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Warmer winters come at a cost
Mar 20, 2024
Debra A. Aleksinas
For many, a mild winter and early spring are reasons to rejoice.
Not so much to environmentalists, health officials, and municipalities, who said temperatures in February and March that are more akin to May, combined with fierce and frequent rain in place of snowfall, are sources of concern.
It’s not just the Northwest Corner that is experiencing a shifting climate. On Friday, March 8, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed that the winter of 2023-2024 was the warmest in nearly 30 years of record keeping.
According to the NOAA, the lower 48 states averaged 37.6 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 5.4 degrees above average.
The root of the issue is tied to the effect climate has on the weather, said Tom Worthley, associate extension professor at the UConn Cooperative Extension Service and the University of Connecticut Department of Natural Resources and the Environment.
“For example, when you boil a pot of water,” he explained, “it doesn’t warm evenly, it becomes turbulent, and that’s kind of what we’re seeing with the weather.”
Worse potholes and infrastructure damage
Downsides to a nonwinter include early emergence of bears and other mammals from their cozy dens at a time when food is scarce; a premature budding of trees and native plants; longer season of ticks, fleas and mosquitoes; and extended mold and allergy seasons for people with asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Bird migration is also affected when seasons don’t line up.
An early spring also hurts the local economy by hampering winter sports and damaging infrastructure as towns grapple with the expense of repairing gaping potholes caused by freeze/thaw cycles and damage to washed-out roads and bridges from intense downpours.
Cornwall First Selectman Gordon Ridgway, who also operates an organic farm in town, noted that “there is a price to pay” for winter warming.
While town road crews have used fewer resources to treat roads this winter, that cost savings has been offset by more than $500,000 in damaged infrastructure, including a washed-out dirt road last July, flood damage to a retaining wall in West Cornwall and a recent landslide.
“That projected $500,000 is huge” and is a major hit to the town’s budget, said Ridgway, who noted that the loss is not covered by insurance.
“I’ve been the first selectman for 34 years, and this is the first time the town had to pay for the damages. We always got FEMA reimbursement and so the towns are on the hook for a lot of these repairs,” as the government’s focus shifts to major disasters.
“As a result,” said Ridgway, we’re looking at a significant tax increase to help replenish our reserve.”
Waking up too early
Black bears have emerged prematurely from hibernation, prompting discussion during an early March meeting of the North Canaan Board of Selectmen’s meeting.
Worthley confirmed that a sudden winter warmup is summoning hungry bears from their dens. Since it is too early for the large mammals to find an abundance of native plants and nuts for foraging, “they are going to be looking elsewhere for food, and that might be in the garbage can or bird feeder.”
Amphibians, too, are vulnerable to sudden cold. Frogs and salamanders, for example, begin to breed at the first sign of spring, so they, too, may emerge prematurely, only to be threatened by a hard freeze.
But by far the most unusual sight Worthley has experienced in his 40 years of working in the woods is the amount of movement of organic material underfoot.
“No matter how much rain the forest floor will absorb, I’ve never seen the leaves move across the surface, and that’s unusual,” said the environmentalist. “It could be due to the presence of earthworms where they don’t belong, and the intensity of precipitation.”
Also of concern is that an early, wet spring could extend the seasons for some pests, like ticks and mosquitoes. On the bright side, a rainy spring could keep destructive spongy moth caterpillars at bay.
Bears emerging prematurely from hibernation have limited foraging options, so they are on the hunt for trash cans and bird feeders.Debra A. Aleksinas
Timing can work against birds
Early blossoming in plants and trees can throw off the schedule of available insect food for birds. To understand why it matters, said Eileen Fielding, director of Sharon Audubon, consider neotropical migrant birds like scarlet tanagers, wood thrushes or many of the warbler species.
“These are birds that winter in Central or South America or the Caribbean and come north to breed. Migrating is hugely expensive in calories, and risky, but it’s worth the trip,” said Fielding. “We may think of the tropics as buggy, but the northern latitudes provide an enormous flush of insect life every spring and summer when our trees leaf out and provide a feast for millions of fat, nourishing caterpillars and other insects.”
It’s perfect for raising young birds quickly, Fielding explained: “Each pair of breeding birds has to feed thousands of insects to their nestlings.”
Now imagine a warm spell causing trees to bud earlier than usual. In that case, she said, the insects may not synchronize with leaf-out, so there might be fewer insects. Or perhaps the birds arrive after the insects have peaked.
“There are a lot of variations on how the timing can work against birds.”
The impact isn’t all from earlier spring times. Other factors can affect insect availability or bird survival, Fielding noted.
