Wethersfield, CT --
06-12-2002 --

    There is a critical Town Council meeting this Tuesday, June 18th, 7 p.m. in Council Chambers. The future of Wethersfield Cove is at stake.

    If Council chooses to back a lesser proposal, then chronic, known, predictable human sewage overflows will persist in our Cove EVERY YEAR.

    The status quo for which DEP and MDC would like the town to settle is to continue to allow high hundreds of thousands to millions of gallons of RAW sewage per year to flow into our Cove.

    Furthermore, both agencies are attempting to misappropriate and misdirect the bond monies our ELECTED legislators secured to eliminate CSO's into The Cove. Those monies were to be additional to any Consent Order activities to which MDC was already committed -- not in lieu of them. Now, these agencies want to use the monies to get us only to the above levels by funding "leader disconnections" that were in four- and eight-year old "consent orders," issued long before the legislators began work to secure the new monies.

    "Wethersfield Involves Neighbors Association" [WINA] has hired a highly reputable engineering firm, SEA Consulting Engineers, which has developed a proposal that will completely separate sanitary (human) sewage from the storm drains in south Hartford for about $26 million, or about the same expenditure as the originally proposed tank plan. This SEA plan is one of several that are under consideration by Council, including leader disconnections, but, IT IS THE ONLY ONE THAT TAKES HUMAN SEWAGE OUT OF THE LOOP and OUT OF OUR COVE.

    We urge everyone, and urge you to ask everyone you know, from neighbor, to civic or church member, to any concerned citizen with whom you are acquainted, to express your expectation for a complete end to ANY human sewage in Wethersfield Cove.

    Come to the Council Meeting Tuesday, June 18 (6/18), at 6 p.m. in the Wethersfield Town Hall, Council Chambers. We made the difference before. That's why the SEA Engineering proposal is now on the table... and the tank's off.

    We can do it again.

WINA, Wethersfield, CT
Wethersfield Involves Neighbors Association

  [ Editor's note: Mr. Leigh Standish, of WINA, has taken the as yet unapproved minutes of the Town Council's special meeting of 6/10/2002, available in the sidebar to the left, and provided his own, involved interpretation and correction of those minutes. This virus-free addendum gives the reader another perspective of those minutes as they now stand, 6/17/2002. His comments are in blue; click; [Back] to return.]

Additional concerns and commentary about the MDC's continued pollution of the Wethersfield Cove is provided here by Mr. Standish; click