups concerned that the new rules would be overly strict and restrictive of public water supplies. The DEP contends it wrote ample flexibility into the rules to ensure public water needs can be met.

Betsey Wingfield, bureau chief of the water protection and land reuse bureau of the state DEP, said her office is still analyzing the technical and substantive issues raised by the Legislative Commissioners Office in its report to the committee.

"It's a legal analysis of the regulations, and I don't see them as pushing for them to be more or less protective of the environment," Wingfield said. "It's raising legal issues."

For example, among 10 "substantive concerns," the report said the regulations need to clarify the basis for a decision to change the classification of river or stream, and to more clearly define natural and sufficient flow variations.

Wingfield expects the DEP will resubmit a new version to the legislative committee in time for its November or December meeting.

She added it is typical for the committee to send new regulations back for revision after the first submittal, as was the case with the streamflow rules. The committee could have voted to reject the regulations altogether, but that would leave the state out of compliance with the law passed five years ago.

"Rejection without prejudice" was expected, Wingfield said, given the complexity of the regulations.

David Sutherland, director of government relations for the Nature Conservancy, also didn't see the committee's action as a major setback. The conservancy and several other environmental and outdoor sportsman groups have been advocating for the regulations to ensure water companies and others that divert from rivers and streams maintain water levels that can adequately support fish and other aquatic life.

Elizabeth Gara, executive director of the Connecticut Water Works Association, said her group and others in the coalition opposed to the last version of the regulations are looking forward to a new version "that will protect aquatic life and make sure public water suppliers have sufficient water to meet customer needs."

The regulations should also be narrowed so that they do not apply to groundwater supplies that were not covered in the original law, she said.

"I don't believe the Legislative Commissioners Office report went far enough," she said. "Certainly the committee identified concerns that went beyond."

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