For example, a scarlet tanager might be kept from foraging in the treetops for several days by heavy rain, long enough to threaten the survival of its young.
A winter wren, which prefers moist, shady places in the woods, might find that an intense period of drought dries up its habitat and makes its insect prey scarce, so it can no longer successfully raise broods where it used to.
Fielding fears that many birds could lose some or all of their Connecticut habitat.
Allergens, mold a growing concern
When trees, grasses and plants produce pollen prematurely, it extends the annual allergy season, according to Dr. J. Keith Joseph of Sharon Primary Care.
Exposure to pollen can trigger symptoms of sneezing, runny nose, itchy and watery eyes, headache and congestion.
“This is especially harmful for those with asthma and other respiratory issues like COPD. Pollen exposure can cause exacerbations of respiratory conditions in individuals who have an allergic reaction to pollen,” he explained.
As a result, said Joseph, increased discomfort can greatly impact emotional well-being, social life and daily activities. Individuals who enjoy outdoor activities such as hiking, walking, running or bike riding may have to limit their time outside to avoid exposure to allergens:
“This can make them feel frustrated and isolated, and lack of sleep due to congestion or itchy eyes can make individuals feel tired and irritable.”
Joseph suggested those affected keep windows closed if pollen levels are high, wash hands and change clothing after being outdoors, avoid touching their eyes, and seek a referral to an allergist for identification of triggers and targeted therapy.
Recent downpours have also caused flooding to homes and businesses, which often leads to the growth of harmful mold if left untreated.
“Mild winters can increase moisture in and around your home, which can stimulate mold growth and in turn can trigger allergic reactions.”
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in the coming decades, “changing climate is likely to increase flooding, harm ecosystems, disrupt farming and increase some risks to human health.”
In the meantime, noted Worthley, “we are living in a giant experiment, if you will.”
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Connecticut has eight counties but no county governments. That leaves local leaders in the state’s 169 towns — over half of which are home to fewer than 13,000 residents — to manage all local services, from zoning enforcement to tax collection, animal control, voting registration and fair housing.
Gov. Ned Lamont has proposed legislation intended to enable more regional collaboration, helping town leaders work together and save money by sharing services.
In written testimony submitted to the legislature’s Planning and Development Committee, Lamont said the bill, H.B. 5056, “is a step in the right direction for regional collaboration by allowing municipalities the option to work with other towns.”
The legislation would achieve that by revoking any local town or city charter provisions that currently prohibit or limit shared services agreements. It also calls for local unions to form “coalition bargaining units” to negotiate service agreements across multiple towns.
With the intention of facilitating regional labor agreements, the bill states labor contracts cannot contain language prohibiting such agreements. That is one of the main stumbling blocks for towns that want to collaborate, according to advocates who favor the legislation.
“In the effort to bargain for wages and benefits and working conditions, we’ve also bargained away the ability to assign work across town lines, which has precluded service sharing arrangements, in some cases, from taking place,” Joe DeLong, executive director of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, told lawmakers during a public hearing Wednesday, March 13.
DeLong said the bill seeks to clarify “that we can’t bargain away the ability to help our neighbor.”
Eric Chester, a lawyer whose firm represents teachers and municipal employee bargaining units around the state, took issue with phrasing in the bill that he read as potentially undermining the ability of union coalitions to negotiate at all.
“We’re looking to maintain that their rights are preserved — that they have a right in negotiating over their working conditions, and that an interlocal agreement does not usurp those rights and does not usurp any existing collective bargaining agreement that already governs their wages, hours and working conditions,” Chester said.
Planning and Development co-chair state Rep. Eleni Kavros-DeGraw, D-Avon, said the language in the bill was still a work in progress. “There are ongoing discussions with labor and the governor’s office,” she said.
State Sen. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich, raised questions about the bill repealing town charter provisions prohibiting shared service agreements.
“It was characterized that this will give municipalities greater ability and discretion and ease to share services, and I think most of us would share that goal. I’m concerned…however, that it’s more prescriptive than that,” Fazio said.
“I don’t think the intention was to be prescriptive. The intention is to be enabling,” Rebecca Augur, testifying on behalf of the state Office of Policy and Management, said. “It was to enable municipalities to voluntarily enter into these regional shared services despite any charter provisions currently restricting them, or ordinances and so on.”
Fazio wasn’t entirely convinced. “Maybe that’s something we can work on as the bill goes forward,” he said.
Leaders from Connecticut’s regional Councils of Government said that while several municipalities around the state have forged service sharing agreements — often with coordination by the respective COG — obstacles remain. For example, many town charters require that certain public positions be appointed by the town’s mayor or first selectman, said Matthew Fulda, executive director of the Metropolitan Council of Governments.
