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05/26/2015 01:00 PMThough The Preserve is now public land, it’s not yet ready to receive public visitors unfamiliar with the property.
Miles of unlabeled trails criss-cross the 1,000-acre parcel, so visitors could easily get lost. Many of the more than 1,400 PVC test pipes that prospective developers sunk to collect data for project applications are still sticking out of the soil. Also strewn around the land is discarded trash deposited over many years.
A dedicated team of volunteers led by members of the Board of Selectmen’s Preserve Ad Hoc Committee is already working to address these issues, however. Members of this body include Parks & Recreation Director Ray Allen, Walt Smith of the Conservation Commission, Judy Preston of the Inland Wetlands Commission, Elizabeth Swenson of the Economic Development Commission, Joe Nochera of the Old Saybrook Land Trust, and Kathy Connolly, Chris Cryder, and Tom ODell from the Westbrook Conservation Commission.
The charge of The Preserve Committee is to recommend actions with respect to land stewardship to The Preserve’s two-member Cooperative Management Committee (CMC), represented by the State of Connecticut and the Old Saybrook first selectman. Among the recommendations will be those addressing public safety, boundary lines and encroachments, passive recreation development and enhancement, forestry management, wildlife conservation, and environmental education.
“There’s a big, big push to mark The Preserve’s boundaries, remove ‘No Trespassing’ signs, and put up new signs with the message ‘No Unauthorized Motorized Vehicles,’” said Connolly, a co-leader with Cryder of the volunteer work crew effort.
“Right now, there are just pink ties marking property boundaries. In the next stage, every several hundred feet, an ‘Old Saybrook Open Space’ sign will be posted on trees,” said Connolly. “In between the posted open space signs, we’ll place green paint blazes to mark the boundary.”
To prepare for a recent field work day, 500 new open space signs and paint buckets were readied. Then Connolly, Cryder, and the other 11 volunteers split up to start the boundary marking process.
“We got about 10 percent of the boundary markings installed, took out three bags of garbage, removed several posted ‘No Trespassing’ signs, and removed two PVC test pipes,” said Connolly.
To remove the test pipe stubs from the landscape, volunteers dug down to a depth of six inches around two, nine-foot-deep vertical pipes the crew found. Using a portable saw, they cut the PVC pipe off at that depth and then fill the void with soil and other material.
Numerous trails wander through the thousand-acre Preserve and the 500-plus contiguous acres of protected open space—land trust land, town land, the Great Cedars Conservation Area, and the town park. These existing trails were not created for recreational purposes, however. Most are instead remnants of old logging operations once conducted on the land.
“If you go walking in The Preserve, understand that the trails are not marked and so you’ll need to have with you a compass and/or use a GPS device to find your way,” said Connolly.
Westbrook’s representative on The Preserve Committee, Tom ODell, said that the Westbrook Conservation Commission he chairs also is supporting effective long-term Preserve management. Toward this goal, ODell and the commission are working on two initiatives: to develop a plan to assist in developing and managing a major trail head on Route 153 in Westbrook and to develop a regional trail system that will link Old Saybrook and Westbrook trails with the Cockaponset State Forest trails.
The Preserve Agreement
The two official owners of the 1,000-acre Preserve property, the State of Connecticut and the Town of Old Saybrook, recently agreed on the terms of the Cooperative Management Agreement that will guide future land management and decision-making.
The agreement states that the state and the town agree to establish a committee to make decisions on the use of the property, use of the Stewardship Account funds, and to set the roles and responsibilities of cooperative management of the property. The state and the town each must designate one representative and, to assist them, a representative of The Nature Conservancy is designated to serve as a non-voting member on this Cooperative Management Committee (CMC). All actions of and decisions by the committee shall be by unanimous vote of the committee.
The agreement also allows the CMC to appoint ad hoc committees like the current town Selectmen’s Preserve Ad Hoc Committee, to recommend actions with respect to management and stewardship of The Preserve.