The Planning and Zoning Commission (PZC) is seeking resident input for ideas on how to best move forward with its decennial Plan of Conservation and Development (POCD).

Results from the survey, which is available on the town’s website, “will guide the ways in which the Town guides and regulates growth for the next decade,” according to its description. Respondents will be asked to “identify priority areas and development types,” within the four broad areas of Deep River. Those areas include those surrounding Winthrop Road, Kelsey Hill, Main Street and the Town Landing, and River Road.

The renewed POCD will go to satisfy CT Gen Stat § 8-23, which requires that municipal planning commissions “prepare or amend and shall adopt a plan of conservation and development for the municipality” and that “the commission shall regularly review and maintain such plan.”

Respondents will be asked in the survey to check off boxes indicating if conservation and development in a wide variety of categories are appropriate in those identified quadrants of the town. Categories include forestry protection, increased affordable housing, recreation and entertainment, light industrial and commercial uses, and hiking and biking trails.

The survey also asks respondents for directions the Town should take regarding industrial development in its three active areas and the number of allowable uses in those industrial areas. The three industrial districts in Deep River are Turnpike, Commercial, and Village.

“Those questions will really function more of a temperature check about the types of development people want to see in town,” said Zoning Enforcement Officer (ZEO) John Guszkowski.

The Town adopted a POCD on Oct. 15, 2015, but most of its approximately 80 individual goals were not timely with its adoption and have not been given a “full review” for meeting them line-by-line, according to Guszkowski.

“In many ways, the 2015 plan was actually a very sort of a short and sweet update to the 2005 plan, and really very little had changed in the 2015 plan,” he said. “In many ways, we’re looking at goals that are 18 years.”

Guszkowski said the steering committee overseeing the eventually renewed POCD is looking to set aside the previous and current plans and is “starting a little bit from scratch” on how best to move the Town forward based on the results of the survey.

“They're sort of starting from a new vision standpoint,” said Guszkowski.

The ZEO said one of the developmental interests of the steering committee through the survey is “to find ways to enhance Deep River’s position as the economic and cultural center” of the tri-town region “to encourage broader cooperation between Deep River, Chester, and Essex.” This could be partly achieved through bolstering both the Town’s Main Street economic activity and preserving its rural lands.

On the conservation side, ecologically-minded groups such Conservation and Inland Wetlands Commission and the Deep River Land Trust are attentive to actions regarding the rural spots in town underdeveloped open space designated by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. They are curious about enhancing hiking trails and ensuring that future development does not disturb “open and environmentally-sensitive places out in the western part and the Winthrop Area.”

Guszkowski said these considerations remain part of evolving discussion on the interests of the Town in developing its renewed POCD.

The ZEO said the Town is looking to adopt the new plan by the summer or fall of 2024.