And many of those positions are ones that “require additional licensing — like building officials, health officials and those types of positions — that are becoming harder and harder to fill as we have less and less licensed officials to do that work,” Fulda said. They’re precisely the positions that would be most helpful to share with neighboring towns, he said.
Collective bargaining agreements also limit the positions towns can share, said Matt Hart, executive director of the Capitol Region COG. “Hypothetically, towns at present can share any service,” Hart said. “However, the vast majority of what occurs right now is with positions that are held by non-union employees.”
Hart said that’s why the bill’s provisions on coalition bargaining are important, and he urged stronger language “to require collective bargaining units to form coalition bargaining units, as opposed to keeping it discretionary.”
“That way,” he said, “the legislative bodies for the participating towns are in the driver’s seat, as they should be.”
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Tom Brown
FALLS VILLAGE — The Housatonic Musical Theatre Society’s production of “Beauty and the Beast” played to full houses last week at Housatonic Valley Regional High School (HVRHS).
When The Lakeville Journal visited the dress rehearsal the evening before the Thursday, March 14, opening, Aron Ladanyi — Gaston — was out sick, and Niya Borst, who played Belle along with Tess Marks, was filling in, reading straight from the script — and making it look easy.
But the cast was in order for the opening night.
Tess Marks played Belle for the Friday and the Saturday evening performances.
Niya Borst played Belle for the Thursday and the Saturday matinee performances.
The show held a few surprises, one that had the audience sitting bolt upright when wolves with glowing eyes chased Hudson Sebranek’s Maurice up one aisle of the auditorium and down the other.
And Tryston Bronson’s Beast got beastlier as the show unfolded.
Comic relief was provided by Andy Delgado’s Lumiere and Alex Wilbur’s Cogsworth, the former with glow-in-the dark hands and both with outrageous French and British accents. Ladanyi’s Gaston was splendidly oleaginous.
The entire cast was well-rehearsed, singing strongly and clearly, and moving confidently through the dance routines.
“Beauty and the Beast” was directed and produced by HVRHS teacher Christiane Olson, with musical direction from fellow teacher Tom Krupa. Amber Cameron of Falls Village was the choreographer.
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LITCHFIELD — Municipal leaders throughout the region gathered on Zoom Thursday, March 14, to learn of cybersecurity solutions in the age of digital threats.
A presentation by Weston Meehan of Executive Business Machines in Trumbull was given to the Northwest Hill Council of Governments (COG) at its March meeting.
Meehan spoke about the training and solutions available to small town governments. On the front line, Town Hall staff can take the first step by becoming educated on how to spot and avoid phishing emails.
Phishing is an online scam designed to trick users into granting access or personal information to criminals.
In Torrington, Mayor Eleanor Carbone said her town fell victim to cyberattacks during the pandemic after an employee clicked an unsafe link.
“We were hacked in 2020,” Carbone said. “I highly encourage everybody to be very serious about what are you doing with regard to protecting yourself and making sure your employees are not clicking the wrong email, because ultimately, that was how we got hacked.”
Torrington responded by creating a team of information technology (IT) professionals to handle cybersecurity in town.
For smaller towns that lack the resources for a dedicated team, Meehan advised leaders begin to offer training courses to municipal employees. This not only improves awareness but can reduce cyberinsurance rates for towns.
He recommended towns use a tool called KnowBe4 to gather data on points of vulnerability.
“KnowBe4 is the industry leader,” said Meehan. “They’re always coming out with phishing campaigns and deceptive emails that can easily be dispersed.”
KnowBe4 uses fake phishing emails to identify which employees are in need of more training. Susceptible users can then be offered additional training.
COG Executive Director Rob Phillips added that one town fell victim to phishing scams and is now ineligible for cyberinsurance. Instead, it must fund an IT team to head up digital security.
COG senior regional planner Jean Speck advised towns update municipal websites to .gov domains instead of .org. Government domains offer increased security and have recently become free for municipal web pages.
“Of [COG’s] 21 towns, only 23% actually have a .gov domain name. Most have .org, a couple have .us, which doesn’t meet the same security protection level as a .gov. So, we’d like to offer a walk-through,” Speck said.
Speck asked municipal leaders looking to increase cybersecurity in their towns to reach out to her for next steps.
Speck noted that in 2021, Connecticut was home to 77 municipal cyberattacks and more than 80 educational institution cyberattacks. The result was “millions and millions of dollars” lost.
“It’s a life-changing event for any town,” Speck said.
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