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11/22/2015 11:00 PMA Town Meeting scheduled for Nov. 17 was canceled after a petition to take a water main utility easement at the intersection of Lower Road and Daniel Avenue by eminent domain failed to pass the Board of Finance (BOF). The eminent domain taking would have supplied clean water to the Mulberry Point, Joshua Cove, and Tuttle Point areas.
The Town of Guilford had received a petition asking the town to invoke eminent domain in order to attain the easements for water main utilities. The petition was accepted with 98 confirmed signatures and a Town Meeting set, but the BOF felt the process hadn’t yet come to an eminent domain taking, through which a municipality can purchase property for public use without the seller’s consent.
“There were a couple of reasons,” said BOF Chair Matt Hoey. “There were a series of conversations between board members and town counsel, along with two other attorneys working on this. All three recommended it was premature for us to move forward with eminent domain. The advice of the counsel was consistent with some of the concerns voiced by the BOF.”
The BOF not only worked with Guilford’s town attorney on the issue, but also with the attorney who had negotiated the original agreement with the Indian Cove Association and a land use attorney.
The neighborhood associations in the Mulberry Point, Joshua Cove, and Tuttle Point areas have voiced concerns over water quality for years, noting contamination by seawater and insufficient septic systems. The associations sought to bring public water to their neighborhoods, but in order to do that, several easements were needed, including one from the Indian Cove Association.
The Indian Cove Association had initially agreed to the easement, but when the issue was presented to the association’s general membership, it was rejected. The petition was to invoke eminent domain in order to move ahead with the easement through Indian Cover Association.
“That’s not the only easement required. Five other easements would be needed, three of which would be automatic because they’re under the control of the area associations making the request, but there are two others” on private property, said Hoey. “The other easements had not been secured and the BOF found it unusual that we’d move to eminent domain on one easement when we didn’t have bona fide agreements in place on the other easements.”
Hoey noted several other concerns on moving ahead with the petition. He noted that the data presented from the areas making the request was from 2012 and had not been updated, nor had the recommended studies been conducted.
“There was not definitive data on how many wells are bad and if any had been monitored to consider how significant a problem that is,” said Hoey.
While the bulk of the costs of bringing city water to the neighborhoods making the requests would fall on residents, Connecticut Water requires 75 percent of property owners to sign up for services. Hoey said the BOF still had questions about the town’s financial responsibility if the 75 percent requirement was not met.
At this point, the town has already spent some money on attorneys’ fees, but if the issue proceeds to eminent domain, those costs will increase.
“In a perfect world...we wouldn’t have to go to eminent domain,” said Hoey. “Our hope that negotiations begin in earnest quickly.”
Now the neighborhood associations are back to the negotiation table. Hoey said he and several other members of the BOF are hoping that the situation can be resolved through negotiations and more communication.
“Unfortunately we have one community that’s holding another community who has declared that they have significant water issues hostage,” said Hoey. “My hope is that there is a significant amount of misunderstanding that can be cleared up by further negotiations.
“I think that the misunderstanding is how severe the problem really is and the fact that Indian Cove Association will be made whole—and in fact be improving the road because it would be repaved—and individual members will not suffer as a result of water going to the Mulberry Point area,” said Hoey. “My hope that this situation can be resolved by various parties working together and we’re able to restore the sense of one community.”